MERRIGONGX is our annual artists’ program. It focuses on supporting artists to take creative risks.
MERRIGONGX places artists and their practice at the centre of our community. From in-house creative developments to full-blown public presentations of new work, and everything in between, MERRIGONGX provides independent artists with financial, technical, marketing and artistic resources.
MERRIGONGX Productions 2 - 9
• Yandha Djanbay (Go Slowly)
• Dog People
• Squatch Watch: LIVE
• Public Access
Other Supported Artists ..................... 10 - 15
• Lachlan Grogan
• Tegan Ware
• Bonnie Curtis
• Susie Fagan
• Dean Fruit Theatre Co
• Lily Hensby & Lotte Beckett
• Kingsley Reeve
• Jordon Mahar
• Siobhán Doran-Chaston
• Cheryle Moore, Carla Yamine & Iain Whittaker
• Stupid Theatre
• Bradley Ward
• Myfanwy Wild
• Susan Kennedy
Reserve Your Spot For Free We want to make it easier to experience new works, so for events in this brochure, there is no set ticket price. Instead, you simply reserve a spot, show up, then Pay What You Feel the performance is worth afterwards. Find out more on page 20.
About Kirli Saunders
Kirli Saunders (OAM) is a proud Gunai Woman who rarely stays in her lane. She's an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist, writer, singer-songwriter and consultant. Kirli creates to connect, to make change. Kirli’s eight celebrated books, among others, include Eclipse (Allen & Unwin, 2025), Returning (Magabala, 2023) and Bindi (Magabala, 2020). She was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to the arts (2022).
“Yandha Djanbay (Go Slowly) combines elements of my creative practice that I haven’t fully explored in my poetry or music. My relationship with Leland Kean as Dramaturg and Director of the work has helped me step into the theatre world in a way that feels both profound and personal. Theatre offers me a way to be vulnerable in front of an audience, providing a unique environment where I can communicate experiences that are difficult to convey in other mediums. This work is still evolving, and for me, it’s an ongoing process of refining my craft on stage. I’m grateful for the chance to unite different forms of expression and performance, weaving them into a cohesive narrative that reflects the power of land, identity, and belonging. At its heart, this piece explores the practice of returning to Country during times of complexity, drawing on the land, sea, and sky as sources of healing.
Ultimately, the performance invites the audience into a meditative space, where they can engage with the transformative potential of connection—to self, to others, and to the environment. I’m eager to share this experience and offer insight into life as a queer Blak woman, using theatre as a platform for both personal and collective growth.”
Yandha Djanbay (Go Slowly) is the first work to be presented as part of our new First Nations stream of development and presentation as part of the MERRIGONG This new stream will be launched in its entirety mid 2025.
Yandha Djanbay (Go Slowly)
By Kirli Saunders
Yandha Djanbay presents a powerful meditation on resilience, connection, and healing. Fusing language with land, and intimate storytelling with audiovisual projection, this work honours proud Gunai woman and multi-disciplinary artist, Kirli Saunders' relationship with Country as both balm and blessing in times of hardship. Kirli invites the audience into a reflective space where life’s moments are met with the healing power of land, sea and sky.
This performance is a celebration of her inherited strength, her identity as a Blak queer woman, and the wisdom found in slowing down, offering an immersive experience of renewal and connection.
20 – 22 Feb, 7.30pm
Bruce Gordon Theatre
Approx. 1 hr (no interval) Recommended for ages 14+
Reserve your spot at merrigong.com.au/merrigongx
About
Lucy Heffernan
Lucy is an award-winning actor, writer, musician and theatre maker. Lucy’s critically acclaimed one woman show Party Girl (MERRIGONGX 2019, Crack Theatre Festival, Adelaide Fringe, KXT) won the Week 4 award for Best Theatre/Physical Theatre at the 2023 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Lucy made her international debut performing Party Girl at Summerhall as part of the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she was featured on the BBC News and received outstanding reviews.
As a writer, Lucy incorporates original music into all her work. She has created two new musicals Teen Angst and Tender with young people at Shopfront Arts Co-Op, and adapted two Shakespearean texts for the University of Wollongong, The Fool and Yeah Nah. Lucy is the creator of Stay at Home with Sprinkles, a musical web series made during the 2021 lockdown. Lucy also works as a workshop facilitator, delivering drama, music and writing workshops to people of all ages across NSW. She completed her Bachelor of Creative Arts Honours (First Class) in 2024
“MERRIGONGX is a natural home for my work. After presenting my debut season of Party Girl in 2019, MERRIGONGX has generously supported the development of Dog People in both 2023 and 2024.
Dog People is a work that speaks to Illawarra dog people. From Puckey’s Estate to Bellambi beach, to the streets of Balgownie and Mount Ousley, my family and I have walked our beloved dogs around the landscape of Wollongong for many years. Dog People is tied to the Illawarra, and Illawarra audiences will recognise themselves in the stories. It is an opportunity for me to reconnect with my childhood home and invite Illawarra people share in this journey her contribution to the arts (2022).”
Dog People
By Lucy Heffernan
Dog People is a new play about dogs and death...with songs. Tuning into the music of dogs, writer and performer Lucy Heffernan unleashes her inner animal, creating an exciting new work that explores themes of love, loyalty and loss. Using the language of alt rock, pop and love ballads, Dog People explores what it is to be human… perhaps people aren’t that different from dogs after all?
19 – 21 Jun, 7.30pm
Bruce Gordon Theatre
Approx. 1 hr 30 mins (no interval) Recommended for ages 14+
Reserve your spot at merrigong.com.au/merrigongx
About Vaguely Adjacent
Vaguely Adjacent is a new performance collective led by Nick Vagne, Sophie Florence Ward, Luke Standish and Frank Dwyer. Although its name is unambiguous, the work it creates is not. Built upon a devised process, lots of play and anything that’s lying around, Vaguely Adjacent reaches into the fringe box of discarded novelty and brings it right into focus. The result is a wild blend of genre and form that’s silly, serious, and outrageous. It may not be the work you expected, but one you will love every step of the way.
“This show was developed through us discovering ways to bring the audience not only to the table, but to put their hands in the pie. We've asked questions of whether those already hoodwinked can hoodwink another. We wish to replicate the aesthetics of conspiratorial indoctrination to the end of revealing their insidious misdirections and hypocrisies. Not only are we pushing the medium of theatre, we are pushing the medium used by actual conspiracy theorists to see how far it goes and where the edge is, if there is any at all.”
Squatch Watch: LIVE
By Vaguely Adjacent
Coming to you live is ‘Squatch Watch’ the most acclaimed and highest rated cryptozoology podcast in Australia. Join Luke, Frank, Sophie and Nick as their decade of recording and research culminates in the most exciting live show you will ever see.
Squatch Watch: LIVE brings you undeniable, irrefutable and jaw-dropping proof of Australia’s very own Bigfoot – The Yowie. Whether this is your first expedition into the unknown or you’re a seasoned Sasquatch veteran looking to take your search to the next level, we have something for everyone.
Become one of the special few transformed by the truth.
25 – 27 Sep, 7.30pm
Bruce Gordon Theatre
Approx. 1 hr (no interval)
Recommended for ages 15+
Reserve your spot at merrigong.com.au/merrigongx
About The Corinthian Food Store
Formed in 2012, The Corinthian Food Store is a collective dedicated to creating new work about the experience of living in Australia today. We are fascinated by the fluidity of Australian identity, and we are dedicated to telling stories that reflect the diversity of our country in all its forms.
TCFS productions are a unique audience experience, tapping into Australia’s rich history of clowning, community storytelling and original music. We tell sophisticated and heartfelt stories with an eye for specificity, connection and the sublime.
"We're all desperate to somehow find each other. Public Access is about connection, community and the shifting of the last public spaces to the online world. Libraries, like the theatre, wear many masks: a meeting place, a repository of cultural knowledge, a clean bathroom, a chance to snoop, an intellectual hothouse or somewhere to sit for an hour away from the burning sun. We’re opening up our local library and showing it off in all its glory. This work is a love letter to the safe haven they’ve always offered us, even when we forgot about them for a while. It’s going to be a lot of fun."
Public Access
By Amy Fairall and Desmond Edwards
Nic wants a seachange. She’s fled Sydney to take up a job at the local library, but the ‘quiet life’ is proving a little more complicated than she hoped. The staff are set in their ways, the customers defy classification and management are already asking her to make cuts.
Her only ally is Pauly, the elderly library hermit who knows every page in every book by heart. But he’s rapidly losing his ability to read... Can Nic find a way to help him and save the library from itself? Does the library even need saving?
From the award-winning minds at The Corinthian Food Store, Public Access is a new work set in an actual library about the role of public spaces in our increasingly privatised society. It’s about the places we go to be seen and heard, and who gets to decide what matters.
23 – 25 Oct, 7.30pm
Wollongong City Library
Approx. 1 hr 30 mins (no interval)
Recommended for ages 16+
Reserve your spot at merrigong.com.au/merrigongx
Other Supported Artists
A range of artists will be working in our venues throughout 2025.
Lachlan Grogan
Lachlan is a Wollongong based actor and dancer. Recent credits include ensemble in Romeo and Juliet (The Australian Ballet), dancing on The Masked Singer and extra work in Heart Break High and Pieces of Her His work, Service, is born from years of experience in the hospitality industry. Every night in restaurants around the Illawarra, milestones, birthday parties, first dates (and breakups) all happen. The aim is to create a bold and experimental piece of movement/mime/dance theatre that captures the essence of these moments in the full gamut of their joy, humour, grief, and community.
Tegan Ware
Tegan Ware is an aspiring filmmaker, theatre director and writer based in the Illawarra and Sydney regions of Australia. The stories that she captures are inspired by the heart and soul of people; their struggles and triumphs in life.
Cicada is a gothic, non-linear theatrical piece that chronicles the rise and fall of a young artist.
Bonnie Curtis
Bonnie is a multi-faceted artist driven by a curious imagination and a desire to discover. Subverting typical dance conventions, Curtis blends artforms to explore themes of women’s rights, disability, gender, sexism, body image, celebrity culture and social norms.
GIRLS GONE WILD is a dark satire, ensemble dance theatre work dissecting sources of women’s anger through a post #MeToo lens.
Susie
Fagan
Susie Fagan is a writer and performer from Ireland. Her work Snakes & Ladders deals with an upbringing in a strict, Catholic embedded culture in 1980s Ireland, infused with typical Irish dark humour.
Weaving personal stories through hilarious tales and stark reality, Snakes & Ladders tells a story of escaping to heal and finally find home.
Dead Fruit Theatre Co
Dead Fruit Theatre Co. is a recently formed collective of three Wollongong artists Mish Fry, Clementine de la Hunty and Domenic Hort. The company focuses on producing works that utilise elements of tech and movement to experiment with theatre form.
IRIS is a theatrical work that uses dance and visual media to explore themes of guilt, change, self-acceptance and young adulthood.
Lily Hensby & Lotte Beckett
Lily Hensby and Lotte Beckett are actors, writers, comedians and theatre-makers. They live on Dharawal and Gadigal Lands, and have performed their original shows at the Old Fitz, Motley Bauhaus, Melb. Int Comedy Festival, and too many Fringe Festivals. Drama? Comedy? They love it all! Hensby & Beckett love to make their audiences laugh as much as they cry - theatre with heart, humour and grit.
Their work in development, The Stars of Gold Rush Hill is a play for young people. Hungry for fame, four aspiring actors go off-script at a historical re-enactment theme park and experience the perils and hysterical consequences of making theatre.
Kingsley Reeve
Kingsley is an award-winning, professional sound storyteller with over 30 years of professional industry experience. He graduated from the Sound discipline at WAAPA in 1995 as a sound designer and then from the Theatre discipline in 1998 as an actor. He has been designing sound and music since his youth. He is a passionate educator, between 2014-18, he was the lead Sound Design lecturer at NIDA, and now independently lectures extensively in the higher education and VET sector.
Polyphony investigates the intersection between acoustic and digital storytelling with a strong focus on place, heritage, and what we find sacred.
Jordon Mahar
Originally from Dharawal Country (Wollongong), Jordon is a Bachelor of Fine Arts Music Theatre graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts. As an actor, Jordon can be seen as Jacob Azinovic in the Peacock's award-winning television series Apples Never Fall. Recent theatre credits include The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Little Triangle), Sunday in the Park With George (Watch This) and more. Jordon makes his directorial debut for the Wollongong Workshop Theatre Company in 2025.
To Hell in a Handbasket is an experimental piece of storytelling that challenges conventional narrative structures by employing a non-linear approach. The play is set in an ambiguous dystopian version of our reality—a world that mirrors our own but is tinged with a sense of unease and unpredictability.
Siobhán Doran-Chaston
A former journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Sunday Life and the Sunday Telegraph – and scholarship recipient at the Academy Drama School in London –Siobhán Doran-Chaston appeared on Ben Elton's BBC sitcom Blessed, and in numerous UK productions.
Since moving to the Illawarra, Siobhán has focused her efforts on raising her family, coaching young adults for drama auditions, and editing a monthly digital magazine in the allied health sector.
Siobhán was a participant of the 2023 SCWC and Merrigong Theatre Playwrights Program. Most recently, Siobhán was a proud recipient of MERRIGONGX’s 2024 development program, during which she completed the script of Two Weeks.
Two Weeks is an experimental play about the final two weeks in anyone's life, when (chances are) we don't realise the biggest countdown is furiously ticking away. Within this uncomfortable grey area lies the staggering truth, beauty, humour and irrelevance in all our lives.
Cheryle Moore, Carla Yamine & Iain Whittaker
Cheryle is a performer, creator, director and teacher and founding member of performance collective Frumpus. Carla Yamine trained in performance and multi-media at the College of Fine Arts, and has worked as a performer and creative producer for more than 25 years.
Iain Whittaker is a visual artist, curator and teacher. Cleveland is a research and installation performance centered around a dilapidated property in West Dapto known as Cleveland House, a historically significant site which is currently earmarked for integration within West Dapto's urbanisation program. The work seeks to shine a light on a moment in time from the 1860's when the trailblazing Scott Sisters visited Cleveland with their unique scientific and artistic lens.
Stupid
Theatre
Founded by Tori-Lee Joy Featon and brought together with Amy Crean and Charlotte Dickinson, Stupid Theatre is dedicated to exploring the human experience through themes of identity, empowerment, and transformation, with an emphasis on diverse and underrepresented voices.
Sext Me, I'm Bored explores the way in which women must often surrender parts of themselves in order to fulfil the societal ideals impressed upon us since birth. Disillusioned by how the notion of "sex selling" has commercialised our sense of femininity and sexuality, this work encourages women to reclaim their own sexual agency and to question the roles we are raised to believe will fulfill us.
Bradley Ward
Bradley Ward is a Wollongong based actor, writer, and improviser. He graduated from the University of Wollongong in 2013 with a Bachelor of Performance (Acting) and from NIDA in 2021 with a Master of Fine Arts (Dramatic Writing). He most recently performed as Francis Flute / Fairy in the Merrigong Theatre Company production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (2023).
Wallgrove Road is based on the central premise that there is a mythology present in the storytelling of contemporary Australian working-class communities and how stories told in pubs and at backyard parties have a kinship with the myriad oral folklore traditions across the globe.
Myfanwy Wild
Myfanwy Wild grew up in Wollongong heavily influenced by local theatre. She attended Wollongong High School of the Performing Arts majoring in Drama. After graduating she moved to Melbourne and found a greater love for production and direction. Myf has explored practices in 3D design, writing, sculpture, film and photography. Currently she has been focusing on a new path in her Psychology degree, her creative background often finds its home as a tool for assisting her clients to connect and process emotions.
THIRROULESTATE (working title) is a walking theatre piece that engages the audience in the role of ‘house hunter’ walking through staged properties and observing the various scenes within. The show deals primarily with themes of community, connection to place and loneliness.
Susan Kennedy
Susan's practice includes dance, physical theatre, theatre, circus, clowning and creative engagement with a focus on the development of new explorations of meaningmaking in the now. She is particularly interested in cultural justice and accessibility along with finding new ways of connecting and engaging with audiences whether that be one on one in a residential aged care setting, a festival event, or in audience empowerment in more traditional settings.
The Living Room centres on the positive transformation of a self-isolating elderly woman over a series of visits from an Elder Clown. This work will be funny, sad, and affirming while demystifying ageing and dementia.
Made From Scratch
Here, experimentation is key.
Made From Scratch is a multi-artform performance night offering artists space and support to test new ideas in front of a live audience, backed by the Merrigong tech team to showcase them on The Music Lounge stage.
These events will show case new works from local artists across performance, film, stand-up comedy, poetry, music, cabaret, circus and anything in between.
The opportunity is open to independent artist and collectives working across theatre, dance, video/digital art, interdisciplinary performance, stand-up, poetry, music, cabaret and circus.
The MERRIGONGX Artist Wellbeing Program supports artists’ mental, emotional, and professional growth through tailored one-on-one mentoring sessions and skills development workshops using evidence-based strategies. It focuses on two key areas: Artist Wellbeing, providing holistic support during creative processes, and Artist Development, enhancing skills, networks, and access to opportunities. Participants gain tools to build resilience, foster inclusive rehearsal spaces, and sustain their creative practice.
This innovative program supports local artists, facilitating a long-term shift in industry practices towards prioritising artist wellbeing alongside artistic excellence.
“The program was an empowering and positive experience and provided me with the tools and resources to make sure my rehearsal space was a safe and positive environment for everyone.”
Sign up for Made From Scratch
“MERRIGONGX led a generous program where we were able to work together to identify and implement ways to run a project that had the team's wellbeing as a priority. We felt supported and listened to at every step.”
“The MERRIGONGX Artist Wellbeing Program has benefitted my artistic process and career by making me feel capable and empowered to support actors and create a safe, positive rehearsal space.”
Art by Kiara Mucci
SCWC / Merrigong Playwrights Program
Merrigong Theatre Company has a long history of developing and producing new work by Australian playwrights. Merrigong Theatre Company and the South Coast Writers Centre (SCWC) are both dedicated to leading from the regions and nurturing the next generation of creative writers and artists. For this reason, Merrigong and the SCWC have formed a partnership to invest in the next generation of theatre storytellers via a long-term development program for those with an interest in writing for the stage.
The 2025 SCWC / Merrigong Playwrights Program aims to create a space where writers are encouraged to develop their writing projects among a safe and supportive group of peers. Capped at 10 participants, this is a 10-month program that will run from Mar - Nov 2025. The group will meet monthly on Saturdays either at Coledale Community Hall or at a performance in one of Merrigong’s venues. Over the course of the program, participants will also see and discuss Merrigong shows, will hear from guest industry teachers, and will workshop the participants plays in development. The group will be convened by Tom Peach, playwright, ex-president of Stanwell Park Arts Theatre and an alumni of the Merrigong Playwrights Program.
Criteria: This program is open to anyone aged 18 and above. We encourage applications from Indigenous Australians, people with disability, people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, mature age workers and LGBQTI people. Participants will need to be members of the SCWC to accept a position in the program. We are committed to providing an inclusive culture and program where all our artists are valued and recognised for their unique qualities, ideas and perspectives.
For more information, visit southcoastwriters.org/playwrights-program
How To Engage
Merrigong is committed to supporting independent artists through new and established performance platforms and development opportunities, including:
• Presentation: funded and in-kind support for the production of new works with a presentation season
• Creative Development: funded and/or in-kind support for the development of new works with no immediate public outcome
• Development Showings: funded and in-kind support for the development of new works with a ‘work-in-progress’ public outcome
• Made From Scratch: our experimental scratch night of new work and new artists. A callout for interested artists for our 2025 Made from Scratch series will be made throughout the year.
Artists and Companies with a connection to the Illawarra are encouraged to make an Expression of Interest through the MERRIGONGX application process. After consultation with the artists/groups, works are selected and curated by Merrigong’s artistic team, with the assistance of external industry professionals. Applications take place on an annual basis from July of the previous year, with successful applicants informed in December.
Show Up and Support Artists
There is no set ticket price at MERRIGONG a spot, show up, then pay what you feel the performance is worth afterwards.
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Come See The Show
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If you don’t show up on the night, please be aware that you will be charged a $20 no show fee per seat. This ensures the artists don’t miss out for their work!
Reserve Your
Spot
For Free Register and reserve your spot online.
A 1 cent card authorisation fee applies.
and your circumstances. There is no minimum or maximum amount.
Acknowledgement of Country
Our company’s name ‘Merrigong’ reflects the Dharawal word for the Illawarra region’s distinctive escarpment, a landmark of supreme cultural importance.
This name serves as a constant reminder that our venues rest on unceded First Nations land.
In all that we do, Merrigong Theatre Company seeks to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land, seas and skies, and to show respect to all First Nations people who call our region home.
Venues
Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, 32 Burelli Street, Wollongong
Wollongong Town Hall, Corner of Crown and Kembla Streets, Wollongong
Thank you
Other Supporters of Works and Artists
Squatch Watch: LIVE
Cover Art by
Kiara Mucci
Kiara Mucci is an illustrator and graphic designer living and working on Dharawal land, where the escarpment meets the sea. Kiara is inspired by the local landscape and the vibrant creative community in the Illawarra. She is passionate about creativity as a balm for our collective mental health, and has worked closely with Makeshift, having recently illustrated their book ‘Creative First Aid’ (Murdoch Press).
