BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY

Dalara Williams

Theatre credits include, for Belvoir: Winyanboga Yurringa; forIlbijerri Theatre Company: Black Ties, forSydney Theatre Company: The Visitors; forDarlinghurst Theatre Company: Rainbow’s End; forMalthouse Theatre: Blackie Blackie Brown; forNIDA; Realism, Love & Money, The Season at Sarsaparilla, Twelfth Night, The Shadow King, Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui. 

Film credits include: The Flood, Top End Wedding.

Television credits include: Critical Incident, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Black Comedy S3 & 4, Get Krack!n.

Short Film credits include: Last Drinks at Frida’s.

Ian Michael

Ian Michael is an award-winning Noongar director, writer, and actor. Ian is currently the Richard Wherett Fellow at Sydney Theatre Company. BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY is Ian Michael’s debut at Belvoir St Theatre. Other credits include: for Sydney Theatre Company: As Director: Constellations, Stolen; for Black Swan State Theatre Company: THE BLEEDING TREE. As Associate Director: for Sydney Theatre Company, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (toured to Perth Festival and Adelaide Festival), DRACULA, THE SEAGULL, THE 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING, THE PRESIDENT; for Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company: THE CHERRY ORCHARD. As Assistant Director: for Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company: SKYLAB. As Writer: Black Swan State Theatre Company: YORK (with Chris Isaacs). Critical Stages/Paines Plough: ANOTHER DAY IN THE COLONY, HART (with Seanna van Helten). Positions: STC Resident Director, Richard Wherrett Fellow (2022-2023). Resident Artist and Artistic Associate at Black Swan State Theatre Company (2018-2020). Curator of the Maali Festival (2021). Besen Family Artist, Malthouse, 2017. Awards: 2022 PAWA Awards for Outstanding Direction of an Independent Production and Best Independent Production (The Bleeding Tree). 2021 Blue Room Award for Direction (The Bleeding Tree). Best Emerging Artist, Adelaide Fringe 2016. Training: WAAPA.

Stephanie Somerville

Stephanie is a proud Martu woman. A graduate from the Aboriginal Theatre course and the Acting BA at WAAPA, in her final year she was awarded the Sally Burton Award for Best Female Performance of a Shakespearean Text.

Big Girls Don’t Cry with be Stephanie’s first main stage Belvoir Production. Her stage productions include Minus One Sister, Quokkapocalypse (The Blue Room Theatre); Lysistrata (Subiaco Arts Centre); A Little Piece of Ash (KXT); Macbeth (Bell Shakespeare Company); Slaughterhouse (Belvoir 25A); Julius Caesar, Blithe Spirit, Chalkface, Stolen (Sydney Theatre Company); The Bleeding Tree (Black Swan Theatre Company), Blaque Showgirls (Griffin Theatre Company).

Stephanie won Outstanding Performer in a supporting role in the Performing Arts WA Awards for The Bleeding Tree, Blackswan Theatre Company.

Megan Wilding

Megan Wilding is a proud Gamilaroi person and and a graduate from WAAPA. She has performed in many theatre productions, including The Rover at Belvoir Street Theatre, Stolen, The Seagull, Blithe Spirit, Banging Denmark and Blackie Blackie Brown at Sydney Theatre Company, Animal Farm at Black Swan Theatre and A Little Piece Of Ash, which she wrote, directed and performed in for Jack Rabbit Theatre at KXT.

Megan appeared in feature film We Are Still Here which opened the 2022 Sydney Film Festival and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. She has been seen in numerous television productions including Mystery Road: Origin, The Moth Effect and Gold Diggers. She is the recipient of the Balnaves Indigenous Playwright’s Award and the Griffin Award as well as a Casting Guild of Australia Rising Star Award. Megan will next be seen in Stan series Sunny Nights.

Dalara Williams

Theatre credits include, for Belvoir: Winyanboga Yurringa; forIlbijerri Theatre Company: Black Ties, forSydney Theatre Company: The Visitors; forDarlinghurst Theatre Company: Rainbow’s End; forMalthouse Theatre: Blackie Blackie Brown; forNIDA; Realism, Love & Money, The Season at Sarsaparilla, Twelfth Night, The Shadow King, Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui. 

Film credits include: The Flood, Top End Wedding.

Television credits include: Critical Incident, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Black Comedy S3 & 4, Get Krack!n.

Short Film credits include: Last Drinks at Frida’s.

Bryn Chapman Parish

Bryn Chapman Parish is a graduate of the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Bryn’s theatre credits include M.ROCK for ATYP directed by Fraser Corfield. Television credits include HEARTBREAK HIGH (S1,2 and 3) and MR INBETWEEN (S3). Bryn’s Feature Film credits are JIMPA starring Olivia Coleman and John Lithgow which premiered at Sundance 2025 and
WELCOME BACK TO MY CHANNEL.

Bryn won the Audience Choice award for Best Actor at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (AACTA) in 2022 and is also the frontman for popular punk band Mac The Knife, which has toured all over Australia.

Big Girls Don’t Cry is Bryn’s Belvoir debut.

Mathew Cooper

Mathew is returning to the Belvoir stage after performing in Coranderrk (Belvoir/Ilbijerri Theatre). His other theatre credits include Love Stories (Brisbane Festival/QPAC), Stolen (Sydney Theatre Company, Hubris and Humiliation (Sydney Theatre Company), Top Coat, City of Gold (Black Swan State Theatre Company), Boy Swallows Universe (Queensland Theatre), City of Gold (Queensland Theatre/Griffin Theatre Company), Stolen (National Theatre of Parramatta), Blaque Showgirls, Whitefella Yella Tree, Cracked, Yirra Yaakin: The Sum of Us (Griffin Theatre Company), The Season (Performing Lines) and Lucky (MTC/Neon). Mathew’s film credits include The Marshes and Last Drinks at Frida’s. His television credits include Redfern Now and Janet King.

Nic English

Theatre credits include, for Outhouse Theatre Co: Consent; for Adelaide Festival: Aleppo. A Portrait of Absence; for State Theatre Company South Australia: End of the Rainbow, Neighbourhood Watch, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), The Glass Menagerie, Holding the Man, The Misanthrope.

Television credits include: Ten Pound Poms, Home & Away, Wellmania, Joe vs. Carole, The Tailings, Reckoning, Rosehaven.

Guy Simon

Guy Simon is a proud Birripi, Worimi, Waddi Waddi and Walbunga man and is the 2024 Balnaves Fellowship recipient. His theatre credits include: Holding the Man (Belvoir), My Brilliant Career (Belvoir), Jasper Jones (Belvoir- Return Season & NSW Tour,) The Visitors (STC), Jacky (MTC), The Tempest (STC), White Yella Tree (Griffin Theatre Company), The Return (Malthouse Theatre), Grand Horizons (STC),Playing Beatie Bow (STC), First Love is the Revolution (Griffin Theatre Company), Cloudstreet (Malthouse Theatre), The Harp in the South (STC), Strangers in Between (Cameron Lukey Presents), Bright World, (Theatre Works), Jasper Jones (MTC), Blaque Showgirls (Malthouse Theatre, The Battle of Waterloo (STC), The Myth Project: Twin (Arthur, A Theatre Company), Black Diggers (QLD Theatre Company), This Fella, My Memory (Mooghalin Performing Arts, Yellamundie (Mooghalin Performing Arts), Junction (Bakehouse Theatre),Stolen (STC),  Lucky (IPAN Productions).

Film: Undertow, Around the Block. TV: The Secret She Keeps S2, Wakefield, The Wrong Girl, Redfern Now 2. Other: Online Series: A Chance Affair. Training: NIDA. Pronouns: He/Him

Awards: 2017 Helpmann for best Male Actor in a Supporting role in a Play

Stephen Curtis

Stephen’s extensive design career spans four decades and embraces set and costume design for features, short films, dance, drama, opera, physical theatre and musicals, including major collaborations with Australia’s leading directors, choreographers, festivals and performance companies. He designed the sets for Company B Belvoir’s first production Signal Driver and has subsequently designed sets and or costumes for Holding the Man, The Weekend, Cursed!, Things I Know To Be True, Barbara And The Camp Dogs, The Drover’s Wife, Twelfth Night, The Business, Gwen In Purgatory, Scorched, The Adventures Of Snugglepot & Cuddlepie And Little Ragged Blossom, The Cake Man, It Just Stopped, In Our Name, The Underpants, Svetlana In Slingbacks, Emma’s Nose, The Small Poppies, Cosi, Popular Mechanicals 1 & 2, The Headbutt, Picasso At The Lapine Agile, The Alchemist and The Blind Giant Is Dancing. Other theatre credits include Platée for Pinchgut Opera; The Secret River for Sydney Theatre Company/London/Edinburgh Festival; I Am Eorafor Sydney Festival; Lulu, The Cunning Little Vixen and La Boheme for Opera Australia; Der Ring Des Nibelungen (The Ring Cycle) for State Opera of South Australia; The Hypocrite, Two Brothers and The Blue Room  for Melbourne Theatre Company; The Winter’s Tale and Henry Iv  for Bell Shakespeare Company; Once In Royal David’s City, Black Diggers and Pygmalion for Queensland Theatre Company. As a production designer Stephen’s film credits include Looking For Alibrandi, Bedevil and Night Cries. Stephen has published two books, Staging Ideas: Set And Costume Design For Theatre as a guide to the art of theatre design, and The Designer: Decorator Or Dramaturg? as a Platform Paper interrogating the contemporary role of the performance designer.

Kelsey Lee

Kelsey is a lighting, set and costume designer for theatre, dance and events. Previously for Belvoir she was the Lighting Designer for Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, A Room of One’s Own; and Associate Lighting Designer for Blue, At What Cost?. Other credits include Lighting Designer: Mutiara (Marrugeku); Gurr Era Op (Force Majeure); The Lewis Trilogy; Sex Magick; Whitefella Yella Tree (Griffin Theatre Company), The Comedy Of Errors (Bell Shakespeare); Tell Me On A Sunday (Hayes Theatre); Masterclass; The Memory of Water; A Letter For Molly (Ensemble Theatre); Queen Fatima (NToP); Jali (Aya Productions, Griffin Theatre Company); Extinction of the Learned Response, Skyduck, Kasama Kita (Belvoir 25A); April Aardvark (ATYP); Good Dog; If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You (Greendoor Theatre Company). Set & Costume Designer Somos (Sydney Dance Company). Set Designer: Nothing; A Practical Guide To Self Defence (NTofP). Costume Designer: Silence and Rapture (Sydney Dance Company & ACO), Switzerland (Ensemble Theatre). Co-production Designer & Lighting Designer: Destroy, She Said (Belvoir’s 25A). Set & Lighting Designer: An Ox Stand On My Tongue (Belvoir 25A). Lighting, Set & Costume: Lulu: A Modern Sex Tragedy (NIDA), Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge (ACO). Associate Lighting Designer Cut The Sky (Marrugeku). 

Brendon Boney

Brendon’s work includes At What Cost?, Belvior Theatre, The 7 Stages of Grieving, The Sydney Theatre Company- (Design Associate), Black Ties, Illbijerri Theatre- Musical Director & Composer, Winyanboga Yurringa, Black Cockatoo, Dubboo, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Gods of Wheat Street (ABC1), Redfern Now (SBS), Offspring (Network 10), Winners & Losers (Seven Network), Underbelly Chopper (The Nine Network) & Musical Contributor plus providing lead character Willie’s singing voice in Bran New Dae (2009).

Brendon Boney is a Wiradjuri/ Gamilaroi man who grew up in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales and is now based in Ettalong Beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales. He’s been a recording and performing artist touring the world for the past decade and is an APRA PDA winner. He’s performed Bluesfest Byron Bay, Woodford Folk Festival, Sydney Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Brisbane Festival, Friendship Festival (Seoul, Sth Korea) & The Aussie BBQ (UK). Brendon’s written for and collaborated with artists such as PJ Harding, Jaguar Jonze, Becca Hatch, MXWLL, Tessa Thames, Xavier Dunn & Tasman Keith and his work has over 80 000 Spotify streams.

Emma White

Emma White is a set and costume designer for stage and screen. BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY is Emma White’s debut at Belvoir Upstairs. Other credits include: for Sydney Theatre Company: OIL, THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT, ON THE BEACH; for Hayes Theatre Co: FLAT EARTHERS, THE MUSICAL, AMERICAN PSYCHO. SPORT FOR JOVE: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, THE TEMPEST; for Queensland Theatre: AS YOU LIKE IT; for Griffin Theatre Company: GREEN PARK, A IS FOR APPLE; for Ensemble Theatre: ALONE IT STANDS; for Sydney Dance Company: MOMENTA; for Red Line Productions: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, BURN WITCH BURN, HAND TO GOD, SEVEN DEADLY SINS + MAHAGONNY SONGSPIEL, CHORUS; for Belvoir 25A: KASAMA KITA; for Campbelltown Arts Centre: BAD MACHINE; for Milkcrate Theatre: NATURAL ORDER; for Riverside’s National Theatre of Parramatta/Sydney Festival: BOOM; for Blue Room Theatre: YOU’VE GOT MAIL. Awards: APDG Emerging Designer (nominated)  Training: NIDA, UNSW Art and Design.

Chloë Dallimore

Chloë is internationally trained and accredited as an Intimacy Coordinator by Ita O’Brien of Intimacy on Set (UK). 

She is currently working on “The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart” starring Sigourney Weaver, the Broadway musical “Jagged Little Pill”, as well as productions for Netflix, Warner Bros, Fremantle, Ch9 and Ch10. 

Recent credits include Netflix’s “Pieces of Her” starring Toni Collette, George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing”, Benjamin Millepied’s “Carmen”, ABC’s “Wakefield” and Ch9’s “Doctor, Doctor”.

With a life-long journey in professional dance, and as an award-winning musical theatre performer, Chloë’s career has seen her work as a Resident/ Associate Choreographer on main-stage productions such as Billy Elliot, Oliver!, and Annie, as well as perform lead roles in productions such as The Producers, Chicago, Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Addams Family. 

Chloë is honoured to work with the Belvoir team.

Nigel Poulton

Nigel is an award-winning movement director, fight and intimacy coordinator, SAG-AFTRA/MEAA stunt performer and actor, with over 25 years of professional experience. Selected theatre credits include: for Belvoir St Theatre, Holding the Man, The Master and Margarita, Miss Peony, Packer and Sons, Things I Know To Be True, Stop Girl, Blessed Union, At What Cost?, The Jungle and the Sea; for Sydney Theatre Company, Oil, On The Beach, Do Not Go Gentle, Fences; for Bell Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth; for Melbourne Theatre Company, Bernhardt/Hamlet; for Ensemble Theatre, Memory of Water, Mr Bailey’s Minder, Suddenly Last Summer. Nigel’s film and television work includes: Deadloch, Nautilus, Poker Face, Thor: Love and Thunder, Spiderhead, Ding Dong I’m Gay, Occupation 2, Pirates of the Caribbean V, Deadline Gallipoli, The Water Diviner, The Bourne Legacy, Vikingdom and Winter’s Tale.

In 2021, Nigel was awarded the status of Fight Master with the Society of American Fight Directors, as one of only two recipients outside the US with this accolade. He has also won a Green Room Award for outstanding contribution to the stage.

Elle Evangelista

Elle Evangelista loves dancing. Her BELVOIR choreography credits include Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Holding the Man, The Master and Margarita, The Cherry Orchard, The Boomkak Panto, The Rep Season and Furious Mattress (25a). Her other theatre choreography credits include Twelfth Night (Bell Shakespeare), A Very Expensive Poison (NIDA) and How To Catch A Star (Australian Chamber Orchestra).

As a dancer she has worked for Force Majeure, KAGE Physical Theatre, Opera Australia and she has been awarded residencies to create new work by Ausdance NSW, DirtyFeet, Critical Path, March Dance, Brand X and Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance. From 2019 – 2021, Elle was an Artist Representative on the Board of Critical Path and in 2022 a Belvoir Artistic Associate.

Elle has a Bachelor of Arts in English from UWA and a Bachelor of Arts in Dance from WAAPA. She was raised on Boorloo/Perth by her Filipino and Burmese family and currently lives on Garigal Land in Sydney with her partner and their young son.

Laura Farrell

Laura Farrell (she/her) is a Voice and Dialect Coach living and working on Gadigal land. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Voice from NIDA; a Post Graduate Diploma in Voice from the Victorian College of the Arts; and a Bachelor of Music Theatre from the Victorian College of the Arts. A current lecturer for NIDA’s BFA, Laura has also taught on multiple Sydney actor training programs, including NIDA’s Diploma of Stage and Screen and Diploma of Music Theatre, Actors Pulse, Sydney Acting Studio, Actors Centre Australia and The University of Wollongong.

For Belvoir, Laura’s coaching credits include Into The Woods, directed by Eamon Flack (2023), Blue, directed by Deborah Brown (2023), Jungle And The Sea, directed by Eamon Flack (2022), Tell Me I’m Here, directed by Leticia Caceres (2022), Fangirls, directed by Paige Rattray (2022) and Counting And Cracking, directed by Eamon Flack (2022).  

Other credits include Pear Shaped, directed by Miranda Middleton (Rogue Projects, 2023), F*** It Bucket, directed by Alyssa McClelland (LeftBank Productions UK, 2022),  Reluctant Sea Shanty for UNHCR, directed by Kyra Bartley (FINCH, 2022), Picnic At Hanging Rock, directed by Claudia Osbourne (NIDA, 2022), Paper Stars, directed by Miranda Middleton (Salty Theatre, 2021) and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again., directed by Heather Fairbairn (NIDA, Sydney 2021). 

Angeline Penrith

Angeline is a Wiradjuri and Yuin woman who grew up in the Redfern/Waterloo community.  Making her acting debut at 12 years of age by opening for ABC’s BlackOut, Angeline has gone on to perform in countless film and theatre productions from development to performance.  Her theatre credits include Boori Pryors My Girragundji (Canute Productions), The Dreaming – Wake Up Australia (STC), and Winyanboga Yurringa (Moogahlin Performing Arts). Her Television credits include Cleverman and Black Comedy. 

Angeline has also been involved in numerous play readings and workshops for Belvoir St, Yellamundie First People’s Playwriting Festival. and The Sydney Theatre Company, and has worked alongside talented directors such as Chris Canute, Leah Purcell and Andrea James.

As a community advocate Angeline believes in self-determination and revival of culture which she demonstrates in her MC work for NAIDOC at the 2018 Flag Raising Ceremony at NCIE, as well as Yabun Festival. Angeline hopes her performance career sets an example for young Indigenous actors and that she can continue to be a role model through her recent NITV Quit Smoking campaign and future projects.

Abbie-lee Lewis

Abbie-lee Lewis is a Kalkadoon actress who trained on the Aboriginal Theatre and Acting courses at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Perth.

Her credits include David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era, for Belvoir St Theatre, Seanna Van Helten’s Fallen, directed by Penny Harpham, for Sport for Jove; Our Town, directed by Clare Watson, for the Black Swan State Theatre Company of Western Australia; a national tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (as Hermia) for Bell Shakespeare; and Angus Cerini’s The Bleeding Tree, directed by Ian Michael at the Blue Room Theatre, Perth.

Her television credits include Black Comedy for ABC.

In recent years she has also worked as an assistant director, collaborating with Peter Evans on Hamlet for Bell Shakespeare and with Jena Prince on Charlie Pilgrim for the Australian Theatre for Young People. Last year she made her directing debut with Bruce Pascoe’s Cutter and Coot for Moogahlin Performing Arts and has since directed Jane Montgomery Griffiths’ an ox stand on my tongue, for Belvoir’s 25A and Hannah Belanszky’s Saplings for ATYP which won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Production for Young People..

Based in: Kalkatungu Country, Australia

Isabella Kerdijk

Bella graduated from the production course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2008. She has worked as a Stage Manager and Assistant Stage Manager on many shows, including: for Belvoir:  An Enemy of the People, The Dog/The Cat, The Drover’s Wife, Every Brilliant Thing, Fangirls, Girl Asleep, The Glass Menagerie, HIR, Jasper Jones, Kill the Messenger, Mother, Mother Courage and Her Children, My Name is Jimi, Stories I Want to Tell You In Person, The Sugar House, Thyestes (European Tours), Well-Behaved Women, Winyanboga Yurringa; for Griffin: And No More Shall We Part, Blaque Showgirls, Green Park, Replay, Sex Magick, Swim, The Smallest Hour, This Year’s Ashes, Ugly Mugs, Whitefella Yella Tree, Wicked Sisters; for Sydney theatre Company; Blithe Spirit; for Circus Oz: Cranked Up; for Darlinghurst Theatre Company: Fourplay, Ride, Silent Night; for Ensemble Theatre: Benefactors, Boxing Day BBQ, Rainman, The Ruby Sunrise; for Legs on the Wall: Bubble; for LWAA: The Mousetrap (Australia/New Zealand Tours); for Spiegelworld: Empire; for Sydney Festival: A Model Murder

Maddison Craven

Maddie (she/her) is a Sydney based stage manager and a graduate of NIDA’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Technical Theatre and Stage Management. Maddie is passionate about creating an inclusive environment in the arts and ensuring space for unheard voices. 

Maddie is excited to be returning to Belvoir after her role as the ASM on Belvoir’s 2024 season of “Never Closer” and the 2025 season of “Jacky”, a co-production with Melbourne Theatre Company. Maddie’s other previous works include JRP’s Production of ‘In The Heights’ performed in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House and Griffin Theatre Company’s 2024 season of “Golden Blood”, a co-production with Sydney Theatre Company.