Assembly
We’re excited to say that Assembly is underway! It’s our bespoke 2019 artist lab through which 8 emerging CALD and ATSI artists are receiving a year of shows, lectures and professional opportunities including one-on-one mentorship. We’d like to introduce you to our Assembly participants and reintroduce you to Project Coordinator Zal Kanga-Parabia.
Participants
Bella Ndayikeze
Bella’s musical career began in 2010 with her first single “Letter to Mama”, an inspiring song dedicated to her mother Trinite. Since 2010 Bella has recorded and released over 30 songs, her music is a real-life portrait of the journey of a young person in the modern world. It captures the struggles and the beauty of her life and what she is going through. It is a raw glimpse into her soul.
For Bella, music is a release and a freedom. Creating music inspires her, and she hopes to perform her to inspire others. Bella’s music touches on topics so relevant to the youth of today; resilience, emotional struggles, staying positive amongst negativity, family problems, facing your fears and many more. She brings everything she faces to life through her music in the hope that others may draw strength from the knowledge that they are not alone.
Kobi Arthur Morrison
Kobi is a 24 year old bibbulmun noongar who was born and raised in Perth. While he studies as an English major at UWA, Kobi spends his spare time playing music, being involved in various music projects such as Moombaki, Koondarm, Madjitil Moorna and Endeavorous, these are projects that earned him the 2018 Perth NAIDOC Youth of the Year award.
Ming Yang Lim
Ming Yang Lim has recently graduated and finished his studies at Curtin University, where he studied Theatre Arts. He performed in many shows during his time at Curtin where he played Ketu in 100, Mr Lawrence in People Who Stamp Papers All Day and Fish/ Ensmeble in Masquerade. He was also a part of a collaboration between the Hayman Theatre Company and Spare Parts to create 12 Strings and the Scale of Things and was a part of two Stage One shows where he played Number 7 in Body Farm, directed by Will O’Mahony and The Perilous Adventures of the Postman, directed by Damon Lockwood. In 2018 Perth Fringe Festival, he was a part of Squid Vicious first production godeatgod directed by Andrew Sutherland. Ming Yang wants to continue creating new works that are thought provoking.
Patrick Gunasekera
Patrick is an emerging interdisciplinary artist working in performance, theatre, and poetry. His creative practice disrupts social sites of power and challenges the conditions of whiteness and ableism to engage in a destabilisation of systemic oppression across different social contexts.
From 2016-17 Patrick studied a Certificate IV in contemporary visual arts at North Metropolitan TAFE, and his creative process is heavily influenced by visual culture and the politics of representation and gaze in artistic and public contexts of white imperialism and ableist capitalism. Patrick is also Buddhist by descent, and prayer and meditation are part of his acting process.
Ramiah Alcantara
Ramiah is a 23 year old who identify as queer, and a cisgendered female. Ramiah uses the pronouns she/her and was raised in Manila, Philippines, for five years before moving to Australia at the of 16.
In 2018 Ramiah graduated from Murdoch University where she majored in Theatre, Drama, and Film Production, as well as minor in Photography. You can find Ramiah working here at The Blue Room Theatre or across the road at The Bird. Ramiah hopes to create art that is immersive, inclusive, experimental, and reflective of the transforming social and political climate. Be it through performance, music, digital and visual art.
Rosie Pickett
Rosie Moana Pickett is a Māori artist who draws from performance, visual art, and concept art to create works that discuss and subvert dominant discourses of the ‘Other.’. They use theatre and art as a form of storytelling to explore ideas about culture, identity, and belonging to provide themselves with the narratives they didn’t see growing up in Australia. Rosie is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts at Murdoch University with a major in Australian Indigenous Studies and a focus in theatre and drama. They have performed in the Murdoch University student productions One and Other and A Midsummer Nights Prom.
Sarah Sim
Sarah was born in Singapore and started full time dance training at School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA) before she came to Western Australia. Last year she graduated from WAAPA with a Bachelor of Arts (Dance) Honours as part of LINK Dance Company. She is currently an independent artist based in Perth, WA as well as part of the collective, Fonder Physical Theatre. She has worked with choreographers such as Ellen-Hope Thomson, Lauren Catellani, Emma Fishwick, Natalie Allen, Brooke Leeder and Olivia Hendry this year, as well as completing various solo projects. She is interested in capturing the beauty and integrity through movement, screen and photography and looks forward to ongoing creative and movement research.
Taonga Sendama
Taonga is 19 years old, a spoken word artist, poet, and above all things, a storyteller. In 2017 she made her debut at the Western Australian Youth Slam and has since performed countless events including the Perth Poetry festival, and featuring across Perth. Her art is a means of self expression and greatly reflects the ever changing person she is and will continue to be.
At the moment, she is branching into visual and sound art, installation pieces and finding ways to combine spoken word and other art forms. Her art is also a form of self healing and understanding, and a way to test her capacity and strength and confidence in herself.
If you’re an artist or a member, please say hello as you see these fellow artists around the building in 2019 and beyond.
“The Blue Room Theatre to me has always been a space where I’ve felt change is made for the better, where stories are shared unapologetically and where emerging artists are given a space to breathe. Assembly is a direct reflection of these values and I’m so excited to see where the participants end up and what stories they tell.”
Zal Kanga-Parabia – Assembly Coordinator
Through Assembly, we hope that a group of emerging, culturally diverse and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists will get an in-depth understanding of how they can get involved with The Blue Room Theatre and the local industry, and make the work that is important to them.
Our aim is to introduce the participants to a broad community of theatre and performance makers and cultivate new collaborations within which they can make work and develop their artistic careers. We’re doing thisby facilitating participants’ attendance at selection of works programmed in The Blue Room Theatre season, exposing them to shows from a variety of artists and practices exploring different genres, forms and content. At the same time, we will offer individual mentoring in artistic or career development and facilitate a series of opportunities for conversation. We hope participants will come away with a greater sense of what they want to contribute and achieve into the future.
We’re looking forward to creating a new set of relationships with a diverse group of young artists; we want to hear the perspectives and interests of the participants as a way to shape an ongoing commitment to building cultural diversity at The Blue Room Theatre.
The Blue Room Theatre Team