Step-in Saray 2023
Date: Saturday, 11th November 2023
Venue: PHIVE, Parramatta
Time: 2-5 pm AEST
Objective: To create employment and creative opportunities for Australian creatives who identify themselves as South Asians.
Step-in-Saray’ is a laboratory where Theatre creatives share stories, skills and ideas. Employing ground-breaking methodology through 3 interlinked subprojects (Sarays), industry professionals facilitate incubation of local talents to shape a new generation of theatre practitioners over a period of 9 months.
Guide 1 - Bina Bhattacharya
Bina Bhattacharya is an award-winning filmmaker from Campbelltown in Sydney’s south-west. She is a Writer for the feature film “Here Out West” about the intersecting lives of Western Sydney’s migrant communities which opened the 2021 Sydney Film Festival. “Here Out West” received development and production funding from Screen Australia, the ABC and Create NSW, with Bina attached as a writer from the project’s inception.
Bina also works as Creative Producer – Youth and Emerging at PYT Fairfield, Western Sydney’s leading professional theatre company with a focus on youth. PYT Fairfield have generously supported the development of “From All Sides”.
Guide 2 - Kenneth Moraleda
Kenneth Moraleda is an actor/director/writer/producer of Filipino descent. He is a Resident Director at the Sydney Theatre Company.
He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and has lived in Seattle, various cities in the Philippines, Los Angeles and Sydney, Australia. He started training at Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) before being accepted into the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) graduating with a Bachelor of Acting in 1995.
He is a Company Member for NIDA, Advisory Panelist for Hayes Theatre Co, Committee Member for Actors Benevolent Fund of New South Wales, member of the Diversity and Pride Committees of MEAA , and a panelist for the Sydney Theatre Awards. He is a proud member of MEAA since 1995.
Mentor 1 - Suzanne Pereira
Suzanne is the Executive Director at the Darlinghurst Theatre Company. She also sits on Theatre Network NSW Board. With a background in the Performing Arts, Marketing and Investment, Suzanne combines a unique set of creative and critical thinking skills to bring strategic solutions to the arts. She is passionate about creative, collaborative, visionary thinking and revolutionary action that is driven by kindness, compassion and respect.
As a Cultural & Creative Leader of South Asian heritage, Suzanne passionately advocates for Access, Equity and Inclusion as a guiding principle at all levels of government, industry, and society.
Mentor 2 Margie Breen
Margie Breen is a theatre maker and advocate who has worked across the sector as a director, producer, dramaturge, Community Cultural Development artist, performer, teacher, and project manager in Australia and Internationally. She has performed, facilitated and toured extensively with physical and visual companies, Erth Visual and Physical Inc. and Stalker Theatre. She was first the Creative Producer for Local Stages, a national pilot project, at BMEC, in Bathurst NSW. She has been project manager and facilitator for multidisciplinary and international research projects with Performance Space and Critical Path. She was the first director of Milk Crate Theatre and has since been an associate artist, designing and leading a women’s program.
From 2017-2020 she was the Artistic Associate at PYT Fairfield, where she curated, lead and managed development programs. She has directed performances in the Central desert, for the Perth Festival in the Pilbara, in regional NSW and Queensland, and across greater Sydney. She has been a teaching artist and director for NIDA, The Australian Theatre for Young People, The Opera House, The Sydney Theatre Company and Belvoir. Margie is an Associate Artist for award winning interdisciplinary performance company, Box of Birds.
Margie is Currently the Director of Theatre Network NSW. She is passionate about community engagement and developing connections through theatre and performance.
Mentor 3 - Rakini Devi
Rakini Devi integrates her knowledge of Indian Classical Dance (Bharata Natyam and Odissi), her multidisciplinary practice including painting, writing, live art and dance. Devi’s work can be described as intercultural hybrid performance art, integrating her knowledge of Indian Classical Dance and her visual arts practice. Devi’s performance personas are visual enactments and evocations of the body as living, ritual artifact. The subject of her practice as feminist activism and her 2018 doctorate Urban Kali centres on the “erasure” of women from global misogynist atrocities. Devi’s use of hybrid religious iconography draws from Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist influences.
As a Cultural & Creative Leader of South Asian heritage, Suzanne passionately advocates for Access, Equity and Inclusion as a guiding principal at all levels of government, industry, and society.
Her iconisation of the female body as symbol is illustrated in her performance installations including The Female Pope, The Widow, Urban Kali, Kali Madonna and Inhabiting Erasures, with performances in Australia, US, UK, India, Indonesia, Japan, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Spain and Mexico. She continues her research-based practice in dance, live art, visual art and academic writing.
Rakini lives in Sydney, mentors new and emerging artists and continues her practice as an independent artist.Margie is Currently the Director of Theatre Network NSW. She is passionate about community engagement and developing connections through theatre and performance.
