Backstage

Patrick Dickson

Patrick takes Regina through his life as an actor and into his current show about Victor Hugo.

Patrick is co-artistic director and founding member of O'Punksky's. Essentially an actor he also designs, directs, produces, teaches, builds sets, [this web site] etc etc...... Patrick met Maeliosa Stafford at the Crossroads Theatre in Sydney's Darlinghurst in late 1989 and accepted his offer to join the cast of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. There was a tiny budget so Patrick also volunteered to design the show. The production was a small triumph and O'Punksky's theatre was born. In 1990 Patrick played Malcolm Scrawdyke in O'Punksky's next production, Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (chosen for its long title), also directed by Maeliosa. Patrick again took on the task of designer and a creative partnership was galvanized.
Patrick has been acting professionally since 1976, starting his career as AASM at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London. After a year he joined the Roundabout Theatre in Education Company in Nottingham and then, after another year at Stratford he emigrated to Australia.
Over the years Patrick has worked with many companies in Australia, most notably Thalia, Bell, Griffin, Ensemble, Studio and most State companies.

Patrick is co-producer/writer of a series of training films in which he performs and sometimes directs. See O'Punksky Pedagogic page on this site.

He has taught acting courses and directed students at UNSW and ACTT.
TV Credits include,: The Timeless Land, Carson's Law, Home and Away, Rake and Seachange.
Film credits include: A Bridge Too Far, The Fluteman, Panacea, Flotsam Jetsam and Rogue Nation.
Patrick has extensive voice credits which include many commercial voice overs, prose and poetry readings for ABC Radio Arts, and book readings which include Treasure Island, The Marx Sisters, The Drowner and A Tale of Two Cities.
Patrick has self-produced two audio books:The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo and Kabaka Lear by David Allen.
Both are available as downloads on iTunes and Audible.com

Tommy Murphy

Tommy joins Regina to talk about the last two decades in his award winning writing career. 

In 2020 Tommy Murphy received the National Theatre Prize from the Australia Council for the Arts. His most recent stage play was Packer & Sons broke box office records at Belvoir.

Another recent work, Mark Colvin’s Kidney is currently in development for a screen adaptation. Murphy’s earlier stage adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s memoirs, Holding The Man, is regularly produced around the world with recent productions in Florence, Chicago, Nashville and London.

His screenplay for Holding the Man, for which he was Associate Producer, won the Australian Writers’ Guild Award and the Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay. Netflix distributes the film globally.

The stage play Holding the Man started at Griffin, directed by Murphy’s regular collaborator David Berthold, before transferring multiple times across Australia culminating in a West End production. It won multiple awards including the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Australian Writers’ Guild Award and the Philip Parsons Award. Tommy was the youngest and only dual winner in consecutive years of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, having won for Strangers in Between at Griffin in 2005. Strangers in Between was revived in Melbourne, Sydney and on London’s West End in 2018.

Tommy’s adaptation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding formed part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. His play Gwen in Purgatory (Belvoir/La Boite) won the WA Premier’s Award and the Richard Burton Prize. His other plays include Troy’s House (Old Fitz/ATYP) and an adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris (ATYP).

He is a graduate of NIDA’s directing course, a former president of SUDS, a Patrick White Fellow at Sydney Theatre Company and a Sidney Myer Fellowship recipient. Tommy is the creator of an upcoming ABC TV series, having been on the writing teams for Foxtel’s Fighting Season (Goalpost Pictures) and Devil’s Playground (winner of the 2015 Logie for Most Outstanding Miniseries and AACTA Award for Best Miniseries). 

 

Dean Walsh BACKSTAGE

Dean is an award-winning Australian contemporary dance and performance practitioner, teacher and writer.

Dean has made over 45 works to date, solo to group, including 24 works he identifies as queer and/or disability integrated, due to their content, cast members, compositional methodology and the communities they were reflecting.

He is Autistic (higher functioning) and identifies as living with disability through a co-morbidity of ADHD and Complex-PTSD that influences his Autism and life significantly.

https://www.weirdnest.com/home

 

Richard Piper BACKSTAGE

Backstage with Richard Piper.
Richard joins Regina Botros to talk about his life in the theatre.

Richard has spent almost his entire 43-year career on stage.  Trained in London, he was soon performing on the West End in Grease and Elvis, and came to Australia in 1985 with cult cabaret band The Bouncing Czecks.  MTC: The Lady in the Van, Twelfth Night, Born Yesterday, Double Indemnity, Ghosts, Music, Queen Lear, The Gift, Drowsy Chaperone, Rockabye, Entertaining Mr Sloane, The Give and Take, Dumb Show, The Daylight Atheist (Green Room Award), Betrayal, Man the Balloon, Life After George, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors. Malthouse:  The Black Rider, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. STC: The Secret River, Gross und Klein, Great Expectations, Moby Dick.  Bell Shakespeare:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The War of the Roses, Henry V, Henry IV.  STCSA: Moby Dick, Marat Sade, Restoration.  Musical Theatre: Come from Away, Oklahoma!, King Kong, Billy Elliot, Rocky Horror. TV:  Wentworth, Underbelly.  Films:  Pirates of the Caribbean. 

Shane Placentino BACKSTAGE

Shane goes Back Stage with Regina Botros to talk about Aida the Opera and his life on the stage.

OPERA AUSTRALIA- AIDA

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND CHOREOGRAPHER

Adelaide born Shane Placentino graduated from The Australian Ballet School in 1990 and was accepted into the Australian Ballet in 1991. As a member of the Ballet, Shane danced in the entire classical and contemporary repertoire. He also worked with Graeme Murphy and Janet Vernon appearing in Murphy’s Nutcracker and Beyond Twelve. After ten years with The Australian Ballet, Shane left in 2000. He joined Sydney Dance Company in 2002. Sydney Dance Company repertoire: Ellipse, Air and other invisible forces, Salome, Free Radicals, the role of ‘Jack’ in Tivoli, Underland, Random Play, Some Rooms, Grand, Hua Mulan, Berlin and Ever After Ever. Other credits: The Australian Ballet: full classical and contemporary repertoire including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Merry Widow, Jiri Kylian’s Sinfonietta, Nacho Duato’s Jardi Tancat, Stanton Welch’s Red Earth, John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet and Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. In 2008 Shane has assisted and performed in Meryl Tankard’s Inuk2 and was appointed the stage manager for Rafael Bonachela’s recent work with Sydney Dance Company.

 

Melita Rowston BACKSTAGE

Backstage with Melita Rowston.

The gorgeous and articulate Melita Rowston joins Regina Botros in this episode to dig deep into her life as a theatre maker and the stories behind her work.

Melita is a writer, director, painter and performer. 

Melita's in her happy place writing and directing plays, painting, telling stories about Australia's Shit Tourism, performing poetry, writing about travel (while travelling) and she delights in interviewing interesting people.

​Melita started writing for theatre because she wasn’t seeing the voices of Australian women represented on our stages. She's passionate about giving voice to those left in the shadows, on the sidelines of history. She finds the stories that fall through the cracks are the most compelling. They shed light on the forgotten social narratives of this country and offer us an opportunity to better understand the depth and diversity of our culture, our shared histories and ultimately, ourselves.

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Katrina Retallick BACKSTAGE

Katrina Retallick is back stage with Regina Botros to talk about how she came to the stage and her life in the lime light.

Katrina trained at The Central School of Speech and Drama, London. Her phenomenal music theatre career includes roles in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ruthless! The Musical, Falsettos, The Addams Family, Every Single Saturday, No Way to Treat a Lady, A Little Night Music, Wind in the Willows, Jekyll and Hyde, Songs For a New World, Company and South Pacific, with Katrina garnering wins and nominations for Sydney Theatre, Helpmann and Glug Awards.

Recent performances include the Hayes Theatre Company’s Big Fish and the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf Revue.

In film, Katrina appeared in Accidents Happen and The Eternity Man and will soon be seen in June Again. On the small screen, credits include Love Child, Comedy Inc, The Chaser’s CNNN and Backberner.

Catherine Ryan BACKSTAGE

Catherine joins Regina to talk theatre writing and her inspirations and process.

A VCA graduate Animateur, Catherine works as a writer, dramaturg, director, community theatre maker, producer and performer, with a range of experiences across several media including stage, radio, published prose and documentary film. Her practice is inspired by questions about empathy, interconnectedness, the dynamics of relationships and the spaces and obstacles between us.

She lives in Dja Dja Wurrung country (Central Victoria), just outside a town with a name, but no shop, pub, tennis court or public phone (there are, however, magnificent eagles and a gorgeous river). In 2001 she co-founded Castlemaine’s Barking Owl Theatre, co-creating many original and community-based works in their 8 years of activity. In 2009 Catherine won an AWGIE for Best Radio Adaptation for Aurora Calling: The Results of a Joint Observation, which was then the Australian nominee in its category at the Prix Italia International Media Awards. Her work has also won a George Fairfax Award (Precipice - 2009) and 2 Inscription Awards (Precipice and Getting Away From It All - 2009, 2006), along with several other national (Patrick White, Griffin and Hal Porter Short Story Awards) and international (Perishable Theatre International Women’s Playwright) short-listings. She has been an Affiliate Writer at the Melbourne Theatre Company, a Resident Playwright at Griffin Theatre, Sydney, and commissioned by the Malthouse Theatre (2013) and ABC Radio National (2008, 2004). Catherine’s work has appeared at/in the Castlemaine State Festival, ABC Radio National, La Mama Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Overland, and will be seen in the journal Antipodes. In 2017 her work, Dogged, received a National Script Workshop at Playwriting Australia.

Imogen Sage BACKSTAGE

Imogen Sage has studied in London as well as here and has been in roles from Woyzeck to The Three Sisters and A Street Car Named Desire to Romeo and Juliette and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  She has performed around the country as well as overseas and has also starred in many films, as well as voicing many audio books.
Currently she is on stage in the titular role of Claudel at the Sydney Opera House. And she joins Regina Botros to traipse through her life so far and the world of the theatre.

Moreblessing Maturure BACKSTAGE

Moreblessing talks with Regina about theatre, women of colour and making a difference on the stage.

Moreblessing Maturure is a Zimbabwean/Australian inter-disciplinary artist, TEDx Speaker and the Creative Director of FOLK Magazine.

The award-nominated actor has appeared in a suite of projects pre-Rona, most recently ‘THE RETREAT’ (Victoria Zerbst) and CH 9’s ‘SEACHANGE: REBOOT’ (Wayne Blair) as well as on various stages across Sydney. Moreblessing also works with various theatre companies as dramaturg, outreach producer and cultural advisor, which supports the advocacy practice Moreblessing carries out within the arts for accurate and diverse representation. She’s an Equity Member and sits as Co-Chair of MEAA’s Equity Diversity Committee.

Most recently she appeared in Yana Taylor’s sold out season of LEADING IS FOLLOWING IS LEADING for Liveworks 2020 and can be seen in the SELL OUT season of seven methods of killing kylie jenner at Darlinghurst Theatre Company .

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Recent credits include:
THEATRE: Leading Is Following Is Leading (Liveworks 2020)// A Little Piece of Ash (Jack Rabbit Theatre, KXT Bakehouse)//Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again (House of Sand, Old 505)//Fallen (Sport for Jove, She Said Theatre)// Undertaking, The Bee and the Tree, Like Me, Age of Entitlement, The Way of the Wall (Mongrel Mouth)

SCREEN: (TV)- Back To The Rafters, SeaChange, Deadly Women (FF)- Akoni (WS)- The Retreat, Ang Wilson, Afro Sistahs (SF)- (W)hole, STIGMA, Prelude, I am Black and Beautiful and. Searching for Babel