SCENES FROM THE CLIMATE ERA

David Finnigan

David Finnigan is a playwright and game designer from Ngunnawal country. He works with climate and
earth scientists to create theatre and games about complex systems and planetary transformation.

His six-part performance series about climate change, You’re Safe, has been presented at the Barbican
London, the Sydney Opera House, ArtScience Singapore and the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

David’s 2017 play Kill Climate Deniers was awarded the Griffin Playwrights Award and produced in 10
cities worldwide. In 2021, he received Melbourne’s Green Room Award for Best Writing for Are You
Ready To Take The Law Into Your Own Hands, his collaboration with Manila-based theatre company
Sipat Lawin. His ecological rom-com 44 Sex Acts In One Week was presented at the Sydney Festival in
2022 by Club House Productions.

David is a Churchill Fellow, an Asialink Fellow and a consultant on disaster risk with the World Bank

Carissa Licciardello

Carissa Licciardello is a Resident Director at Belvoir. She was previously an Artistic Associate for the company and its inaugural Andrew Cameron Fellow. She graduated from NIDA’s Directing course in 2017.

Her credits include: for Belvoir – as Director/Co-Adaptor, A Room of One’s Own; as Associate Director, Fangirls 2019; as Assistant Director, Counting & Cracking; Ghosts. For Sydney Theatre Company, as Assistant Director, Rules for Living. For 25A Downstairs Belvoir: Extinction of the Learned Response; The Maids.

Carissa is also a recipient of the 2020 Glorias Fellowship.

Harriet Gordon-Anderson

Harriet’s theatre credits include the titular role in Hamlet (Bell Shakespeare), Boxing
Day BBQ (Ensemble Theatre), Anatomy of a Suicide (Sugary Rum), In a Nutshell
(Bell Shakespeare), The Museum of Modern Love (Sydney Festival), Ulster
American (Outhouse), The Miser (Bell Shakespeare), Picnic at Hanging Rock
(Malthouse / Black Swan, The Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, The Barbican London),
Kindertransport (Darlinghurst Theatre), You Got Older (KXT), Blue Christmas
(KXT), Leaves (KXT), and Lifestyle of the Richard and Family (Next Wave).

Her film and television credits include The Greenhouse (Netflix), Amazing Grace
(Nine), Mr Inbetween (Fox Showcase), Love Child (Nine), The Secret Daughter
(Seven), and Mikki Vs The World (ABC).

Harriet is a Sydney Theatre Award, Green Room Award, and Performing Arts WA
Award nominee, a graduate of WAAPA, and a proud member of MEAA.

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.

Based in: Kalkatungu Country, Australia

Brandon McClelland

Brandon graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2012. Brandon’s theatre credits include: Wayside Bride, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, and Packer & Sons, with Belvoir; The Deep Blue Sea, A Cheery Soul, Saint Joan, Three Sisters, The Present (Broadway Season), A Midsummers Night’s Dream, The Golden Age, The Present, Suddenly Last Summer, and M.Rock, with Sydney Theatre Company; Girl in the Machine, and Flight Paths, with National Theatre of Parramatta; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with Ensemble; Little Borders, with Old 505; Fracture, with New Ghosts Theatre Company; and A Town Named Warboy, with ATYP.

Brandon’s film credits include, Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, Roger Pulvers’ Star Sand, James Vanderbilt’s Truth, and Darby Deck’s short films Waking Moon and Walk Right In. His television credits include Significant Others, The Moth Effect, Doctor Doctor, The Other Guy, Black Comedy, Operation: Buffalo, Here Come the Habibs!, Love Child, Anzac Girls,and Devil’s Playground. Brandon can most recently be seen in Fremantle Media’s Totally Completely Fine as ‘Hendrix’. He is also a founding member and performer with comedy troupe ‘The United States of Kensington’. Brandon was twice-nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Mainstage Production from the Sydney Theatre Awards for Packer & Sons and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He also received a 2015 Logie Award nomination for Most Outstanding Newcomer, was shortlisted for the 2015 Heath Ledger scholarship, and won The Equity Award for an Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, both for Anzac Girls.

Ariadne Sgouros

Ariadne Sgouros graduated from NIDA in 2017 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting.

Most recently Ariadne has been on stage in Belvoir’s production of Scenes from the Climate Era,
Never Closer (Belvoir 25a) and in Shitty (Belvoir 25a).

During her time at NIDA, Ariadne performed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Eurydike and Orpheus,
and The Show That Smells. Since leaving NIDA, Ariadne has been involved in a series of
KXTeethCutting readings at the Kings Cross Theatre, as well as The Divorce Party and Love, Me (The
Old 505), Before the Meeting and The Shifting Heart (White Box Theatre) and What The Butler Saw
and This Bitter Earth (New Theatre).

On screen, Ariadne has been involved in a number of AFTRS short films, including The Retreat,
Reunion, and Gorgon, in which she speaks Greek. Ariadne also recently appeared on Home and Away
and in Strife on Binge.

Charles Wu

Charles Wu is one of Australia’s most exciting actors of stage and screen. Charles graduated from NIDA in 2014 and is well known for his work on popular series Doctor Doctor. Charles’ other television credits include Summer Love, The Letdown, Harrow, Here Come the Habibs, and Secret City. He was also seen in feature film Australia Day, and web series Liberty Street.

Charles’s theatre credits include The Cherry Orchard alongside Pamela Rabe, An Enemy of the People, Jasper Jones, Samson, The Overcoat: A Musical (Belvoir), The Lifespan of a Fact, Mosquitoes, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Three Sisters, Chimerica (Sydney Theatre Company), The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Darlinghurst Theatre), Golden Blood (Griffin Theatre), and Torch the Place for which he won a Green Room award for Best Actor(Melbourne Theatre Company). Charles was most recently seen on stage in Bernhardt/Hamlet as ‘Edmond Rostand’ for the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Nick Schlieper

Nick Schlieper has designed for all of the major performing arts companies in Australia, and works regularly in Europe and the USA. He is one of Australia’s most highly awarded designers having received seven Sydney Critics Awards (two for set design and 5 for lighting design), six Melbourne Green Room Awards, the inaugural 2013 Australian Production Designers Guild Best Lighting Design Award, as well as 5 Helpmann Awards for best lighting and a 2016 Nomination for Best Lighting and Best Set (with Simon Phillips) for North by Northwest.

Recent productions for Belvoir include Opening Night, Packer & Sons, Ghosts, Twelfth Night and set and lightingfor Once In Royal David’s City.

His many productions for Sydney Theatre Co include The Tempest, Strange Case of Jekyll & Hyde, Playing Beatie Bow (which recently re-opened the Wharf), Dorian Gray, Wonnangatta,The  Harp In The South, Chimerica, Macbeth,  St Joan, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, The War of the Roses, The Season At Sarsaparilla, The Maids and Gross und Klein, as well as set and lightingfor Endgame, Face To Face and Baal. For Melbourne Theatre Co, his work includes As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Richard III, Hamlet, The Tempest and The Visit, as well as set and lighting for North By Northwest (with Simon Phillips), Photograph 51 and Death and The Maiden.

His international work includesproductions of Lear and Medeé for the Salzburg Festival, Billy Budd and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Hamburg State Opera; The Devils of Loudun at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich; The Hostage for the Royal Shakespeare Company; The Government Inspector for Theatr Clwyd; Waiting for Godot at The Barbican, London;   Armut, Reichtum, and The Ginger Man for Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg; Kasimir und Karoline and Lea’s Hochzeit in Vienna; U.F.A. Revue in Berlin and the Kennedy Centre Washington; Michael Kramer and Ein Florentinerhut in Berlin; Michael Bogdanov’s productions of Macbeth and Peer Gynt for the State Theatre of Bavaria; Uncle Vanya and Private Confessions (both directed by Liv Ullman for The National Theatre of Norway)  Aristokraten in Stuttgart; Away and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at the Summerfare Festival in New York and Hedda Gabler, Streetcar Named Desire, Uncle Vanya and The Maids, allwith Cate Blanchett, also in New York. His lighting designs for The Present and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert have been seen on Broadway and Gross und Klein also travelled to Paris, London and Vienna.

He has lit many productions for Opera Australia and was lighting and associate set designer for the first Australian production of The Ring Cycle in Adelaide.

Nick’swork in Music Theatre includes Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Musical in Australia, on Broadway, the West End, Toronto, Sao Paolo and throughout Europe; Love Never Dies in Hamburg, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne and a US national tour for The Really Useful Company.

His designs for Bangarra Dance Theatre includes their acclaimed productions of Bennelong, Patyegarang and Bush.

Ella Butler

Ella is a Sydney-based Production and Costume Designer for theatre, film and live performance. Informed by her beginnings in theatre, Ella’s work has evolved through contrived spaces, searching for the extraordinary found in the everyday.

Ella’s work as Costume Designer at Belvoir includes Tell Me I’m Here, The Weekend and Scenes From the Climate Era. Her costumes examine character with an urban melancholy. Currently, her work can be seen in the national tour of RENT; The Musical, directed by Shaun Rennie coming to Opera Australia in 2025. Productions where Ella has worked as both Set and Costume Designer include Dubbo Championship Wrestling (The Hayes), LOVE (Darlinghurst Theatre Company), First Love Is The Revolution and Wherever She Wanders (Griffin Theatre Company).

In film, Ella worked as the Costume and Production Designer for CATSinAM, The Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Nurses and Midwives, for In Our Own Right; recounting Black Australian Nurses’ and Midwives Stories. In commercial as Production Designer, her clients include Google, Woolworths, Officeworks and James Squire. Ella is a graduate from the National Institute of Dramatic Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Design for Performance).

David Bergman

David is a video, music and sound designer for theatre, dance, opera, installation, and film.

Theatre credits include: composer and sound designer for Scenes from the Climate Era, sound designer for Into the Woods, video designer for Blue, co-sound designer for Packer and Sons (Belvoir); video designer for Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Picture of Dorian Gray, sound designer for Playing Beatie Bow, video and sound designer for A Cheery Soul and The Wharf Revue from 2009-2018 and video designer for Muriel’s Wedding: The Musical, The Hanging, The Effect, and The Long Way Home (Sydney Theatre Company); video and sound designer for The Gospel According to Paul (STCSA/Soft Tread); sound designer for The Lovers (Bell Shakespeare); video designer for Sandsong, Knowledge Ground and Spirited (Bangarra Dance Theatre); video designer for Breaking Glass (Sydney Chamber Opera); composer and sound designer for Superheroes, composer, video and sound designer for First Love is the Revolution and sound designer for Green Park (Griffin Theatre Company); sound designer for RENT (Sydney Opera House), sound designer for Dubbo Championship Wrestling, The Rise and Disguise Of Elizabeth R., Catch Me If You Can, and sound and video designer for Merrily We Roll Along (Hayes Theatre Co); video designer for Possum Magic and The Peasant Prince, and sound designer for Josephine Wants to Dance (Monkey Baa Theatre Company); composition, sound and video designer for Museum of Modern Love and Made To Measure (Seymour Centre); and sound designer for Spring Awakening (ATYP). 

David is a National Institute of Dramatic Art graduate and teaches at NIDA.  

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). 

Clement Rukundo

Clement Rukundo is an African Australian actor and theatre Director who recently moved from South Australia to Sydney. He is the Founder and Producer of Unheard Collective. Scenes from the Climate Era is his Belvoir debut. Other theatre credits as a Director include Journey (Soul Lounge/ActNow Theatre); Unheard (Adelaide Festival Centre). As Assistant Director Chalkface (STC); Hibernation (State Theatre Company SA). As Contributing Poet New World Coming (Gram Collectives); How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, Could be Perfect, A Doll’s House, A Bright New Boise (ACA Adelaide).

Vaishnavi Suryaprakash

Vaishnavi Suryaprakash is an actor, dancer and emerging writer. She completed her training at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, in 2017 and also holds an Arts/Law degree from Sydney University. Her theatre credits include Counting and Cracking, Life of Galileo and Sami in Paradise for Belvoir; Grand Horizons, White Pearl and Julius Caesar (as understudy) for the Sydney Theatre Company; What the Ocean Said at the Sydney Opera House; Moby Dick for Sport for Jove; and Pramkicker for Vox Theatre. Her television credits include Wakefield for ABC, Pieces of Her for Netflix and The Secrets She Keeps for Lingo Pictures. She also appeared in the short films Pass the Parcel and Stories of Kannagi, which won the Blake Prize. Vaishnavi won the Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Play for her performance in Counting and Cracking. She is currently a literary associate at Belvoir, and was selected for this year’s AFTRS (Australian Film Television and Radio School) Writing Talent Camp.

Rikiah Lizarraga

Rikiah Lizarraga’s works centralize empathy in unconventional methods to be at the core of her audience experience. She is a proud queer, POC and disabled artist who actively works to see her communities represented in roles both on and off stages across Australia’s theatre scene.

As a multifaceted creative, she has acted, written and directed works for both stage and screen throughout her career. She graduated with her Bachelor of Performance-Acting Intensive at The University of Wollongong in 2018, where her debut work as a director and playwright As Above So Below was staged and selected to tour to Yogyakarta in Indonesia as part of The Asian Pacific Bureau of Theatre Schools Festival in 2018.

She went on to be an inaugural member of Merrigong’s playwright project mentored by Mark Rodgers in 2019. In 2020 she undertook training by Lauchlan Philpott in writing and Jess Arthur in direction.

In 2021 she began her Master of Fine Arts in Directing at NIDA, where she directed Beckah Amani’s music video for Smoke and Mirrors which premiered on ABC’S Rage. In 2022 she directed large scale puppetry in Hydrarchos (A new play written by Grace Davidson Lynch) for NIDA’s festival of Emerging Artists as well as for The Sydney Fringe Festival, with it being nominated for best of theatre and a Broadway world award. Rikiah assistant directed Benched, written and performed by Jamila Main and directed by Amy Sole for Darlinghurst theatre company’s 2022 season. She continues to develop new works in 2023 for seasons at Sth sth king street.

Luke McGettigan

Luke is Belvoir’s Resident Stage Manager. For Belvoir, he has stage managed Holding the Man, Master and Margarita, The Weekend, Scenes from the Climate Era, Blessed Union, The Jungle and the Sea, Tell Me I’m Here, Opening Night, The Boomkak Panto, Stop Girl, My Brilliant Career, A Room of One’s Own, Packer & Sons, Things I Know To Be True, Counting and Cracking, The Dance of Death, A Taste of Honey, Sami in Paradise, Barbara and the Camp Dogs, Ghosts, The Rover, Mark Colvin’s Kidney, Faith Healer, Twelfth Night or What You Will, The Great Fire, Mortido, Seventeen, Elektra/Orestes, Radiance, The Glass Menagerie, Brothers Wreck, Once in Royal David’s City, Miss Julie, Forget Me Not, Peter Pan (including New York tour), Private Lives, Death of a Salesman, Babyteeth, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Neighbourhood Watch, The Wild Duck (including UK and Europe tours), Namatjira (Belvoir/Big hART), Page 8, The End, That Face, The Promise, Scorched, Antigone, Keating!, The Little Cherry Orchard and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. His other credits include The Pig Iron People, The Give and Take, Bed, La Dispute (Sydney Theatre Company); Like a Fishbone (STC / Griffin); The Government Inspector, The Tempest, The Servant of Two Masters, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew (Bell Shakespeare); Paradise City, Through the Wire (Performing Lines); and Alive at Williamstown Pier (Griffin).

Christopher Starnawski

Christopher Starnawski graduated Sydney University, having studied a B.Music & B.Arts, with a
passion for Stage Management & Photography. Recent notable shows include Amadeus (Red Line
Productions & Sydney Opera House); The Lovers (Bell Shakespeare); Losing It (Megan Bennetts); La
Traviata (Opera Australia); Macbeth (Sport For Jove); Jekyll & Hyde (Hayes Theatre); The 7 Deadly
Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel, Hand To God & Happy Days (Red Line Productions); Chef (2022 &
2023), Twelfth Night & The Cherry Orchard (Virginia Plain Productions); Chop Chef (Blush Opera).
Chris also venue manages KXT on Broadway. Previous years productions of note include Symphonie
Fantastique & Rime Of The Ancient Mariner (Little Eggs Collective); Herringbone, The Dismissal &
NINE (Squabbalogic); Angels In America (Apocalypse Theatre Company); Sensitive Guys (Cross
Pollinate Productions); Cyprus Avenue (Empress Theatre); The Van De Maar Papers (Ratcatch); Switch
Witchetty’s Almanac Of Everything (Pinwheel Productions, toured to Edinburgh Fringe); An
Intervention (Last One Standing Theatre Company); KXTeethcutting 2.0 Readings (Legit Theatre Co.);
The Underpants (Sugary Rum Productions in Nov) and 2019-2020 Summer Season (Sport For Jove);
YEN (New Ghosts, 2018); August Osage County (New Theatre, 2018); Brothers Karamazov &
Constellations (Arrive. Devise. Repeat, 2017); Sunday In the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along,
A Little Cabaret, The Wild Party & NINE (Little Triangle, 2017-2019); Sex Object & HIJACKED RABBIT
(JackRabbit Theatre, 2017). Alongside theatre, Christopher works in film, in the camera and art
department, with notable features such as Head Above Water; Kairos; Ritual; Staying The Night; I’m
Here Too; 17 Minutes; Life After Man; Pseudomonas and Vector. Short films include Disarmed, Deep
Pockets Empty Hearts, An Eight Letter Word Starting With A, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both
Of Us, and most recently music videos for the bands In Hearts Wake, Amalia and Rayn.