The Nargun and the Stars - 2009 - Perth International Arts Festival

international festivals and directed The Sapphires for Melbourne Theatre
Company, a play remounted for the 2005 Sydney Festival. These works were all
nominated for Helpmann awards with Riverland winning Best Children’s Work
and The Sapphires winning Best Production and Best New Australian work. He
was also nominated as Best Director for Riverland.
Wesley directed Howard Brenton’s Paul, Alana Valentine’s Parramatta Girls,
Rainbow’s End, Bitin’ Back, Headhunter, Black Medea, The Sunshine Club,
Black-ed Up, The Cherry Pickers, The 7 Stages of Grieving, The Dreamers,
Conversations with the Dead, Stolen, Romeo and Juliet, Shrunken Iris,
Radiance, A Life of Grace and Piety, Murri Love, Capricornia and Maralinga.
Steve Howarth
SET DESIGNER
As a co-founder and full-time member of ERTH,
Steve Howarth designs or coordinates the design
elements for most of the company’s productions.
Outside of ERTH he also designed and performed
with the Australian / Indonesian collaboration Theft
of Sita, directed by Nigel Jamieson. He was puppet
doctor on tour with the stage adaption of The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe, directed by Nadia
Tass. He also mentors final-year design students as part of the Sydney College
of Fine Arts professional placement program.
Bryony Anderson
PUPPET DESIGNER
Bryony Anderson is a designer, inventor, maker
and exhibiting artist who has been working with
puppetry and circus companies in and out of
Australia since 1997. Puppetry work includes
projects with ERTH, Theatre of Image, Puppetvision,
Polyglot, My Darling Patricia, Born in a Taxi and
museums in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and
Los Angeles, as well as numerous festivals. Circus
work has included Circus Monoxide, Riggerous, Acrobat and The Flying Fruit
Fly Circus. While a scholarship student at the University of Wollongong in
1995, she was accepted as trainee puppetmaker at Skyworks Studio and later
returned to complete her Visual Arts degree. Her sporadic career as a fine artist
includes three solo exhibitions: Pets and Livestock, 1997; Scape-o-matic II,
2004; and Sick People, 2008. She lives and works in Pappinbarra, NSW, in a
shed in the bush.
Colin Sneesby
ASSOCIATE PUPPETRY DIRECTOR / PUPPETEER
Since graduating from Acting at Victorian College
of the Arts, Colin Sneesby has worked as an actor,
dancer and puppeteer with companies such as
Polyglot Puppet Theatre, Snuff Puppets, Dance
Exchange, MRPG, ERTH and Terrapin Puppet
Theatre. He has worked with choreographers such
as Russell Dumas, Jude Walton and Phillip Adams.
Most recently he co-wrote and performed in
Terrapin’s Frankenstein and performed in Jessica Wilson’s Dr Egg and the Man
with No Ear at Sydney Opera House and The Arts Centre, Melbourne. He has
toured extensively with 5 Angry Men and Windmill Theatre’s Twinkle Twinkle
Little Fish, has performed in Europe, America and Japan and received funding
to study in New York.
Phil Downing
COMPOSER
Phil Downing has been performing and recording
music for 20 years and has designed and created
a number of unique musical instruments in that
time. Since 1995 he has performed live with these
instruments at venues throughout Sydney under
the name Philophonic Orchestra. He performed
and toured with contemporary band Dogbuoy
from 1996 to 1999 and with Faker from 2005 to
2007, gaining experience in the recording studio and establishing skills as a
producer in his own right. From 2000, as musical director for ERTH, Phil has
created live soundtracks for the numerous productions and toured with the
company extensively. In 2001 he gained funding from the Australia Council to
run a music program at Cobham Juvenile Detention Centre.
Samuel James
AUDIOVISUAL ARTIST
Samuel James works as a projection designer
for contemporary performance companies and
independent dancers, mainly in association with
Performance Space. His main focus is collaborating
with independent dancers and making projections
for live works, installations and dance films. This
practice has developed since 1995, with over 150
credits in that time. His work includes theatre,
new media installation and filmmaking for Quietly Collapsed (Rosie Dennis)
on ABC TV and Nun’s Night Out (choreographer Julie-Anne Long), a production
that won Best Australian Dance Film at the Australian Dance Awards in 2006.
He has worked with a diverse range of companies – from the Sydney Dance
Company to Frumpus – and regularly has his videos screened in international
dance film festivals.
Bernie Tan
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Bernie Tan has worked extensively across a
variety of genres, including dance, drama, opera
and musicals and theatrical productions. He has
worked with Theatre of Image, ERTH, La Boite
Theatre Company, NORPA, Griffin Theatre Company,
Pinch Gut Opera, Sydney Conservatorium of Music,
State Opera of South Australia, Performing Lines
and Sydney Theatre Company. His work includes
Small Poppies, I Am My Own Wife, Twinkle Twinkle Little Fish, The Ring Cycle,
Great Expectations, Gondwana, Macbeth and Cosi Fan Tutte to name just a few.
Mark Haslam
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Mark is a Sydney-based director, designer and
production manager with credits in the UK and all
over Australia. He seems to attract large, ambitious
projects, having recently managed Performance
Space’s mammoth LiveWorks program and Tess
DeQuincey’s epic The Stirring at CarriageWorks. He
was also assistant director to Nigel Jamieson for
Gallipoli at the STC. He has lit some of the world’s
biggest DJs, including Fatboy Slim, Sasha and Carl Cox and currently lectures in
Theatre at the University of Wollongong.
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