Join us for readings from the 2022 South Coast Writers Centre / Merrigong Playwrights Program at Coledale Community Hall.

Entry by donation - registration is required.

The evening will feature staged readings from six new plays in development, a piece of musical theatre and a short animated feature from emerging playwrights Diana McLaren, Tegan Ware, Tonya Lee, Ines Judd, Dale Watts, Emily Gray, Cicily Ponnor, and program convenor Tom Peach.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS

Tom Peach is a local playwright who has had work performed in Sydney, Wollongong, and internationally including The Old Viaduct Hotel at the Blood Moon, Wonderwall at the Phoenix and Keep at the Tom Mann. He has directed productions from community outreach festivals to a sold out run of a Midsummer Night's Dream. He is the literary manager for Short and Sweet Illawarra. He convenes the playwrighting programme for the South Coast Writers Centre and the Merrigong theatre. His passion is for local stories with global relevance.

Diana McLaren is a 30-year-old comedian, actor, and writer operating in the Illawarra area. Having studied at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga where she earned two bachelors degrees (one in acting and one in television, both of which involved writing components) she accidentally left the arts behind and ran the Sydney branch of Australia's largest coworking space for two years. She then returned to the Illawarra area where she has been working as a comedian and room runner under the Cocoa and Butter Productions header while also running her design agency Dem's Designs.

Tegan Ware is an aspiring filmmaker, theatre director and writer based in the Illawarra and Sydney regions of Australia. Tegan studied at the Academy of Film, Theatre and Television (2019-2020) where she worked on over 50 short film projects including projects that she wrote and directed: In Between (2019), Tulipa (2020) and her graduate project Crow (2020) which is still in post production. Tegan participated in the Short and Sweet Festival Sydney in 2020 where she directed the production ‘Danny Boy’ and in 2021 where she directed the production ‘The Morning After the Night Before’. She wrote and directed the piece ‘Damsel in revenge’ for Short and Sweet Illawarra in 2021. Ware’s short screenplay ‘In the Garden’ (2021) was selected as part of the official selection in the Siren Screenplay Competition (2021). She has written with and worked with production companies such as Knockout Productions and Three Quarters Productions.

Tonya Lee is a performer, writer, and singer with over forty years of experience. They are also a mother of three, a survivor of childhood and domestic abuse, and a proud woman of many personalities due to their Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder). Tonya was a founding member of shopfront theatre, "play building" and performing from the age of twelve, touring Adelaide for the Fringe festival, NT for the Come Out Festival, and a tour of the UK in 1986. They have been an actor on TV and stage and a singer, gigging in Cover Bands and forming their own bands. They are currently writing a showcase called "pickled stories" - a celebration of the stories and songs that marinade, shift and develop in our lives. They are a student of performance and social work at UOW and are developing their memoirs into a musical piece. They are also an exercise and nutrition trainer, writer, professional bingo caller, previous bank manager, and creator of the wellness program Babystepping to a better life.

Ines Judd has toured as a puppeteer, run mask workshops in the Blue Mountains, and studied theatre at the Jacques Lecoq school in Paris. In Sydney they have been involved in theatre projects including an adaption for stage of a Javanese shadow puppet play. In 2021 they collaborated on a musical about the plight of the Murray Darling Basin. They are also working on an original project about migratory shorebirds stitching the world together, incorporating music and art from First Nations peoples and inhabitants of the countries the birds travel to, to display on a global scale the sorry state of our environment by viewing the world from the birds' perspective.

Dale Watts is an actor, director, writer, and Wollongong-based creative and member of the LGBTQIA+ community, currently working on an adaptation of the 1823 Ludwig Tieck novel Wake Not the Dead, often regarded as the first modern vampire story: a man brings his wife back from the dead and things go wrong.

Emily Gray is a writer and a lawyer at a community legal centre. She grew up on Dharawal country and lives in Austinmer with her wife and three sons. She was a recipient of the SCWC Emerging Writers Mentor Program, and has a short story published the Legacies anthology. She has a first class honours degree in English Literature, and attended The Writers’ Voice and NYU writing workshops in New York. Emily has a long history of activism in human rights and LGBTIQ equality, having worked for Amnesty International in London and Paris, the UK House of Lord.

Cicily Ponnor was selected in 2022 as part of Australia Plays transform and NTop for a plot development lab on a play about political stances. They have worked as a performer with the late Bruce Keller (Citymoon Theatre) and were part of the inaugural UTP ensemble under the direction of John Baylis (Sydney Front) and PACT and PYT ensemble. They have worked as a performer with ERTH, Gravity FEED. They were selected as part of the inaugural Spark program from Youth Arts QLD, were awarded the Young Leaders Award (now known as Kirk Robson Award) from the Australia Council for visionary leadership in tackling social justice issues through theatre particularly for their work with refugees, and were commissioned by WYD (World Youth Day) in 2008 to devise and direct a performance looking at social justice and indifference. They have written and performed two short solo pieces: Eat My Shorts (Performance Space, 2001) and Short and Sharp (UTP, 2003), have been on the Board of UTP, PYT and BYDS (now known as OUTLOUD ) and have been peer advisor for the Australia Council Literature Board and Community Partnerships Board.