La Mama Presents an Antipodes Theatre Company production of

月を見る夜 MOONGAZING

by MAKI MORITA

4 - 22 February 2026

La Mama HQ

There’s a search bar at your fingertips. but does it have the answers you need?

From the infinity of the internet to the fate of the stars, 月を見る夜 Moongazing looks at the systems we are now turning to for practical, emotional and spiritual guidance.

A chance encounter between two women of the Japanese diaspora, young and old, kicks off an unlikely friendship. But as Tsukiko is drawn to the kind Chie, she seems to find herself with more questions than answers.

Drawing from Noh, Japanese folktales and the digital realm, 月を見る夜 Moongazing is a meditation on the stories we inherit and the grief of witnessing familial and cultural ties dissipating in an increasingly atomised world.

CAST TO BE ANNOUNCED!

Supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants, the Hansen Little Foundation and VCA Foundation, and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust.

This project was previously developed as part of Antipodes Theatre Company's 2025 Winter Lab and received a 2025 La Mama Residency.

SHOW DETAILS

Runtime: 70 minutes, no interval

Recommended for audiences: 16+, parental discretion is advised.

Warnings: Discussion of suicide.

Online “On Demand” Season: 1 March - 6 March

COMMUNITY NIGHTS

Wed 11th: Japanese Community Night The purposeful creation of an environment in which Japanese audience members can experience and discuss an event in cultural spaces where they are the majority.

Thu 12th: Queer Night Show your pride alongside other members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

Sun 15th: Post-show Q&A Join us after the matinee for a Q&A with members of the creative team and cast.

Wed 18th: Auslan Interpreted Auslan Stage Left will interpret this performance for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members.

The 19th: Industry Night Connect with other artists from the performing arts community.

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

REVIEWS OF CREATIVES PAST WORK

FOR TRASH POP BUTTERFLIES, DANCE DANCE PARADISE (WRITER: MAKI MORITA)

“★★★1/2 Morita’s writing is absurdist but playful; dense, but rich with detail. astute social and political commentaries are offered with ready spoonfuls of wit.” - THEATRE MATTERS

FOR SUSPICIOUS FISH (DIRECTOR: ARI ANGKASA)

“★★★★ the conceptual humour is exceedingly clever, the delivery simultaneously provocative and slapstick” - THE AGE

Writer: MAKI MORITA (she/they)

Director: ARI ANGKASA (she/her)

Vision and Systems Designer: D DUÀN 段耀钦 (they/them/tā)

Dramaturg: ROSHELLE YEE PUI FONG (she/her)

Composition and Sound Designer: JACK WHU (they/them)

Creative Producer: BRANDON PAPE (he/him)

Creative Producer and Marketing: CAMERON STEENS (they/them)

Biographies are available below.

Promotion Image: DARREN GILL (he/him)

Antipodes Branding: ROB CHIVERS (PUSH Collective)

Meet the 月を見る夜 MOONGAZING Team

Maki Morita

She/They
WRITER
Maki Morita is an emerging writer and theatre-maker on unceded Wurundjeri country. As a playwright, Maki’s debut work Trash Pop Butterflies, Dance Dance Paradise was shown at TheatreWorks in 2023. Her prose and poetry has appeared in Cordite, Island Magazine, The Suburban Review, Mascara Literary Review, Portside Review, and more. She has also exhibited work at Linden New Art. They have been awarded the Ian Potter Cultural Trust Emerging Artist Grant, Wheeler Centre Playwright Hot Desk Fellowship, and George Fairfax Memorial Award. Maki graduated with a Master of Theatre (writing) from the Victorian College of the Arts.
Ari Angkasa

She/Her
DIRECTOR
Ari Angkasa is an artist working across filmmaking, writing, live performance, and collage. Her solo performance work Sociology of a Volcanic Winter developed with APHIDS premiered at the Institute of Modern Art and made its festival debut in Bangkok as part of Homohaus Festival. Her two-channel video collage Quantum Leap was part of the official selection at Queer East Film Festival in London and her short film The Overwoman was shortlisted for the Incinerator Art Award for Social Change in 2024. She is currently in post-production for her film Medium—originally a live performance shown at Abbotsford Convent—set to premiere at ACMI as part of their New Voices in Australian Cinema program.
d duàn 段耀钦

They/Them/Tā
VISION AND SYSTEMS DESIGNER
d duàn 段耀钦 is an experimental a/v artist preoccupied with spectacle, tech, (para)text and spatial ritual/oracles, living and playing on unceded Wurundjeri land. Their speculative multi-lingual multi-lore practice is bookended by an evolving philosophy of slow working~slow living~𝓅𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝓊𝓇𝑒.
Roshelle Yee Pui Fong

She/Her
DRAMATURG
Roshelle is a Hong Kong born multidisciplinary artist whose award-winning show NOMNOMNOM (2018) was adapted in East Iceland, Shanghai and Sydney, and her online show THIRSTY! (2020) was programmed at Griffin Theatre and Google Creative Lab. Roshelle’s play THE RED LEAD won Bruntwood Playwriting Prize's International Award (2022), and was developed at Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre and Banff Playwrights Lab in Canada. THE ROBOT DOG, which she co-wrote with Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan, premiered at Melbourne Theatre Company for Asiatopa Festival 2025. Roshelle is a New Writers Collective mentor (Arts Centre Melbourne) and in Contemporary Asian Australian Performance’s Artist Reference Group.
Jack Whu 傑克。胡

They/Them
COMPOSITION AND SOUND DESIGNER
A queer performer and sound artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Their work is shaped by the push and pull of diaspora and queerness, where tradition is both refuge and resistance. They move incognito through quiet spaces — through walks, through water sounds, in their bedroom, where they shape sounds. By subverting traditional forms, they transform the western flute from a symbol of colonial influence into a vessel for expressing their fluid identity and diasporic narrative as a non-binary Shanghai artist. By bending and reshaping the flutes voice, in-between shifting microtones, layers of glitches and breath, 傑克。胡’s practice is a reclamation of space that holds both grief, joy and radical softness. You’ll always see them improvising live to their music on an amplified flute.
Brandon Pape

He/Him
CREATIVE PRODUCER
Brandon is the Founding Artistic Director for Antipodes Theatre Company, where he directed Ghost Quartet (two 2020 Green Room Award Nominations, return seasons in 2021 (Meat Market Stables) and 2025 (Hayes Theatre) and co-directed with Trudy Dunn their immersive reimagining of Guys and Dolls (thirteen 2024 Green Room Award nominations). Other Antipodes credits include Sam I Am, And She Would Stand Like This, Passing Strange (five 2023 Green Room Award Nominations), Orlando, and the Winter Lab - an annual development program for new work and bold ideas.
Cameron Steens

They/Them
CREATIVE PRODUCER
A queer, neurodivergent theatre maker based in Naarm, originally from Boorloo. A WAAPA Music Theatre graduate, they work as a creative producer, director and performer. Antipodes’ New Work & Marketing Manager and a Producer on numerous developments including the Winter Labs, Death to a Butterfly, Silver Tongue, Little Squirt (prev. Spunk Daddy), the premieres of Orlando, Storked, the Festival of the Unseen and the Hayes Theatre season of Ghost Quartet. Other credits include: The Last Sunday in June, MIMMA, James Terry’s RENT & BSSTC’s Assassins (Performer). AMTAC Sessions (Co-Producer), This is Living, Pops and If We Got Some More Cocaine… (Associate Director), Protein (Assist. Director & Sound Design) and Venue & Ticketing Coordinator (Gasworks Arts Park). www.cameronsteens.com