NTOP x APT Participants Announced
We are very happy to announce the successful applicants for the NATIONAL THEATRE OF PARRAMATTA x APT 2022 program!
Over 9 x 2 hour sessions*, a leading workshop mentor will guide 5 Western Sydney playwrights, (or writers in other mediums interested in writing for the stage), from idea to story outline. With industry guests and mentoring, the selected playwrights will connect and pitch their work to NToP for further consideration.
The program will take place from March – June, 2022 and was open to Western Sydney, NSW applicants only.
PROGRAM PARTNER:
2022 NATIONAL THEATRE OF PARRAMATTA X APT PARTICIPANTS:
Cicily Ponnor is a writer, performer ,theater director and award winning CCD worker who has worked in the nexus of social justice and contemporary performance . Her major works have been informed with unique lived experiences of Western Sydney, popular culture and hybrid art forms. She has written and performed two short solo pieces Eat My Shorts (Performance Space, 2001 ) and Short and Sharp (UTP, 2003).
Her directing credits include a large scale site based performance installation in Miller Square with fifty youth Screaming Fibro (Liverpool Health services, 2001) Suburban masala with youth from the Indian diaspora (BYDS production presented at Side track, 2002) and India@oz.sangam which was a large scale site specific performance with community members of the Indian Diaspora ( Co- Director, UTP production presented at Parramatta Riverside Theater, 2003) I do But which is large scale site based performance at a Wedding reception center with Indian and Arabic speaking youth(Co-Director, PYT ). She was awarded the Young Leaders award (now known as Kirk Robson award) from the Australia Council for her visionary leadership in tackling social justice issues through theatre.
Danial Yazdani is a second year English, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Education student at the University of Sydney. He writes in his spare time or, more importantly, when struck by an overwhelming feeling or sensation that can only be expressed to others through the written word. Danial doesn’t know where his future will take him, but he hopes to be given opportunities to educate, enact change and stimulate the minds of those around him. His writing for the stage, quite appropriately, supports this goal through a cultural lens. As an Iranian-Australian, Danial likes to silently observe the nuances of these two worlds and unite them as universal human experience.
James Hartley is an award winning director, writer, and actor of theatre and film. He has Malay-Chinese and Australian-Scottish heritage. He spent his formative years in the Philippines which developed his interest in transnational themes. The first full length play he wrote was This Modern Coil which he directed in 2016. Suzy Wrong wrote “There is a depth to This Modern Coil that is very admirably courageous and balanced with a confident sense of comedy and storytelling.”
Pippa Ellams is a Writer/Performer from Western Sydney. Her first play The Carousel was shortlisted for the Rodney Seaborne Playwright Award in 2015. The Carousel went on to be produced and remounted at Shopfront Arts Co-op, Belvoir st Downstairs theatre, as part of Merrigong X’s 2018 season and at KXT as part of bAKEHOUSE’s Step up Festival.
In 2018 Pippa’s monologue #Nofilter was selected to be performed and published as part of ATYP’s Intersection 2018: Chrysalis. Pippa wrote and performed her first solo show The Sorry Mum Project at Bondi Feast Festival 2018. In 2019 Pippa performed The Sorry Mum Project at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Most recently in 2021 The Sorry Mum Project was produced by National Theatre of Parramatta and performed at Riverside theatre as part of their mainstage season
Angela Pezzano and Elisa Cristallo are both writers and performers who first collaborated on the mini-series Welcome to the Family which aired on Channel 31, Melbourne. The series was nominated for four Antenna Awards (the community television awards) including a Best Director nomination for Angela and a Best Performance nomination for Elisa.
Angela wrote and performed in the short film My Stomach is a Dartboard which aired on the ABC as part of the Re-Frame series and directed and produced the short film Whispers which was a Metroscreen Jumpstart grant winner, the Short Cuts film festival winner and a Queer Fruits Film Festival official selection. Two of Angela’s short plays were finalists in the Macarthur Playwriting Festival, with The Beards, receiving the People’s Choice Award. Angela works with local Western Sydney theatre companies, including Glenbrook Players where she played Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, held a play reading for her upcoming play Behind Closed Doors and where she serves as a committee member.
Elisa has written and performed comedy shows for Sydney, Newcastle and Adelaide Fringe Festivals and written for the late-night comedy show Mainland Tonight for Perth Community TV. Elisa had the lead role in the short film They’re Listening which was an Official Selection of Smartfone Flick Fest and which plays on Etihad Airways in-flight entertainment and her short story Mrs. Ziotto’s Three Hundred Dollars was published by Verity La in 2019. Elisa is a two-time recipient of Blacktown Council’s Arts Fund grant, a recipient of Culture Bank’s arts grant and served on the board of the arts organisation, Voices of Women.
