Sunday 5 December, 6pm

Tasnim Hossain

Tasnim Hossain is a director, playwright, dramaturg and screenwriter working across Gadigal and Ngunnawal country. She is a co-director and dramaturg on Lost in Shanghai (CAAP) for the upcoming 2022 Sydney Festival. She directed -.- for Eat Me (NIDA), Yellow Face (Dinosaurus Productions) and Rough Draft #49 – Garage Sale (STC). She was assistant director on Banging Denmark (STC) and The House at Boundary Road, Liverpool (Bontom).

She is currently writing the book for a new musical as a recipient of the CreateNSW-Hayes Theatre NSW Musical Theatre Fellowship as well as an adaptation of Burn Witch Burn (fervour.) at the Old Fitz Theatre. She wrote and performed This Is The Place: Canberra (Critical Stages/Paines Plough), Boys Light Up (Blue Room Theatre) and Letters to John (Batch Festival/Fringe World/Crack Theatre Festival). She was co-creator, co-writer and actor on Carpark Clubbing (ABC iView).

She is currently an Artistic Associate at NIDA, and has been a STC-CAAP Directors Initiative participant, Griffin Studio Artist, ATYP Resident Playwright, and Melbourne Theatre Company’s Women in Theatre mentee. She is an ATYP board member and 2020 Australia Council Future Leader.

Gary Paramanathan

Gary Paramanathan works at the intersection of arts, culture and community. Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Australia, Gary has written and directed a number of short films, including for ABC iView. He has written feature essays and recounted personal narratives including for The Guardian. Gary also runs a regular live storytelling night focusing on PoC stories, called Them Heavy People. Gary is passionate about migrant and diaspora storytelling, and hopes to add to the rich tapestry of diverse Australian storytelling through his work. This piece is one part of a spoken word performance that ties space, time, astrophysics and our experiences of love and movement.

Taofia Pelesasa

Taofia Pelesasa is of Tokelauan and Samoan heritage, born in Rotorua, New Zealand and replanted in Mt Druitt, Western Sydney. A graduate of the United School of Performing and Screen Arts (Auckland, Aotearoa) as an acting and writing student, he has worked as an actor, producer and writer in both screen and theatre in New Zealand and Australia. Highlights of his career thus far have been Young Shakespeare’s performance of Julius Caesar at the Globe Theatre in London, Auckland Theatre Company’s productions of Mary Stuart, A Frigate Bird Sings, Disorder and most recently, the National tour of My Own Darling. He was also core cast on the International tour of The Factory Musical throughout Australia and Scotland as well as the Australian and New Zealand tour of the Victor Rodger hit Black Faggot and the return season of At The Wake at the Herald Theatre. Taofia also wrote and co-produced short films The Promise of Piha and Maria, both of which successfully travelled the international film festival circuit. Piha received a special mention at the prestigious ‘imagiNATIVE Film Festival’ in Toronto and Maria received funding from the New Zealand Film Commission, being selected to represent New Zealand as part of the Department of Tourism’s cultural road show of South America and winning the ‘Most Popular Film’ award as part of the PBS Online Film Festival. As a writer, Taofia has been mentored by Sima Urale, Louise Tu’u and Victor Rodgers with his first short film Fish’n’Chip Friday screenplay being shortlisted for the 2012 Fresh Shorts initiative for the New Zealand Film Commission. His writing has also seen him receive mentorships with Script-to-Screen NZ in Auckland and International & Cultural Exchange in Parramatta, Sydney. His full length play Te Molimau was selected by Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney to be programmed in their 25A Season in August 2019. He was recently invited back in 2020 to develop his new work Hooka Wooka Fooka as an artist-in-residence. Independently, Taofia has worked on his own works, the most significant of which is Polinesia, which has had him spend a two-year research project between Sydney and Lima, Peru. Taofia is an associate Artist for Talanoa Storytelling—a Pacific-focussed storytelling platform based out of Sydney, Australia which has seen him work on projects such as the AV Series The Places we Call Home in collaboration with Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIIC) , Cowbird & PBS based out of Hawaii. This year Taofia will make a series of Pacific focused web-series pilots with the support of Screen Australia and Information & Cultural Exchange.

Peter Polites

Peter Polites is a novelist from Western Sydney. He has written two queer noirs, Down the Hume and The Pillars, which won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Literary Award. He also won the 2020 Woollahra Digital Literature Prize for Fiction. In 2021 he was the ACT Writer in Residence at UNSW Canberra and working on his third novel, God Forgets About the Poor.