Fresh Ink> Fresh Ink Mentors
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Vanessa Bates
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Hilary Bell
Hilary Bell writes for stage, radio, screen and music theatre. Plays include Wolf Lullaby (Griffin, Atlantic, Steppenwolf), Fortune, The Falls (Griffin Theatre), The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch, Memmie Le Blanc (Vitalstatistix, Deckchair), Open-Cut (WAAPA), The Mysteries: Genesis (Sydney Theatre Company) and The Bloody Bride (NORPA). She has written libretti for musicals (The Wedding Song, comp. Douglas Stephen Rae), song cycles (Talk Show, comp. Elena Katz-Chernin), opera (Mrs. Satan, comp. Victoria Bond) and for Phillip Johnston’s score to Murnau’s silent film Faust, premiered at the New York Film Festival.
Current projects include a musical, Do Good And You Will Be Happy with Phillip Johnston; a screenplay of Alex Miller's Journey To The Stone Country; Beautiful Hands for ABC Radio and plays Perfect Stranger for Yale Repertory Theatre and The White Divers of Broome for Black Swan State Theatre.
Hilary is a member of the playwrights' affiliation 7-On, and a recipient of the Philip Parsons Young Playwrights’ Award, Jill Blewitt Playwrights’ Award, Bug’n’Bub Award, Aurealis Award for Fiction, the Eric Kocher Playwrights’ Award, the 2007 Inscription Award and an AWGIE for Music Theatre. She is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She was the 2003-04 Tennessee Williams Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of the South in Tennessee. She is a director on the Griffin Board, and on artistic advisory panels for Griffin and the Production Company, New York.
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Jane FitzGerald
Jane is a freelance dramaturg, mentor and tutor. She has worked as Literary Manager and Artistic Associate for Sydney Theatre Company, as well as administrator of the Patrick White Playwrights' Award. She has worked as dramaturg for STC Blueprints, STC Young Playwrights’ Award, Playworks and ANPC, and on productions including Volpone, The Herbal Bed and A Midsummer Night's Dream for STC. She has also worked as a script reader for the Royal Court Theatre (London). Current projects include mentoring Year 12 students with creative writing major works. Jane has an MA in Theatre Studies from the University of NSW.
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Kate Gaul
Kate is a graduate of the NIDA Director’s Course (1996). Kate has also trained with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company in New York. Kate is currently the Festival Director for World Interplay. In 2004/5 Kate was the Associate director at the Ensemble Theatre where productions include The Violet Hour, Kimberly Akimbo and Lobby Hero. Other directing credits include Carmen (Oz Opera), The Altar Boyz (Ovations Live), Camarilla (Merrigong Theatre Co) Coup D’Etat (MTC), The Gates of Egypt, Our Lady of Sligo, Run Rabbit Run, The Laramie Project, Svetlana in Slingbacks (Company B), Wicked Sisters (Griffin/National tour), Rabbit (Griffin Theatre) and projects for all major drama schools around Australia; most recently Dialogue of the Carmelites (WAAPA). Kate is the Artistic Director of Siren Theatre Co: productions include – FOX (Monkey Baa/National Tour, 2010), Shakespeare’s Richard III, Twelfth Night, Human Resources (by Chris Aronsten) and Duck (by Stella Feehily), eeni meeni mini mo (devised by the company), Hard Swallow (by Mirra Todd), Polly Blue (by Belinda Bradley), Wanna Go Home, Baby? (devised by the company), Connie and Kevin and the Secret Life of Groceries (by Noelle Janaczweska) and Blue Heart (by Caryl Churchill) Frozen (by Michael O’Brien). Kate has also written and directed two short films Embrace and Cake.
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Janice Muller
Janice is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from UNSW. She is particularly interested in new writing and directing credits include Australian premieres of Kindertransport by Diane Samuels (Saltpillar Theatre, Melbourne 1999), Dead Girls are Fantastic by Lally Katz (Next Wave Festival 2000), Crave by Sarah Kane (BSharp 2001) and The Country by Martin Crimp (BSharp 2003)
Janice has worked as a director in Melbourne for Playbox, the National Theatre, St Martins Youth Arts Centre, Redstitch Theatre and as an Assistant Director at the MTC.
Janice was the first recipient of the Goethe Institute and Playwriting Australia’s Dramaturgy Exchange Scholarship in 2006 which took her to Germany; the VCA’s 2003 Keith & Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship which took her to Germany, Spain and India and an Australia Council grant to participate in the 2001 Royal Court’s International Residency for writers and directors in London where she directed a workshop of Her Mother and Bartok by British writer Meredith Oakes.
In 2005 Janice created a site-specific piece for X-Wohnungen Suburbs 2005 a project of the HAU (Hebbel-am-Ufer) Theater in Berlin. Her most recent production was A Woman in Berlin, a new work, adapted with actress Meredith Penman from the book of the same name and presented at the Old Fitzroy Theatre in August.
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Francesca Smith
Francesca has done extensive work with emerging and experienced writers and has been the resident teacher for NIDA Playwrights Studio for the past 8 years. Her work mixes elements of personal practice with a deep knowledge of creative process drawn from her experience as a director and dramaturg with all the major theatre companies and script development bodies in the country.
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