Melbourne Theatre Company, in partnership with Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre and Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) is pleased to announce the artists selected to join the two-year CAAP Directors Initiative.
More than 100 applications were received for the two-year program based across Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Following a week-long introductory directing workshop led by MTC Associate Directors Sarah Goodes and Dean Bryant, 4 emerging directors have been selected to continue in the next phase of the program at Melbourne Theatre Company.
We are excited to welcome Ra Chapman, Joe Paradise Lui, Diana Nguyen and Alice Qin as part of the initiative, which will involve a series of seminars, workshops, networking opportunities and placements to observe MTC productions up close.
A further nine directors have been selected by STC and QT to participate in the program in Sydney and Brisbane.
Read more about the CAAP Directors’ Initiative here.
DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Ra Chapman
Ra is an actor, theatre-maker and writer. A 2018 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk fellow for her work on her first play K-Box. Selected for the 2018 Cinespace/Film Victoria Story Lab Program, and a member of the 2017 Besen Writers Group at Malthouse Theatre. She was a dramaturgical intern for Cybec Electric at MTC in 2017 and attended the CAAP/STC Directing Workshop in 2016. Acting credits range from playing Celia in Volpone at the historic Wilton’s Music Hall in London, to the role of prisoner Kim Chang in Foxtel’s award-winning television series Wentworth.
Joe Paradise Lui
Joe Paradise Lui is a founding member and the creative leader of Renegade Productions. Within its aegis, he creates, writes, directs, designs and composes theatre and performance works. Renegade Productions has earned success and recognition in the independent theatre sector of Perth as a company that creates thought-provoking, socially conscious work that pushes the boundaries of both form and content. Joe Paradise Lui is the Spirit of the Fringe Festival. Joe is also regular and contributing part of the professional and independent theatre industry in Perth as a writer, sound designer/composer, director and lighting designer. He is a passionate educator and workshop facilitator. He directs plays and runs theatre-making, theatre design and technical theatre workshops in conjunction with secondary and tertiary education institutions.
Diana Nguyen
Diana Nguyen has been performing and devising work Australia for 13 years. Diana’s work focuses on storytelling by humanising all our experiences and activating these jewels we need to share using theatre. Diana has written and produced her own shows including her stand up show NAKED, Phi and Me series (MICF), Viet Kieu (cabaret), Singing 10 Ways to Disappoint Your Vietnamese Mother, and has toured around Australia, USA and recently Edinburgh Fringe 2017. Her published short story 5 Ways to Disappoint Your Vietnamese Mother in Alice Pung’s Growing Up Asian in Australia, (10 years later) is still been studied by students all over Victoria. Screen credits include TV panellist on Q&A (ABC), TV panellist on Friday Front Bar and Fox Footy 360 as AFL Multicultural Ambassador. Her TV credits include Upper Middle Bogan, Fancy Boy, Please Like Me, pilot tv show Clean and Jerk, Underbelly, Jack Irish and Bollywood Chak De India.
Alice Qin
Alice is an actor, teacher, and theatre-maker with a strong interest in reaching communities previously shut out from the theatre world with new works and radically reimagined classics. She trained at the Stella Adler Studio in New York. After graduation, she apprenticed under Joan Evans and is certified to teach the Joan Evans technique of physical acting. Her favourite New York theatre credits in acting include Is It already Dusk?, an ensemble physical theatre piece exploring trauma post 9/11 – (Herald Clurman Ensemble/Irondale Theatre, 2013). Romeo and Juliet/Richard II/Love’s Labour’s Lost (Hamlet Isn’t Dead, 2016). Australian acting credits include Little Emperors (Malthouse Theatre, 2017) and the upcoming Atomic (Malthouse Theatre, 2018).
Published on 26 July 2018