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Part of Festival of the Unseen 2025
2025 SUMMER LAB
A DEVELOPMENT ACCELERATOR FOR NEW WORK AND BOLD IDEAS
21 February - 3 March
Antipodes HQ, South Melbourne
Entry: $15 - $35 general admission
See event times and prices below.
ATC’s inaugural Summer Lab provides ongoing development and support to previous Winter Lab projects (Antipodes’ flagship development program established in 2020). Each of the seven projects will culminate in either a one-night-only performance, a staged reading or in-development ‘sneak peek’ open sessions.
The Summer Lab looks to engage approximately 40 artists, returning and new.
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2025 SUMMER LAB PROJECTS & LEAD ARTISTS
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 21st
7.30pm Stage Reading: STORKED by MYFANWY HOCKING (they/them)
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23rd
12pm Open Session: THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER: A NEW MUSICAL by ABIGAIL BANISTER-JONES (she/her)
4.30pm Stage Reading: DEATH TO A BUTTERFLY: A NEW MUSICAL by ANDY FREEBORN (they/them) & JESS RAMSEY (they/she)
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 28th
7.30pm In-Performance: THE LIFE CYCLE OF BLANCO by VONNE PATIAG (he/him)
SUNDAY MARCH 2nd
12pm Open Session: JOURNEY OF THE TRUE SELF by R. JOHNS (she/her) and ALIYA ABOO (she/her)
4.30pm Open Session: CAPTURE: A NEW MUSICAL (WT) by TOMAS PARRISH (they/them)
7:30pm As part of the AMTAC Song Showcase: SILVER TONGUE: A NEW MUSICAL by ALEC STEEDMAN (he/they) & MIRANDA MIDDLETON (she/her)
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 21st 7.30pm
From the 2024 Winter Lab and in active development leading up to the 2025 May production, join us for a book-in-hand stage reading of
STORKED
by MYFANWY HOCKING (they/them)
Doors open 7pm, 7.30pm start
Entry: $25 general admission
When a They and a Them love each other very much…
To have a kid, to not. There is no compromise. You can’t ignore your uterus - it’s constantly reminding you of your capacity for birth. Yuck.
Even if you wanted a kid, capitalism is ******* you in the ***.
You just got Storked.
An electric exploration of the choice to choose, living in a body that constantly betrays you, and finding the people in your life who matter most, STORKED interrogates the expectation upon AFAB people to have children and the growing awareness that it might not be such a hot idea in our world today. Through a series of vignettes, a handful of actors explore society’s obsession with monogamy, pregnancy, parenting and chosen family in increasing levels of absurdity, hilarity and poignancy. We guarantee this wild and visceral show will be unlike anything you’ve seen before.
Warnings: Coarse language, graphic descriptions of bodily fluids, discussions of miscarriages, abortion, homophobia, transphobia, racism, mental illness, pregnancy/childbirth, sexism, misogyny, suicide/self-harm ideation, eating disorders, sexual assault, medical settings and medical gaslighting.
Writer & Performer: MYFANWY HOCKING (they/them)
Development Coordinator: FLICK (they/them)
Director: MAUDE DAVEY (she/her)
Dramaturg: BRIDGET BALODIS (they/them)
Performer: HANY LEE (she/her), BROOKE LEE (they/them), NIKKI VIVECA (she/her) & ELLIOT WOOD (they/he)
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Meet the STORKED Team
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23rd
From the 2023 Winter Lab, join us for an in-development open session for
THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER: A NEW MUSICAL
by ABIGAIL BANISTER-JONES (she/her)
Doors open 11.30am, 12pm start
Entry: $15 general admission
“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.”
When the world appears to be ending, you cling to those you hold most dear. But what if you’re really cross at all of them? Year Without a Summer is a spooky historical piece for the future. With music from now and then, dancing with youth and death, and dark ghostly comedy.
Lord Byron; the world’s first celebrity, and Mary Shelly; the mother of science fiction are rising from the dead to reminisce about their summer at Lake Geneva back in 1816. Only there was no summer, just volcanic ash and unusual storms. There was nothing for it but sex, drugs, and romantic poetry. Maybe inventing a genre while we’re at it.
Based on the circumstances that surrounded the writing of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and Dr John Polidori’s The Vampyre, The Year Without a Summer is about fear. The kind of fear that connects us to each other, if we allow it.
May include discussions: Death or dying, Drug or Alcohol Abuse/Addition, Incest, Miscarriages/abortion, Mutilation of Corpses, Pregnancy/childbirth, Sexism and misogyny, Sexual Assault, Pedophilia, Statutory SA/R, Shaming of promiscuous or premarital sex
Writer, Composer & Director: ABIGAIL BANISTER-JONES (she/her)
Actors: MIELA ANICH (she/her) and ELLIOT WOOD (they/he)
Dramaturgy Consultant: FLICK (they/them)
Music Consultant: LACHLAN OBST (he/him)
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Meet the THE YEAR WITHOUT A SUMMER Team
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23rd
From the 2023 Winter Lab, and following an 2024 March intensive, join us for a book-in-hand stage reading of
DEATH TO A BUTTERFLY: A NEW MUSICAL
by ANDY FREEBORN (they/them) & JESS RAMSEY (they/she)
Doors open 4pm, 4.30pm start
Entry: $25 general admission
Just as queer people go through the journey of finding themselves, so too are we finding Henry, Lilian, Gab, & Loie throughout this piece of artwork; from ashes is a person, and community reborn. People made of burnt scrapbooks, diaries, letters, essays, art works and poems.
On a lavish Welsh estate, a church reborn into a theatre becomes a haven of queer creativity, and the setting for breaking the boundaries of gender identity, kindling the spark of desire, and discovering what it means to love.
Henry and Lilian, bound together through marriage, learn to see each other for who they are as they face the pressures of family duty and societal expectations.
Death To A Butterfly is a story of queer identity and queer erasure, inspired by the extravagant and indulgent life of Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey.
Warnings: Death or dying, Themes of queerness, queerphobia, mild sexual references and scenes
Music, Lyrics & Co-Book: ANDY FREEBORN (they/them)
Co-Book and Ensemble: JESS RAMSEY (they/she)
Musical Director: DAVID BUTLER (he/him)
Actors: SOPHIA KATOS (she/her), ALESSANDRA MERLO (she/her), J RIDLER (they/she/he), MIKEY SAKINOFSKY (they/them) and LUISA SCROFANI (she/her)
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Meet the DEATH TO A BUTTERFLY Team
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 28th
From the 2020 Winter Development Retreat, and 2021 Ricochet Reading Series, join us for a performance of
THE LIFE CYCLE OF BLANCO
by VONNE PATIAG (he/him)
Doors open 7pm, 7.30pm start
Entry: $35 general admission
Returning after a Creative First Look season at the National Theatre of Parramatta and Sydney WorldPride, Vonne Patiag’s one-man show ‘The Life Cycle of Blanco’ will be performed in Melbourne for the first time.
‘The Life Cycle of Blanco’ follows Blanco, an Asian actor who has decided to end the ‘short life cycle’ of his creative career due to the culminating effects of hidden and casual racism on his psyche.
Part monologue, part eulogy, Blanco reviews his harrowing career, his exhaustion caused by institutional racism and class privilege, and honours his dead creative ambitions with documentarian flair.
A fusion of physical theatre and character study, involving movement and call-and-response with the audience, this fractal play explores the fractured mind of one man who has chosen ‘death’ as a way to ‘survive’.
Warnings: Death or dying, Racism and racial slurs
Writer: VONNE PATIAG (he/him)
Director: BENG OH (he/him)
Actors: JASPER LEE-LINDSAY (he/him) & LUKE WILSON (he/him)
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Meet the THE LIFE CYCLE OF BLANCO Team
SUNDAY MARCH 2nd
From the 2021 Winter Lab, (prev. Astitva/dentity) join us for an in-development open session for
JOURNEY OF THE TRUE SELF
by R. JOHNS (she/her) and ALIYA ABOO (she/her)
Doors open 11.30am, 12pm start
Entry: $15 general admission
“I will not be scared of anyone ever again”
Maybe you won’t be either if you see this play.
Journey of the True Self is a snapshot of Aliya Aboo’s life, a fever driven odyssey, based on her lived experience as a person of colour, a Muslim, a migrant, transitioning both gender and culture and geography, from Karachi to Melbourne. Her voice is one not commonly heard. This play is fantastical, violent, incredible, yet true. The audience is taken on a rollercoaster ride of a heroine’s journey into an internal poetic landscape. How Aliya sees the world in her mind as she goes through transformation as a woman trapped in the wrong body, contrasted with the mundane, often brutal day to day, transactions she experiences.
The cast of actors are culturally and linguistically diverse, Anita Torrance (Caprica) ,Majid Shokor (Ali’s wedding, House of Gods) Raj Moodley (Is It Because I’m Indian) and Sepideh Karimi ( The Golden Rooster) .Co-writer is AWGIE nominated R. Johns. Once work colleagues at the NGV, Aliya and Rosemary came together to write this play over many emotional and turbulent years as secrets, dreams and once hidden histories revealed themselves.
May include discussions: Animal cruelty or animal death, Death or dying, Graphic descriptions of bodily fluids (eg blood, vomit, or birth), Mental illness, Physical Abuse, Violence, Sexism and misogyny, Suicide, Self-harm, Ideation, War, Genocide, Riots, Military Violence, Massacres
Co-Writer, Director & 'Friend': R. JOHNS (she/her)
Co-Writer & 'Onlooker/Singer': ALIYA ABOO (she/her)
Actors: EVANGELOS ARABATZIS (he/him), SEPIDEH KARIMI (she/her), RAJENDRA MOODLEY (he/him), MAJID SHOKOR (he/him) and ANITA TORRANCE (she/her)
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Meet the JOURNEY OF THE TRUE SELF Team
SUNDAY MARCH 2nd
From the 2023 Winter Lab, (prev. Views & Visions), join us for an in-development open session for
CAPTURE: A NEW MUSICAL
(working title)
by TOMAS PARRISH-CHYNOWETH (they/them) & ZIGGY RESNICK (they/she)
Doors open 4pm, 4.30pm start
Entry: $15 general admission
Two gender non-conforming lesbians fighting nazis in World War II with their surrealist art on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. It sounds like a fable, but it’s the true story of Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe – known by their artist names, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore.
Capture (working title) follows Lucy and Suzanne through their arrest by occupying nazis, their trial, death sentence, and fortuitous liberation before the sentence could be carried out.
This chronology is interspersed with childhood memories, their 1920s Parisian explorations of the freeing sapphic club scene and the artistic stimulation of the intellectual salons, as well as their life on the island of Jersey. We see their quiet life turned upside down during the war, and what they did to really f*ck with the nazis. We witness the risks they took as two queer folk, and for Lucy as a jew.
Capture is a story of struggle and empowerment, of pain and suffering. But it is also filled with queer joy and sapphic love, with creativity and hope. For us today, in a world where neo-nazism and anti-trans movements are emboldened and violent, and genocides are being committed on multiple continents across the globe, these two queer heroes encourage us to hold each other close in our resistance, and teach us that freedom is worth the cost.
May include discussions: Hateful language direct at religious groups (e.g., Islamophobia, anti-Semitism), Mental illness, Suicide, Self-harm, Ideation, War, Genocide, Riots, Military Violence, Massacres
Co-Writer, Lyricist & Composer: TOMAS PARRISH-CHYNOWETH (they/them)
Co-Writer: ZIGGY RESNICK (they/she)
Actors: SKYE BEKER (she/her) MANALI DATAR (she/her), SARA REED (she/her) and WILLOW SIZER (they/them)
Consulting Collaborator: NEVO ZISIN (they/them)
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Meet the CAPTURE (WT) Team
SUNDAY MARCH 2nd
From the 2022 Winter Lab, join us for the AMTAC Song Showcase which will feature songs from several AMTAC projects including
SILVER TONGUE: A NEW MUSICAL
by ALEC STEEDMAN (he/they) & MIRANDA MIDDLETON (she/her)
Doors open 7pm, 7.30pm start
Entry: $25 general admission
Warnings: Coarse language
An irreverent retelling of 'Treasure Island' framed through the eyes of a female Long John Silver, 'Silver Tongue' is a new musical about misfits finding a place where they belong.
Music and Lyrics: ALEC STEEDMAN (he/they)
Co-Book and Lyrics: MIRANDA MIDDLETON (she/her)
Co-Book: JACOB PARKER (he/him)
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Meet the SILVER TONGUE: A NEW MUSICAL Team
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Meet the Producers