The Creative Team

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Performers + Concept: Emma Che Raethke + Sarah Whitehead

Director: Bridget Boyle

Set Designer: Josh McIntosh and Sue Loveday

Textile artist and community facilitator: Sue Loveday

Audience Engagement/dramaturg: Julie Robson

Yugar textile Artist/samford community consultant: Lucie Verheist.

Story Consultation: Abdul Ibrahimi

Local Samford valley community members

BIOGRAPHIES

Emma Che Raethke is a performer, multidisciplinary artist and creative producer. She holds a Masters degree from WAAPA. She has toured her work across Australia and Europe. She has performed in The 2 Strings European tour, School for Wives, Don Juan and Love on a Summers Eve for Noble Rot theatre, My night with Harold and The Pillowman For 23rd Productions and Getting physical for Strut and Fret in schools and at The DreamBig festival. She has regularly run performance workshops for Backbone youth arts, QT, Laboite Theatre Company, The Song Room, PANI and Moreton Bay regional council. In 2011 she was an associate artist at Laboite where she created and directed So Far Away Yet So Near as well a scripted work, Flinch. Her directing credits include: Black Grey White Lights at The Bakery in Perth and in regional WA, Journey ( RAF, RADF, OZCO funded) at The Judith Wright Centre/ The Centre and RPAC, Hometurf for LaBoite Theatre company and many community engaged site specific performances across the Deception Bay community.

Sarah Whitehead is a trained clown and theatre maker. She studied clown and bouffon with clown masters Philippe Gaulier (Paris) and Giovanni Fussetti (Melbourne). She has also trained regularly in Action Theater with Danielle Cresp. She has also completed a Bachelor of Theatre Arts (Acting) at USQ, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Education at Monash University. Her show credits include: The Show Must Go On (funded by Arts Qld), Free Range (Melbourne Fringe Festival), SeamTogether by The Seamstresses (creative development funded by RADF), The Outhouse by See Saw Theatre supported by Vulcana Circus (funded by Brisbane City Council's Creative Sparks Program) which was programmed at the National Circus Festival 2022 and has been a choreographer for Ludo Studio's Bluey (episodes Dance Mode, Musical Statues and Onesies). Sarah also has worked extensively with young people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds teaching circus skills and facilitating clown and puppetry workshops in Melbourne and Brisbane with the support of Foundation House (Vic) and with young people at Milpera (Qld).

Bridget Boyle is a co-founder of debase productions and holds a doctorate in Drama. She has worked extensively in the field of clowning as a director, performer and teacher, having studied with Philippe Gaulier in 2001. With debase productions she has been involved in the creation of many new works, including The Furze Family Variety Hour, which she wrote and directed and which was staged as part of the Brisbane Festival in 2014. She has taught into the Acting and Drama programs at Queensland University of Technology over many years, specializing in acting and performance making. Her doctoral thesis, which focused on gender and physical comedy, received an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award from QUT in 2015. Directing credits include Rice (QPDA Reading), The Landmine is Me and Hurry up and Wait for Queensland Theatre, The Owl and the Pussycat for Little Match Productions and Festival 18 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, Dead Man’s Cellphone, Little Revolution, Bassett, Twelve Angry Women, Top Girls and Little Hitler’s Ode to an Austrian Bentwood for Queensland University of Technology, Popping Lead Balloons, The Clown from Snowy River, The Look, Lovejunk and Titanic – the Clown Show for debase productions. Other credits include Of Our Own Volition (Spangled Drongo/ Metro Arts, Snagged (Vena Cava Theatre Company) and Glitter and Dust (pretend productions/ Metro Arts). In 2018 she will direct The Owl and the Pussycat an original opera for children premiering at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and The Longest Minute, a co-production with Queensland Theatre and JUTE theatre.

Sue Loveday is an illustrator and a visual art facilitator dedicated to creative play and community collaboration. Sue grew up on a farm outside of Mundubbera, Queensland. She spent her childhood riding a motorbike to find art materials and tinkering in her dad’s shed — loves that inform the playfulness of her current work. Sue graduated from the Queensland College of Art where she studied a Bachelor of Arts in Illustration. She also studied architecture and graphic design.

Josh McIntosh is a multi-award winning Production Designer for theatre, opera, musical theatre, dance and festivals. Recent work includes Shake & Stir’s new adaptions of Jane Eyre and Fantastic Mr Fox, as well as their acclaimed production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Other recent design work includes set design for Altitude Theatre’s inaugural The Producers, costume design for Strut’n’Fret’s Deluxe Deluxe and sets for The Little Green Road to Fairyland, produced by Queensland Ballet and Queensland Music Festival with music by Elena Kats-Chernin. Current works in development include production design for Dogs in the Schoolyard - a brave new piece by Flipside Circus and Elaine Ackworth, The Lost Balloon, being developed with Homunculus Theatre & QPAC and Horizon being created by Playlab. Josh’s Australasian touring productions include Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes & Dirty Beasts, Green Day’s American Idiot, Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Harvest Rain’s arena productions of Grease and Hairspray. Recent festival design includes the Openair Cinemas in Australia & NZ, QPAC’s Out of The Box children’s theatre festival (2016 & 2018). Since 2009 Josh has worked on each of Queensland Music Festival’s signature epic outdoor productions in many Queensland regional centres, from Charleville to Gladstone, from Bowan to Mount Isa featuring some of the biggest outdoor sets in the southern hemisphere. Josh has received a Gold Matilda Award in 2011 for his Body of Work and Silver Matilda Awards in 2015, 2017, 2018 & 2019.

Julie Robson is an artist, educator and researcher. Following her degree in theatre education at Queensland University of Technology, Julie worked in vocal, jazz and theatre ensembles, including a cappella troupe Sister Moon Ensemble, Tokyo-based jazz trio Honeybeeswing, and performance group sacred COW. She co-founded Magdalena Australia, a women in contemporary performance network linked to the international Magdalena Project. After her award-winning doctoral studies on siren vocality, she coordinated the Contemporary Performance program at Edith Cowan University. Julie was then a postdoctoral fellow at ECU, focusing on innovation and arts learning. She has served as a board member for the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative industries and Innovation, and an adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. Returning to Brisbane, she worked for Flying Arts Alliance, managing the professional development program for visual artists and educators. Julie is a co-director of Ladyfinger, a feminist contemporary performance company that perform, produce and publish.