| Voices of Women, KXT Broadway and Bakehouse Theatre present: Women of the Riverina KXT Broadway Cnr of 181 Broadway, Mountain St, Ultimo NSW 2007 Weds 6 – Sat 9 November Ladies and Gentlemen welcome aboard Riverina Airways landing in Wiradjuri Country in November. Please take a moment to adjust your tray table and your expectations. Immerse yourself in the majestic country of the Murrumbidgee/Marrambidya, step back in time behind the bar with Wagga’s only female pub owner, grab a bargain at Best and Less, and meet the ghosts of Tarcutta Memorial Hall. And that’s just the start! The script is written by storytellers and writers from First Nations and diverse backgrounds across generations. |
WRITTEN BY:
Aunty Cheryl Penrith OAM, Arvis Casanova, Claudia Haines, Eleanor Waters-Jones, Gabrielle Tozer, Haya Arzidin, Imogen Rubi, Joy Lubawy, Jody Roberts, Lliane Clarke, Marie Clear, Melanie Reeves, Roz Hasan, Saasha McMillan.
CAST: KXT BROADWAY
Aunty Cheryl Penrith OAM 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 and women’s cultural business. Cheryl appeared in the Voices of Women feature film Entanglement, was a writer and performer in Amplify in 2022 and in Embellishment at KXT Broadway in 2023.
Jessica Saras has acted in theatre, film and television productions across Australia, including on Seven Network’s Home and Away, several productions with Milk Crate Theatre and with Crashing Water Theatre Company. She is also a Producer and Assistant Director, recently on the Shopfront Milk Crate collaboration Hello, Are You Still There? with Directors Margot Politis and Natalie Rose in 2024.
Haya Arzidin is a writer and performer, appearing in TOME, a fully improvised show with four actors which toured to Brisbane in 2021. Working closely with the refugee community in Wagga Wagga, she co-developed Sharing Stories Sharing Place at the Wagga Civic Theatre in 2021. Haya was a writer and performer in Embellishment on tour to Wagga Wagga and Dubbo in 2023.
Amelia Harding graduated from the University of Wollongong with a Bachelor in Performance and Theatre (Acting Intensive) and studied screen acting with Screenwise. She has performed in both scripted and devised pieces including Blind Naive Faith, The Golden Turtle, Scorched and Chekhov In Hell. In 2022 Amelia was a participant of the New Columbo Plan short course in Vietnam where she studied alongside students at the Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema. Amelia’s recent credits include Kate Gaul’s modern adaptation of A Flea in Her Ear and Shopfront and Milk Crate Theatre’s Hello, Are You Still There? Amelia is very proud of her First Nations cultural background and her Wiradjuri grandmother.
COMPOSER AND MUSICIAN: ELIZABETH JIGALIN
Elizabeth Jigalin’s music has been premiered at festivals around the world including Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Extended Play, Darmstadt, BIFEM, Rouse Hills Psychedelia, Percussive Arts Society International Convention, Women of Noise and Australia’s Silent Film Festival. At present, she is Composer-in-Residence for Voices of Women, including composing the film score for the award-winning Entanglement film, and Moorambilla Voices. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Sydney Youth Orchestras, Bundanon Trust, Campbelltown Arts Centre and Bondi Pavillion. Previously, her music and ideas have been brought to life by a variety of performers and commissioners including Biennale of Sydney, Inner West Voices, Vanessa Tomlinson, Will Hansen, Jane Aubourg, Ensemble Offspring, Soundstream, Screen Dive, Lost in Books and FBI’s All the Best.
Elizabeth is the founder of creative music collective the music box project who were awarded Excellence for Experimental Music at the 2020 APRA AMCOS/AMC Art Music Awards for shallow listening. Elizabeth was the co-festival director of the music box project’s inaugural festival CUT PASTE PLAY – featuring over 25 artists from across Australia and abroad.
Elizabeth is grateful to be the recipient of several awards including 2023 APRA/AMCOS Art Music Fund, Ars Musica Australis Scholarship, AAO Mentorship, 1st Prize Centenary of Canberra Composition Competition and 1st Prize Unbound Flute Festival competition. In 2022, Elizabeth was a finalist in the APRA Professional Development awards.
HOW THE SCRIPT WAS BUILT
| In 2022 we began collaborating on a series of storytelling workshops, readings and live shows on Wiradjuri Country across the Riverina region of NSW. Through that process we all built confidence in writing and developing short monologues and investigating performance techniques. In 2024 Co-Producers Lliane Clarke, Vicki Birkinshaw, Haya Arzidin and Cheryl Penrith invited women to take part in Women of the Riverina, opening submissions, running workshops and sharing storytelling through mentoring sessions. At a residency at E3 Workspace at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, next to Wollundry Lagoon, we collaborated to develop the final script of stories. Listening, talking, learning, creating, recording, writing … incredible storytelling and making! We were blessed to work alongside Aunty Cheryl Penrith OAM and invited to take part in the Wiradjuri Creatives Series with a workshop at the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. The result is a powerful script that gives voice to women of the region and to the country as a whole. |
Thank you to Carla Zampatti Foundation, The Curious Rabbit and Wagga Wagga City Council and Eastern Riverina Arts for their support of this program.