Dear Son

Thomas Mayo

Isaac Drandic

Isaac is a Noongar man from the southwest of Western Australia. He is a highly sought-after dramaturg, actor, playwright, and director who specialises in new work by First Nations playwrights.

He has directed for some of Australia’s leading theatre and opera companies including Belvoir Street, Queensland Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, LaBoite, ILBIJERRI and the Victorian Opera. His shows have been seen at every major arts festival in Australia and toured internationally.

For Belvoir Isaac’s theatre credits include: At What Cost?, Coranderrk, (ILBJERRI Theatre Company/Belvoir St Theatre). Isaac’s other credits include As Director: The Visitors (Victoria Opera); From Campfire to Stage Light (JUTE Theatre); Hide the Dog, The Season (Performing Lines); From Darkness, Bigger and Blacker (La Boite Theatre); Blood on the Dance Floor (ILBIJERRI Theatre Company/Arts House); Into the Bloodstream (Archie Roach Foundation).

Positions: Head of First Nations Theatre (Current Position), Associate Artistic Director, Resident Dramaturg, Associate Artist, Queensland Theatre; Associate Director, ILBIJERRI Theatre Company; Resident Artist, Playwrighting Australia. Isaac is a Noongar man.

Awards: 2025 Matilda Awards – Best Direction and Best Mainstage Production 37; 2018 Green Room Awards – Best Direction and Best Mainstage Production The Season.

John Harvey

John’s credits include: As Writer: Dear Son (Queensland Theatre) Malthouse Theatre: The Return, Heart is a Wasteland (with Ilbijerri Theatre – National Tour); As Co-Writer: Ilbijerri Theatre: Black Ties; As Director: Orana Arts: A Little Piece of Heaven (with Yirramboi Arts Festival). Film: As Director & Writer: Still We Rise; Water (ABC); Out of Range (SBS). As Director, Co-Writer & Producer: Off Country; As Director & Co-Writer: Katele (Mudskipper); As Producer: Spear (Toronto International Film Festival); Sand (The Turning) (Berlinale); The Warriors (ABC).

Commissions: Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI): Canopy (multi-channel installation; adapted into a large-scale mural – Melbourne Metro); As Video Component Producer: Ricardo Idagi: Upi Mop Le.

Positions: Creative Director, Brown Cabs; Writers Residencies: Malthouse Theatre and Footscray Arts; 2024 Inaugural First Nations Writers Residency, New York City and Boston; Board Member, Bangarra Dance Theatre.

Awards: Victorian Premier’s Literary Award The Return; AIDC & ADG Best Documentary Awards Still We Rise; ADG Best Documentary Award Off Country (As Co-Director); FlickerFest & Melbourne International Film Festival – Best Australian Short Awards Katele (Mudskipper) (As Co-Writer); 2023 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow recipient.

Jimi Bani

Waangenga Blanco

Luke Carroll

Luke Carroll is a seasoned theatre, film and television performer.

Stage credits include Capricornia, Conversations with the Dead, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Dreamers, No Sugar and The Cake Man, for which he was nominated for a Helpmann Award (Belvoir); Sunshine Super Girl (Performing Lines); Black Cockatoo (Ensemble Theatre); Appropriate, Black is the New White, The Harp in the South, The Hanging, The Battle of Waterloo and Cherry Pickers (Sydney Theatre Company); The Torrents (Sydney Theatre Company and Black Swan State Theatre Company); Black Diggers and Mother Courage and her Children (Queensland Theatre); The Season (Performing Lines/Tasmania and Melbourne Festivals); Wind in the Willows (La Boite Theatre Company); Riverland (Adelaide Festival); Eora Crossing (Sydney Festival); Purple Dreams and My Girragundji (Bell Shakespeare).

Luke was a nominee for the 2012 AACTA Award for Best Guest or Supporting Actor in a TV Drama for his work on Redfern Now, nominated twice for AFI Awards for Best Supporting Actor for Australian Rules and Best Supporting Actor in a TV series for R.A.N.

Luke’s other film credits include Strangerland, Needle, Stone Bros, Subdivision, The Tender Hook and Children of the Revolution. 

His recent television projects include Upright (Foxtel) and the first season of Total Control (ABC). Luke was recently the director’s attachment on the second series with Wayne Blair. His other TV credits include Preppers, Black Comedy, The Gods of Wheat Street, Redfern Now, Heartbeat for UK TV, Home and Away, R.A.N, The Alice, Stingers, All Saints, Water Rats, Heartbreak High, Man from Snowy River, The Flying Doctors and Lift Off.

Luke has been a very proud member of the Play School team for 12 years and is part of the presenting team of Seven’s Sydney Weekender.

Kirk Page

Tibian Wyles

Kevin O’Brien

Kevin’s credits include: Dear Brother, The Button Event (Queensland Theatre) La Boite Theatre: A Streetcar Named Desire, From Darkness, Bigger and Blacker; Moogahlin: The Weekend (with Sydney Festival); Urban Theatre Projects (Sydney): Blak Box (with Barangaroo, Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens); Metro Arts: Where We Meet.

Exhibition Design: Various exhibitions for Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art, National Museum of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Museum, Venice Art and Architecture Biennales.

Film: Set Design and Production: Katele (Mudskipper).

Positions: Adjunct Professor, Architecture, University of Sydney.

Awards: 2023 Flickerfest International Short Film Festival Winner – Best Australian Short Film Katele (Mudskipper) by John Harvey; 2024 Venice Arts Biennale – Golden Lion for Archie Moore’s Kith and Kin (Exhibition Design).

Delvene Cockatoo-Collins

Delvene’s theatre credits include: Queensland Theatre: Dear Brother; La Boite Theatre: Capricorn.

Other credits include: Collections for Cairns Indigenous Art Fair: Dilly Bag, Mat Making; Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair’s Indigenous Fashion Projects: Country to Couture.

Awards: Matilda Award – Best Costume Design Capricorn. Delvene is a Quandamooka artist based on Minjerribah, North Stradbroke Island.

David Walters

David’s theatre credits include: Queensland Theatre: Dear Brother, don’t ask what the bird look like, Bernhardt/Hamlet, Emerald City, Nearer The Gods, The Wider Earth, Motherland, Quartet, Ladies in Black, Brisbane, Boston Marriage, Gloria, Macbeth, Australia Day, Venus in Fur, End of the Rainbow, Romeo & Juliet, Pygmalion, Grimm Tales, The August Moon, Rabbit Hole, The Glass Menagerie, The Memory of Water, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Molly Sweeney, Chilling and Killing My Annabel Lee, The Skin of Our Teeth, Vertigo and the Virginia, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Amy’s View, Master Class, After the Ball, Summer Rain, Arcadia, The Hope of the World, Money and Friends, Gilgamesh, The Shaugraun, Broken Glass, Shadow and Splendour, The Marriage of Figaro, The Game of Love and Chance, On The Whippingside, The Crucible, Essington Lewis: I Am Work, Mrs Klein, The Cherry Orchard, Seven Little Australians, Season’s Greetings, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Month In The Country, Top Silk, Moby Dick, The Taming Of The Shrew, Ghosts, Major Barbara, The Barrets of Wimpole Street, Snoopy, Chorus of Disapproval, Briefs, God’s Best Country, Hard Times, The Bloke, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Night And Day, The Recruiting Officer, A Month Of Sundays, A Spring Song, The Man from Mukinupin, A Different Drummer, Fuente Ovejuna, Salonika, The Venetian Twins. Other Credits: Various credits for Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Bell Shakespeare Company, PlayLab, QUT, QPAC, Jute, Handspan, Playbox, La Boite Theatre, Rock‘n’Roll Circus, Nimrod, Company B, Dead Puppet Society, Expressions Dance Company, Queensland Ballet, Australian Ballet, Opera Queensland, Opera Australia, Topology, Camerata, Boxties, Zen Zen Zo, as well as Iceland’s National Theatre, National Opera, and Reykjavik City Theatre.

Positions: Adjunct Associate Professor in Drama, QUT.

Awards: Matilda Awards/Commendations in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2012, and 2018; ABF Lifetime Achievement Award.

Craig Wilkinson

Craig Wilkinson is an award-winning live performance video designer and the creative director of optikal bloc. His video design work has toured extensively across Australia and internationally to Hong Kong, UK, North America, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

Video design credits include: GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS (Belvoir St Theatre); DRACULA (Sydney Theatre Company); LOVE STORIES, BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE (Brisbane Festival, QPAC); ROUND THE TWIST, DEAR SON (with State Theatre Company of South Australia), FIRST CASUALTY, THE MOUNTAINTOP, GASP! (Queensland Theatre); ILLUME (Bangarra); CINDERELLA, THE LITTLE MERMAID, MY BRILLIANT CAREER (Queensland Ballet); FRANKENSTEIN, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, ROALD DAHL’S FANTASTIC MR FOX, FOURTHCOMING, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, GREEN DAY’S AMERICAN IDIOT, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, 1984 (Shake & Stir Theatre Co); SHAUN THE SHEEP’S CIRCUS SHOW (Circa, QPAC); ANNIE, GREASE THE MUSICAL (Crossroads Live).

Awards: Australian Production Design Guild Award – Video Design for a Live Performance or Event for BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE, AVOIDABLE PERILS, and FIRST CASUALTY; Matilda Award – Video Design for BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE, ROALD DAHL’S FANTASTIC MR FOX and A CHRISTMAS CAROL; Matilda Award ─ Gold Matilda, Body of Work PALE BLUE DOT, THE MOUNTAINTOP, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, GASP!, 1984; Adelaide Fringe’s John Chataway Innovation Award TERROR AUSTRALIS.

Wil Hughes

Wil’s credits as a composer, songwriter and sound designer for theatre have ranged from contemporary ballet to musicals, and include Blue (Belvoir St); Tiddas, Single Asian Female, The Dead Devils of Cockle Creek, The Village, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Wind in the Willows (La Boite Theatre Company); Face to Face (Playlab); Lucie In The Sky, Arc, Still Life (Australasian Dance Collective); Propel (Expressions Dance Company); Mind Your Head, From Within, Sonder, B- Sides (Queensland Ballet); Kill Climate Deniers (That Production Company); Elizabeth I (Monsters Appear/Wonderland Festival); Dear Brother, 37, Rice, The Scene Project (Queensland Theatre); Day After Terrible Day, We Will Not Kiss/ Touch/Frighten You in the Dark, Caligula (The Danger Ensemble); The Theory of Everything (Brisbane Festival/Metro Arts); Dust Covered Butterfly (Metro Arts); and Sweet Meniscus (Anywhere Theatre Festival).

Wil is also an internationally acclaimed composer for film, television and other media, with credits including: Made It With My Hands (SBS); Still Life (ADC, Kiosk); Bird Drone (ScreenWest)

Awards: Recipient of Best Music accolades: Australian Screen Music Awards, California Independent Film Festival (USA), Festival du Film Marveilleux (France).

Member: Australian Guild of Screen Composers; Australian Theatre Composers Guild.

Waangenga Blanco

Eben Love

Patrick Mau

Tibian Wyles

Liam Maza

Marcus Oborn