BlackWrights

Maurial Spearim is a Indigenous Australian Gamilaraay, and Muruwari woman who draws strength from her connection to Country and People. An actor, singer and writer interested in creating work that brings First Nations voices and stories front and centre that can be embraced and celebrated on main stages, in film & television and music arenas. Her work is bold, thought-provoking and unapologetic.

Phoebe Grainer is a Kuku Djungan, Muluridji, Wakaman, Tagalaka, Kunjen, Warrgamay and Yindinji woman from Far North Queensland. Phoebe is a graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting).

As an actor, Phoebe’s performance credentials include: Black Cockatoo (Ensemble Theatre), Tiddas (La Boite Theatre), Saltbush (Insite Arts), Two Hearts (Kings Cross Theatre), Serpent’s Teeth (Kings Cross Theatre), Doing (Kings Cross Theatre) and Rainbow’s End (Darlinghurst Theatre).

This year, Phoebe is in the lead cast for SBS’ new TV Series While the Men are Away. Phoebe is a Creative Producer at Sweatshop Literacy Movement. Her writing credits include as co-editor and sub-editor for Racism: Stories on Fear, Hate & Bigotry and Blacklight: Ten Years of First Nations Storytelling. Her writing has also appeared in The Lifted Brow, SBS Voices, Red Room Poetry and Sweatshop Women: Volume One and Volume Two and Povo: Stories on Class.

As a playwright, Phoebe was in the Darlinghurst Theatre’s 2020 and 2022 Next In Line program and Griffin Theatre Studio in 2021. She has also worked as a playwright in ILBIJERRI Theatre Company’s BlackWrights program in 2021 and is a playwright in their current 2023 BlackWrights program. Phoebe is a 2022 finalist for the Queensland Theatre’s Queensland Premier’s Drama Award with her play, Sugar Cane.

This year, Phoebe won the Australia Council for the Arts prestigious Dreaming Award.

Isobel Morphy-Walsh, a proud Nirim Baluk woman from the Taun Wurrung (Taungurung)
people. Isobel is a mutli-disciplinary artists spanning both visual art and performance art, a
weaver, a curator, a producer, an activist and an educator. Isobel has spent her life working
with her community and our cultures with a particular emphasis on history, culture, country
and its importance today.

Isobel comes from storytellers and weavers and continues both of those practises herself
through her own contemporary and creation story-telling, singing and dramatic
performance. Indeed Isobel Launched her first production combining her whole family skills
in song, dance and story, ‘Gunga-na Dhum Nganinju (The stories we hold tightly) in 2023 as
part of Yiramboi Festival.

Isobel’s visual arts practise is wide ranging and includes many mediums; weaving, lino
printing, painting, fabric creation, woodwork, cultural objects and adornments and more
recently working with metals. Her artwork can be found in state collections, over walls she
passes, on the bodies of people she knows and in Heathcote as public Art. Many a yarn,
spoken word and song can be heard in her presence. Both can be found on the internet.

The BlackWrights program creates a culturally safe and nurturing space that is designed to empower First Nations artists to share our stories through theatre. The evolution of the BlackWrights program continues based on needs identified through each previous iteration of the program.

To date, BlackWrights has evolved through writer’s residencies; commissions; connecting and evolving programs including the Creators Program (supporting streams such as Writers Program and Dramaturg Program) and the Master Labs series (hands-on theatre workshops), all exclusively codesigned with and for First Nations artists and creatives.

Publicly presented outcomes of the program include a presentation at Melbourne Festival in 2019 of select excerpts from three fresh new scripts by cutting edge First Nations playwrights: Monica Jasmine Karo, Nazaree Dickerson and Blayne Welsh. These daring works were developed through the Creators Program, presented by Melbourne International Arts Festival in association with ILBIJERRI and Melbourne Theatre Company.

Success of the writers residency program can be seen in a number of works including the dance-theatre script Blood on the Dancefloor by Jacob Boehme, which was seeded in an earlier iteration of the BlackWrights program and went on to tour internationally, Katie Beckett’s Which Way Home which toured nationally in 2018, and John Harvey’s Heart is a Wasteland which had a season at Darwin Festival in 2021 and had a season in Melbourne in 2022.

The BlackWrights Program is a meditation on the future direction of theatre and what it means for First Nations People. It is a dynamic program aimed at self-determination, innovating the development and performance development of our stories.

The program utilises theory, practice and play while aiming to innovate, collaborate and reimagine live performance. BlackWrights honours the demands of narrative, theory, structure, and the power of language in performance making, while provoking form and strengthening networks and entrepreneurship.

Amy Sole is a proud Wiradjuri/Worimi person. Amy is a director, playwright, actor, dramaturg,  producer and advocate. They are a current graduate of the MFA (Directing) at NIDA, and hold a  Master of Theatre (Playwriting) from VCA, and an Advanced Diploma in Acting at AFTT. 

Recent works for theatre include Burning (writer/director, NIDA, 2022), Nan's Place (writer,  ILBIJERRI Theatre Company as part of Blackwrights, 2020-21), Doing (writer/director, Kings Cross Theatre, 2019). 

Amy has worked as assistant director on productions of God's Country (NIDA, 2022),  Metamorphoses (NIDA, 2021), RENT (Sydney Opera House, 2021). Amy regularly directs  developments of new works at Darlinghurst Theatre Company, including Dylan Van Den Berg's  Way Back When in 2020. Amy has worked in various roles at Queensland Theatre Company, Moogahlin Performing Arts, Hayes Theatre Co, and Playwriting Australia including production,  dramaturgy, and consulting. They are currently Creative Director of Big Blak Bang, a festival of First Nations storytelling and  Artist-in-Residence at Darlinghurst Theatre Company, Co-Founder of Puddle or Pond Theatre Company, and a sitting Co-Chair of the Equity Diversity Committee.

Dalara Williams

Dalara Williams is a Gumbaynggirr and Wiradjuri woman, and an actor and creative based in Sydney
on Gadigal country.
Dalara graduated from the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2017. The
following year Dalara made her feature film debut in Wayne Blair’s Top End Wedding, which
premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and her follow up feature, Victoria Wharfe
McIntyre’s The Flood.  
 
Her television credits include Get Krack!n and the third and fourth series of Black Comedy for the
ABC and the up and coming television drama Lost Flowers of Alice Heart starring Leah Purcell and
Sigourney Weaver

Her stage credits include Exit The King with Redline Productions, Black Ties with ILBIJERRI Theatre
Company which toured both Australia and New Zealand, Rainbows End with Darlinghurst Theatre,
Winyanboga Yurringa for Belvior St Theatre and Blackie Blackie Brown for the Sydney Theatre
Company and the Malthouse Theatre directed by Declan Greene. Also, whilst at NIDA, Dalara’s stage
credits included Realism, Love and Money directed by Judy Davis, The Season at Sasparilla and
Twelfth Night. 
Dalara’s first written play, The Lookout was picked up by Moogahlin Theatre Company as a part of
their bi-annual Writing Festival, Yellamundi Festival. Dalara has always had strong ties to her culture
and now through writing is on the journey to bring those two worlds together, showcasing the
importance of our voices, language, culture and stories to the stage and screen.

Melodie Reynolds

Melodie Reynolds is a Wongutha Nadju woman from Western Australia. She made her
acting debut at the age of 16 in No Sugar at Belvoir Stand and went on to graduate from the
Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in 1996.

Melodie has performed in several ABC radio plays and recorded the audiobook of My Place
by Sally Morgan. Some of her theatre credits include Coranderrk – We Will Show the Country
(ILBIJERRI Theatre Company/Sydney Opera House), The Dirty Mile, Chopped Liver (ILBIJERRI
Theatre Company), Black Sheep, Glorious Baastards (ILBIJERRI Theatre Company/Melbourne
International Comedy Festival), Headhunter (ILBIJERRI Theatre Company/Polyglot), Wild Cat
Falling, Honey Spot, King For This Place, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Dreaming
Festival/STC), Actors at Work (Bell Shakespeare), Holy Day (Playbox), Stolen, Shrunken Iris,
Master Builder, Quilting the Armour, Yandy (Black Swan State Theatre Company), Yibiyung
(Company B), The Man from Mukinupin (Melbourne Theatre Company), and Jackie by
Elfriede Jelinek (Red Stitch Theatre).

Melodie’s television credits include Natural Justice, Broken Shore, Hard Rock Medical, and
Redfern Now (series2). In 2013 Melodie made her debut in an associate directing role in The
Shadow King at Malthouse Theatre. Melodie has recently appeared in the successful 2017,
2018, and 2019 seasons of Black is the New White for Sydney Theatre Company.
In 2018, Melodie’s first play Skylab made its world premiere in Perth, as a co-production
with Black Swan Theatre and Yirra Yarkin Theatre.

Isobel Morphy-Walsh

Isobel Morphy-Walsh, a proud Nirim Baluk woman from the Taun Wurrung (Taungurung)
people. Isobel is a mutli-disciplinary artists spanning both visual art and performance art, a
weaver, a curator, a producer, an activist and an educator. Isobel has spent her life working
with her community and our cultures with a particular emphasis on history, culture, country
and its importance today.

Isobel comes from storytellers and weavers and continues both of those practises herself
through her own contemporary and creation story-telling, singing and dramatic
performance. Indeed Isobel Launched her first production combining her whole family skills
in song, dance and story, ‘Gunga-na Dhum Nganinju (The stories we hold tightly) in 2023 as
part of Yiramboi Festival.

Isobel’s visual arts practise is wide ranging and includes many mediums; weaving, lino
printing, painting, fabric creation, woodwork, cultural objects and adornments and more
recently working with metals. Her artwork can be found in state collections, over walls she
passes, on the bodies of people she knows and in Heathcote as public Art. Many a yarn,
spoken word and song can be heard in her presence. Both can be found on the internet.

Jackie Sheppard

Jackie Sheppard is of the Tagalaka Clan Group, of far north Queensland and lives and works on Kulin Land. They are a mixed medium performer, storyteller, dancer and workshop facilitator, and their creations are inspired by the multilayered narratives of Sovereign Peoples.

Jackie attempts to identify and interrogate Ancestral, inter-generational and meta-physical narratives that are relative to Blak lived experiences. Focusing on somatic, spiritual and sub-conscious “bodies”, Jackie seeks to shed light in dark places, exploring taboo and complex topics.

They have studied dance at NAISDA Dance College, Acting at WAAPA’s Aboriginal Theatre Course, and are presently studying Somatic Movement Therapy (SMT) where they are working towards a reclamation process of Indigenous Embodied practices. Jackie has extensive experience in community engagement and has worked in a diverse range of spaces nationally. Their work encompasses using bodywork & storytelling to cultivate inner awareness and truth-telling in Bla(c)k, People of Colour and LGBTQI+ communities (Creatives of Colour; Serpent Spirals, Koorie Pride Victoria & Switchboard VIC).

Jackie has been a guest lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts for the Master of Dance student Cohort. Some notable projects Jackie has co-devised are: The Honouring (a solo show created & performed by Jackie Sheppard with creative guidance and direction by Rachael Maza, Tim Denton, Jasmin Sheppard, Rinske Ginsberg & Jacob Boehme), Chasing Smoke (Casus Circus), Wild Australia – Men in Chains by Jackie Sheppard, and Crackpipe Dreaming at Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2019.

Jackie has also recently been appointed by Koorie Pride Victoria as First Nations Creative Co-Ordinator for a new festival, ‘FesTevares’, and is officially embarking on their new and ongoing research project, ‘Sentience’, through the Art X Science Residency through Arts House and the Science Gallery Melbourne.