Workshop Artists

Caitlin Baker is an emerging actor, director, and theatre maker, heading into her fourth year of Arts/Law (Hon) at ANU. In 2022, Caitlin will be taking the helm as President of the ANU Shakespeare Society, producing their largest season yet, Kiss/Kill. This follows her performance in their inaugural production of Much Ado About Nothing (2019), and her direction of The Tempest (2021). Over the past few years, Caitlin has been deeply involved in the Canberra theatre scene, with other credits including Canberra Repertory Society shows Grapes of Wrath, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and The Governor’s Family, and most recently, the inaugural Emerge Company’s Carpe DM. Deeply invested in the necessity of live performance, Caitlin is thrilled to be able to collaborate and teach young artists as a workshop artist.

Christopher is a professional actor, writer and director from Ireland, trained at The Samuel Beckett Centre, Dublin, and Ecole Jacques Lecoq, Paris. Since moving to Canberra in 2016, he has become one of the city’s most prolific and celebrated performers, winning the inaugural Helen Tsongas Award for Excellence in Acting in 2019 for roles in Twelfth Night, Icarus, Howie the Rookie, and Metamorphosis. As artistic director of Bare Witness Theatre Co., he has produced ten shows to date, in Ireland, the U.K., France and Australia, winning a reputation for raw, pulsating theatre that ignites the imagination. Recent work has included directing Carpe DM for Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerge Company; a solo adaptation of The Stranger by Albert Camus; and writing, directing and acting in his play about the dark arts of marketing, Smokescreen, at The Q in Queanbeyan. He will be starring in the debut production at the ACT Hub, When the Rain Stops Falling, in April 2022; and will be directing, devising and acting in the Bare Witness production of I Have No Enemies at Gorman Arts Centre in July 2022.

Elliot Cleaves is a Canberra-based artist, seasoned in many areas of performance. He holds a qualification in live production within the creative industries and by day works within the education sector. Having experience in a wide range of genres including musical theatre, comedy, and Shakespeare some acting credits include Cosi (2021), Two Twenty Somethings… (2021), and Dags by Debra Oswald with Canberra Youth Theatre (2022). As an Artistic Director with the newly established Green Oak Theatre he supports the development of their original scripts, lends his dramaturgical expertise, and his technical expertise as lighting designer for various productions. Elliot is passionate about all styles and expressions of storytelling.

Rebecca Duke is a 21 year old writer and student raised in Tasmania. In 2021, she is starting her third year of a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics / Bachelor or Arts at the ANU. In 2019 she took part in ATYP’s National Studio and was delighted to receive her first publication in Intersection: Beat closely followed by This Was Urgent Yesterday written during CARCLEW’s residency, The Writing Place. She has been commissioned by the Canberra Youth Theatre to write Space Oddity, a play that accompanies a new work by Mary Rachel Brown. She is also writing Church Sweet Church, a play about faith, community and reckoning which has been selected for The Street’s First Seen program.

Coming soon.

Anna spent nearly nine years in the United Kingdom where she worked for the Theatre Royal Bath and The Egg, Children’s Theatre, in a variety of roles from youth theatre tutor to director. In 2009 she was appointed the position of Trainee Theatre and Education Practitioner a full time Arts Council funded position that saw her work alongside and in collaboration with UK’s award-winning theatre companies, such as The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Pins and Needles Productions and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. 2015 saw her gaining the position of Associate Artist at The Egg Theatre, where she learned about and practised the devising process, working alongside and under the instruction of many award-winning theatre makers such as Sally Cookson, Amy Leech, and Emma Earle. For Canberra Youth Theatre she: created and directed a site-specific piece for I’m Me Festival (2017); co-directed Filtered (2018) for the young company; created and presented another original work for I’m Me Festival (2019) at Gorman Arts Centre; and co-directed Possibility (2019) for the teen ensemble.

Tijana is a bubbly singer, actress and writer who specialises in comedy and accents. She has attained a Diploma of Musical Theatre (2015) and Advanced Diploma of Performance (2017) from Perform Australia (formerly Canberra Academy of Dramatic Art), where she has taught in the children’s programs and recently made her directorial and choreographic debut with The Little Mermaid. She has appeared in numerous shows during her studies at Perform Australia, including: See Rock City and Other Destinations,  A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Hermia and The Bald Soprano as Mrs Smith. Ickle Pickle’s The Little Mermaid as a Princess and ensemble, Green Oak’s The Thornthwaite Inheritance as Lorelli Thornthwaite, Fantasy Studios’ The Trail to Oregon as Mother, and Papermoon Theatre’s The Penelopiad as Maid/Antinous. When not performing, Tijana can be found spontaneously singing and reading books from her extensive collection.

Tobi is an actor and dancer who specialises in screen acting and hip-hop. She started acting at 11 years old when she won her first regional improvisation challenge and went on to represent her region nationally. Since then, she has taken multiple short courses with companies such as Victoria’s Models and New Faces Talent Academy to sharpen her skills. In 2018 she won second place in the commercial monologue division at an actors’ showcase in Sydney and was then invited to perform at the 2018 Australian Convention of Actors and Artists (The AUSCAAS). The following year she performed at the 2019 Sydney Eisteddfod with her college dance crew. It was around then that she began studying part-time at Perform Australia, and she graduated two years later with a Cert IV in Screen and Stage Acting. During this time, she acted in a number of plays; Turandot (2019), The Park (2021), as well as short/feature films; Unidentified (2019), Romeo And Juliet Abridged (2020), and Once Upon A Time In Serbia (2022).

Charlotte Palmer is a Canberra-based actor and has been a part of Canberra Youth Theatre since the age of 11. Throughout her time at the company she has participated in weekly workshops, masterclasses as well as the Company Ensemble (2019) and Emerge Company (2021). She completed a double-major in drama at school, obtaining the highest score within the subject three years in a row. She devised and directed her own show (2019), working with twelve actors aged 13–18 over two months. Charlotte is now studying a Bachelor of Secondary Education/Bachelor of Arts majoring in drama and English studies. She looks forward to working together with Canberra Youth Theatre as a workshop artist to create a platform where youth are empowered to use their voices and express themselves through theatre.

Cathy Petőcz is a Canberra-based theatre practitioner — a playwright, director, performer, and producer. Cathy writes many different kinds of performance works: plays (Unbecoming, Canberra Theatre Centre, 2019), experimental performance (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Melbourne’s Emerging Writers Festival, 2014), and recently an interactive game-based performance for the Museum of Australian Democracy (We, the People, Old Parliament House, 2019). Cathy’s work with young people is an important part of her artistic practice. She has made theatre with young artists at Canberra Youth Theatre for over ten years, including directing digital puppetry play Insomniac Attack (2014) and mentoring the emerging playwrights who wrote Possibility (2019). She is currently working on a screenplay adaptation of her surreal mother-daughter drama Hired Mother, a reimagined Lysistrata (after Aristophanes), and an experimental apocalyptic opera about mushrooms.

Jena Prince is a Canberra-based director, movement specialist and teaching-artist. She is passionate about creating extraordinary theatre with young people. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology/Drama) from the University of Queensland, part of which involved a semester abroad studying acting at the University of California, Berkeley. Jena has been working with young people since 2007, and is currently a teaching-artist with Canberra Youth Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre, Imagination Theatre, and the Australian Theatre for Young People. Jena specialises in a number of areas including: group devising using Viewpoints and Composition; the Suzuki Method of Actor Training; Butoh dance theatre; and creating choreography for non-dancers. She also regularly devises and writes plays with primary and secondary school students.

Recent directing credits include: for ATYP, Charlie Pilgrim: or a Beginners Guide to Time Travel (2018, nominated for the Sydney Theatre Awards); for Perform Australia, Beauty and the Beast (2022), for Imagination Theatre, Medea (2020), Tantalus (2019), Please Remain Calm (2018). Recent choreography credits include: for Perform Australia, Beauty and the Beast (2022); for Presbyterian Ladies College, A History of Everything (2019), Inheritance (2017); for Cranbrook School, Buckets (2019); for ATYP, Fight With All Your Might The Zombies of Tonight (2016).

Mirjana began her professional acting and teaching careers at just 18 years of age, performing in Sydney’s Sidetrack Theatre’s acclaimed production of Adios Cha Cha which went on to tour the nation, and teaching children’s programs for the Sydney Performing Arts Centre. Mirjana graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1991, after which she taught, directed, produced, and created original works in a range of schools and theatre companies around Australia.

In 2003 Mirjana established her own theatre company, film school and performance centre, the Queensland Actors’ Playhouse (QAP), which she ran for 16 years. Students from QAP have gone on to perform and work all over the world, from lead roles with the BBC to major Hollywood movies, as award winning feature filmmakers and theatre practitioners, fronting top selling Australian bands, and in comedy and stand up from Melbourne to Iceland! Over 100 of Mirjana’s students also went on to be accepted into Australia’s major drama schools and universities including NIDA, VCA, WAAPA and QUT.

Over the several decades that Mirjana has been working with adults and children in theatre she has developed a range of techniques that develop both the actor and the person. Mirjana is looking forward to bringing to the Canberra Youth Theatre her passion for creating safe yet challenging environments in which young people can be nurtured, empowered and inspired.

Rachel has recently emigrated from Scotland. They graduated from Napier University with a BA(hons) in Acting and English Literature in 2017. They are one of the founding members of Storyboard Theatre, pieces of their work include the debut romantic classical fringe show The Shakespeares: Scenes from a Marriage written by Donna Soto Morettini and The Patient Prisoner by James Boal, written in response to 100 years of women winning the vote in Scotland. As well as this they worked as a drama assistant with Strangetown Co. and traveled to areas in Scotland delivering music workshops. Their ten years experience of the Edinburgh Fringe from performing, directing, stage management and technical work has prepared them for a world of theatrical oddities and they are excited to see what Canberra has in store.

Coming soon.