MinterEllison Future Directors Initiative

Katie Cawthorne

Touching the Void

Katie is a director, theatre-maker and teaching artist. She is co-founder of The Anchor theatre company with playwright Laura Lethlean and since relocating to Melbourne in 2019, Katie has directed HONEY (National Theatre Drama School); Circuit (Art Not aPart Festival Canberra); The Three Graces (Theatreworks) and Two Hearts (The Butterfly Club) with the company. She has also directed the work of Melbourne playwrights Madelaine Nunn - Cactus (La Mama) and Emily Sheehan - Hell’s Canyon (Regional Arts Victoria tour). Katie was the Artistic Director of Canberra Youth Theatre from 2015 to 2018, directing SKIN; The 24 Hour Butoh Project; The Verbatim Project; The Greek Project – Antigone; poem every day; Filtered and Fading with the company. Katie is a regular teaching artist at performing arts institutions including National Theatre Drama School, National Institute of Circus Arts and National Institute of Dramatic Arts’ Open Learning program. Katie studied at National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) receiving a Masters of Fine Arts in Directing.

Roshelle Fong

Laurinda

Roshelle Fong is a Hong Kong Australian multidisciplinary artist who directed, produced and wrote the Melbourne Fringe award-winning immersive show nomnomnom (2018) which she adapted in East Iceland, Shanghai and Sydney as part of Kings Cross Hotel’s Vivid programming. In 2020 Roshelle created and performed in the live-streamed interactive show Thirsty! for Griffin Theatre’s Griffin Lock-in and Google Creative Lab’s Theatre, made for the internet. She was also in Democracy in Colour's Create Change Fellowship and co-created an anti-racism card game for schools Zoophobia. In 2021 Roshelle's interactive theatre show Poona (Next Wave Festival) co-created with Keziah Warner premiered at the Museum of Chinese Australian History, and she joined Melbourne Theatre Company’s (MTC) First Stage writers’ program. She also co-directed, wrote and performed in Ruthless World which won the Melbourne Fringe Headroom Award supported by RISING. Roshelle is an alumni of Malthouse Theatre’s Besen Family Artist’s Program 2018 and MTC’s Women in Theatre Program 2019.

Miranda Middleton

Come Rain or Come Shine

Miranda Middleton is a director, writer, and choreographer, with a Master of Fine Arts (Directing) from the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA). She is particularly interested in the intersection of text, music, and movement on stage, and aims to create theatrical events which spark connection and joy within the audience. In 2021, Miranda undertook a Professional Directing Placement on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with Michael Cassel Group.

Miranda’s most recent directing credits include Not Today: An Almost-One-Woman Cabaret (Kings Cross Theatre), Voldemort and the Teenage Hogwarts Musical Parody (Theatre Works), The Great and Powerful Ozzie (Old 505 Theatre), and Ned: A New Australian Musical (New Theatre). She has also directed development readings of Brittanie Shipway’s play A Letter for Molly (Belvoir Street Theatre), Brittanie Shipway’s musical Yellow Rock (Australian Musical Theatre Festival), and JoJo Zhou’s verbatim play Sowing Seeds’(Gasworks Arts Park).

Miranda’s writing credits include a theatrical adaptation of the screenplay Amélie, which she also directed (NIDA Studio Theatre), and a semi-autobiographical play Pear-Shaped, currently under development with Rogue Projects. The new Australian musical Paper Stars which Miranda is writing with Grace Chapple and Luke Byrne has been developed through Salty Theatre’s Hatch Lab Musical Theatre Workshop, under the mentorship of Tony Award-winning Producer Michael Rubinoff.

Alonso Pineda

Admissions

Alonso was born and raised in Mexico. He is proudly the first Latin-American graduate of the Master of Directing for Performance at The Victorian College of the Arts. His experience throughout the course includes assisting director John Kachoyan working with the VCA acting company 2021, and interning with director Naomi Edwards in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. In 2019, he was awarded the Cassidy Bequest – Theatre Scholarship for excellence.

Before starting his artistic journey in Australia, Alonso built a solid career as a creative producer in Mexico with credits such as Constellations by Nick Payne, Heisenberg by Simon Stephens and collaborations with artists such as Joey Arias (New York), Dorian Wood (Los Angeles) and Ivor Martinic (Croatia). His directorial debut in Melbourne is Nothing, an adaptation by Fleur Murphy of the award-winning Danish novel by Janne Teller, opening in 2022.

Alonso is passionate about performance that entertains and provokes the audience to feel, think and explore their internal curiosities. He believes that no matter where someone was born, the language they speak, the colour of their skin or gender, we are all dreamers, we are storytellers, we are human. His work is an invitation to travel through the complex spectrum of this humanity with bold stories.