On Wiradjuri country, join us for a unique immersive collage of live music, art and storytelling artists as we celebrate voices of women in International Women’s Week. Embellishment has developed from the gathering of women’s stories from Wagga Wagga and across regional New South Wales, with a focus on young women and First Nations stories.
In amongst the Archibald Prize winning portraits, experience the power of storyteller Aunty Cheryl Penrith, Wagga Wagga’s own Oddball Theatre actors Saasha McMillan and Haya Arzidin, and music performed in response to the story experience by musician and composer Elizabeth Jigalin.
From comedy to crisis and everything in between, the evening celebrates resilience and the many beautiful strengths of our shared humanity.
Date and time
Thu 16th Mar 2023, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm AEDT
Location
Wagga Wagga Art Gallery – National Art Glass Gallery
Morrow St, Wagga Wagga NSW 2650, Australia
Thank you Emily Francis and 7NEWS Riverina for coming to talk to us before EMBELLISHMENT at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery this week!
CAST
CHERYL PENRITH
Cheryl Penrith is a Wiradjuri Elder, mentor and performer with a passion for fashion. Her focus is community development and capacity building, business and strategic planning, cultural empowerment, community health and wellbeing, involvement in decision making and the revival and reinvigoration of cultural practices such as language, possum skin cloak making workshops, women’s cultural business. Cheryl appeared in the film Entanglement and wrote and performed at Voices of Women Amplify in Wagga Wagga in 2022.
ELIZABETH JIGALIN, Composer and Pianist.
Elizabeth Jigalin has created music for a variety of contexts in collaboration with festivals, ensembles, technologists, artists across disciplines and community groups.
She has held several composer in residence positions for programs including Sydney Youth Orchestras (2014), Bundanon Trust (2019), Campbelltown Arts Centre (2020) and Voices of Women (2020-). Select commissioners of her work include Lost in Books, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Moorambilla Voices, Kaldor Public Arts Projects and Ensemble Offspring. She has also composed and performed on the piano new soundtracks for over 20 silent films/shorts as part of Australia’s Silent Film Festival. Her music has been premiered at festivals including VIVID, Extended Play Festival, Fishers Kid’s Festival, Darmstädter Ferienkurse and Pacific Alliance of Music Schools. She has also devised several interactive foyer installations and music experiences for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, City Recital Hall, Australian Museum and Casula Arts Powerhouse.
Awards include Ars Musica Australis Scholarship, First Prize Canberra Composition Competition, First Prize Unbound Flute Festival Competition and while a student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music she was awarded the Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize and Ted & Susan Meller Scholarship. Additionally she has been a selected participant of several composer development programs including Australian Art Orchestras Mentorship program, Soundstreams Emerging Composers Forum, nonclassical academy (UK), Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt.
As an extension of her creative and collaborative drive, she is the founder and director of creative music collective The Music Box Project. In 2020, TMBP was awarded the APRA AMCOS Art Music Award for Excellence in Experimental Music for Shallow Listening – a project that premiered at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music and featured her music theatre work ‘prelude & pickle’ (2019). In 2021, TMBP presented two sold out performances of this project as recipients of the Create NSW’s Play the City fund.
HAYA ARZIDIN
Haya Arzidin is a writer and performer, her most recent endeavours have been her roles in TOME, a fully improvised show with four other actors. This show was taken to the stage in Brisbane in 2021. She has also been working closely with the refugee community in Wagga Wagga, developed a show with six refugee teenagers called Sharing Stories Sharing Place, which took to the stage at the Wagga Civic Theatre in December 2021. These days Haya has been mostly family orientated but quietly writing and developing future works behind the scenes. She is excited to take to the stage again for the Voices of Women project.
SAASHA MCMILLAN
Saasha McMillan grew up in Southern NSW, and has spent the last decade calling Wagga Wagga home. Opening Oddball Theatre in 2018, she has worked regularly with young people to foster a love of theatre and a passion for storytelling. She can be seen running classes and events in Wagga Wagga & the surrounding villages, as connecting with regional kids reflects the opportunities she had growing up in Deniliquin with Outback Theatre. She runs and hosts regular Open Mic and Improvised Theatre nights at The Curious Rabbit, has volunteered with, SoACT, Bidgee Productions,SMRF Productions and recently starred in,”The Final Sin” as part of Persona Collectives 2022 season. She is also regularly involved with the regional drag and burlesque scene and is excited to tour with Cabaret Schmabaret for it’s 2023/2024 season. She is honoured to be both playwright and performer in ‘Embellishment’.
Thank you Emily Francis and 7NEWS Riverina for coming to talk to us before EMBELLISHMENT at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery this week!
Visit our YouTube Channel for Workshop Videos!
Workshop program supported by Multicultural NSW through the Compact Alliance program and Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and performance supported by the Australian Government RISE Program.
