AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

Tracy Letts

Eamon Flack

Eamon Flack is the Artistic Director of Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney. He is a director, writer, dramaturg and script developer for stage and screen.

 Eamon was born in Singapore and grew up in Singapore, Darwin, Cootamundra and Brisbane. He has a BA (English and History) from the University of Queensland, and trained as an actor at WAAPA from 2001 to 2003. He has worked around Australia and internationally, from the Tiwi Islands to Sri Lanka and the UK. He has led Belvoir’s new work development in various guises since 2006, and has commissioned and developed many of the company’s most acclaimed new works over the last 15 years.

His productions of The Glass Menagerie, Angels in America and Counting and Cracking won the Helpmann Awards for Best Play in 2015, 2016, and 2019. 

His key directing credits include: Counting and Cracking (with Associate Director S. Shakthidharan, winner of the Helpmann Award for Best Direction of a Play and nominated for the Sydney Theatre Award Best Direction of the Mainstage Production), The Jungle and the Sea (co-directed with S. Shakthidharan, winner of Best New Work and Best Production at the Sydney Theatre Awards), Angels in America, The Glass Menagerie, Into the Woods, Tommy Murphy’s Packer & Sons, Rita Kalnejais’s Babyteeth, Alana Valentine’s Wayside Bride (co-directed with Hannah Goodwin), Tom Wright’s adaptation of Brecht’s Life of Galileo, Eamon’s own adaptations of Hendrik Ibsen’s Ghosts and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Ivanov (Sydney Theatre Awards Best Production and Best Director), as well as The Rover, The Blind Giant is Dancing, As You Like It, and Beckett’s The End. His other directing credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Bob Presents/B Sharp) and Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui by Jason de Santis (Darwin Festival).

His writing and adaptation credits include: Associate Writer of S. Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking (winner of the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Victorian Literary Prize and the Victorian Premier’s Award for Drama, Helpmann for Best New Work), co-writer with S. Shakthidharan of The Jungle and the Sea (Winner, Best New Work, Sydney Theatre Awards 2022); a stage adaptation of Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children; Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Ivanov, Gorky’s Summerfolk, Sophocles’ Antigone and Ibsen’s Ghosts; co-adapter with Leah Purcell of Ruby Langford Ginibi’s memoir Don’t Take Your Love To Town; and co-deviser of Beautiful One Day with artists from ILBIJERRI, version 1.0, and the community of Palm Island.

For orchestral concert he has adapted and directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream alongside Mendelssohn’s score for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Belvoir St Theatre conducted by Simone Young, and directed and co-created Beethoven and Bridgetower with Anna Goldsworthy, Rita Dove and Richard Tognetti for the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Bert LaBonté

Pamela Rabe

Pamela is one of Australia’s most prolific and highly awarded actors.

For her work in theatre and musicals, amongst numerous nominations, she has been awarded 3 Helpmann Awards for Best Actress for The Children, The Glass Menagerie and Grey Gardens, 8 Melbourne Green Room Awards, a Sydney Critics’ Circle Award and a “Mo” Award. Other notable credits include The Dance of Death, Ghosts, The Cherry Orchard, A Little Night Music, A Room of One’s Own, The Wizard of Oz, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and, while a founding member of the Sydney Theatre Company’s Actors’ Ensemble, several acclaimed productions including Mother Courage and Her Children, Benedict Andrews’ The War of the Roses and The Season at Sarsaparilla, and Barry Kosky’s The Lost Echo. Pamela has also directed plays for the Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company and the Malthouse Theatre.

Her work in television includes The Secret Life of Us, Mercury, The Bite and Stingers, and most recently Wentworth, for which she won a Silver Logie award for Most Outstanding Actress in 2018, and the AACTA award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama in 2015. The final scene of the 5th season, in which her character Joan “The Freak” Ferguson meets her apparent demise was nominated for TV Moment of the Decade in the 2020 AACTA Awards. Recent television roles include Principal De Rossi in the mini-series The Hunting and Maude in Fucking Adelaide. Pamela has appeared in several feature films including Sirens alongside Hugh Grant and Sam Neill, Paradise Road, Vacant Possession, Cosi, and The Well, for which she won the 1997 AFI, Stockholm Film Festival and Variety Club awards for Best Actress.

Helen Thomson

Bob Cousins

Ella Butler

Ella is a Sydney-based designer for theatre, film and live performance.

In film, Ella has worked as the series Set Decorator on ‘Born To Spy’ (SBS, Aquarius), ‘While The Men Are Away’ (SBS, Arcadia) and Art Director on the experimental, operatic film ‘A Delicate Fire’ with Pinchgut Opera. In collaboration with CATSinAM, The Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Nurses and Midwives, Ella designed the Wardrobe and Production Design for ‘In Our Own Right; recounting Black Australian Nurses’ and Midwives Stories.  In theatre, Ella was nominated for Best Stage Design of A Mainstage Production at the Sydney Theatre Awards for her work as Set and Costume Designer on ‘First Love Is The Revolution’ (Griffin Theatre Company). 

Previously, Ella has worked with Belvoir in costume design for ‘Tell Me I’m Here’ Directed by Leticia Caceres and The Rep Season directed by Eamon Flack and Hannah Goodwin. Ella styled Tim Minchin and his band for his return to the stage with the National Tour of ‘BACK’, as well as Styling and Production Designing Minchin’s most recent album launch, a live recording of ‘Apart Together’. Ella’s work in theatre has been received internationally after designing ‘Enter the Underworld’ as part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ella is a graduate from the National Institute of Dramatic Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Design for Performance).