Superluminal

Geoff Cobham is the Artistic Director of Patch Theatre and one of Australia’s leading culture professionals, with over 40 years’ experience collaborating in all forms of theatre.

His artistic reputation both nationally and internationally comes from an outstanding multi-award-winning career working with several of Australia’s foremost arts organisations and events. He spent ten years as Associate Director of dance theatre Force Majeure, five years as resident designer at State Theatre Company South Australia and has worked in senior management roles at Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival and WOMAD.

Geoff founded Bluebottle in 1998, an award-winning lighting design company which integrates outstanding lighting design into theatres, galleries, installations, architecture, exhibitions and music.

He has a long and notable history with Patch Theatre, having worked on a variety of productions including The Fastest Boy, Emily Loves to Bounce and Me & My Shadow before taking the reins as Artistic Director in 2018. While at Patch, Geoff has created in-theatre works ZOOOM, I Wish…, and Home and installation works The Lighthouse, Sea of Light, and Mirror Mirror.

Zoë is an acclaimed cellist, composer, sound artist, performance maker and educator. She creates chamber music, scores for film, theatre & dance, gallery sound installations and immersive theatre experiences for intergenerational audiences. She collaborates with leading theatre & sound makers across Australia and internationally. Zoë works across traditional performance spaces, found spaces, and the digital world. Her process is collaborative, relational and reflective, exploring an ongoing inquiry into the politics of slowness, amplifying quiet voices, and relational experiences.

Michelle 'Maddog' Delaney is a maker of things. Places, spaces, feelings and things – forests in disused buildings, themed bars and bespoke furniture, shattering plaster BMX wheels, Ediacaran based décor, rocket stands and giant cocoons, and more. She has worked as a designer, production manager, builder, scenic artist, stage manager, sourcer and sorcerer for major companies, festivals and independent artists. She likes nothing better than working in great teams to produce beautiful experiences. She is currently Creative Associate at Patch Theatre and, with Geoff Cobham, has co-designed all of Patch’s shows since 2019. Maddog’s design credits include Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2018–2021, Dark Mofo 2018 & 2019, Adelaide Festival 2013–2016, Darwin Festival 2010– 2015, Adelaide Fringe 2007–2009, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2012, Red Sky Morning – State Theatre Company of South Australia (2016), and co-design with Meg Wilson on Life is Short and Long – Emma Beech and Vitalstatistix (2016).

James Dodd exhibits regularly across Australia in publicly funded institutions, commercial galleries and artist-run spaces.  He works with a range of approaches including particular interests in painting, machines as art, graffiti, adventure and public space. He maintains a curiosity in sheds, backyards suburbia and the creative activities and transgressions that occur in these spaces.

A recent and ongoing project is The Painting Mill; a contraption that is cobbled together from various household, shed-found and DIY parts such as cordless drills, rollerblades and bicycles, which are operated via remote control. The Painting Mill becomes somewhat performative in its presentation whilst also pursuing painted outcomes that can be engaging in their own right.

Dodd is active as an educator at Adelaide Central School of Art and regularly delivers youth and community based arts programs across a range of outcomes. He is often finding ways to tap into his kinetic art interests to develop educational projects that lean into both visual art and STEM streams.

Bianka is a designer + maker with a diverse practice, working across stage, screen and gallery.  Bianka has been Head of Prop Making for the multi award winning children’s TV series Beep and Mort, lectured in the creative industries division of Adelaide College of the Arts, is Co-Founder of Kinetik Collective and operates a workshop from fab, a new iteration of the acclaimed George Street Studios. 

Her debut solo exhibition Sugar won an Adelaide Fringe 2021 visual arts award and was an industry example of integrating accessibility into the design, fabrication and exhibition of an art experience. Her accessible theatre designs have also been recognised with a 2022 Ruby Award. Permanent public artworks can be found in Adelaide and in the Kangaroo Island Sculpture Trail.

Currently Bianka is working on the design of DreamBIG festival (2025), a range of furniture and objects and a variety of wonderful live performance works.

Luku Kukuku is South Australia’s favourite multidisciplinary multimedia guru, well known for his specialities of Art, Design, Animation, Digital Media, Interactivity and Sound Responsive Multimedia. For over a decade, Luku has been using this varied palette of skills to forge an expanding and award winning career in the Australian art landscape.

The magic of imagination, the delight of creativity, and the thrill of light, colour, and motion constantly drive Luku to strive towards new forms of artistic expression which fully capture the revolutionary tools at our disposal at this wonderful point in history.

Cedric Varcoe is a proud Ramindjeri and Narungga man from Raukkan and Point Pearce communities – an artist, weaver, carver, and respected cultural leader, keeping his culture strong. He has been painting since he was a boy of eight years old, inspired by watching his mother, sisters, brothers, aunts, and uncles as they created their artworks.

His main subjects are Ngarrindjeri Ruwi and Narungga Country, stylised Ngarrindjeri and Narungga ancestors, and his NGA:TJI (totems) snakes and lizards. Growing up, Cedric spent time with his Elders, whom he respected – from them, he learnt about his culture, dreaming sites, and stories. They would tell him, “here you learn weaving, carving, and painting so you can keep your MI:WI (spirit) strong and powerful in knowledge”. As Cedric got older, he began painting and drawing from his childhood memories spent on Country by the ocean, River Lakes, and Coorong. He started creating artworks that share about his lands, waters, history, and stories passed on to him. His unique artistic style is full of colour and reflects his vision, connection and spirit that is strong in his Country.

Cedric's works are held in private and public collections around the world. His art is featured in a variety of products and public artworks, including murals in communities throughout South Australia.

Wiradjuri artist Elisabeth Blomberg, under the name Wiinya, delves into the connection of country and soul through visual and textural creations, inspired by the land that surrounds us.

Coming from rural New South Wales, she watched as her nan and pop painted their Country, and created art with techniques that had been passed onto them. This has followed Elisabeth as she has taken these skills and found her own voice with her art. Be it painting, weaving, or discovering new mediums, Elisabeth produces work from a visceral place of wonder and unknown.

“It started as a way to connect back to myself and really find what brought me joy, but what I found was a way to connect to my culture and also express my creativity”

Wendy has done set and costume design for a variety of performing arts companies and has done everything else from site co-ordination to prop maker and scenic artist. Set and Costume Designer Credits include: Worldhood [Australian Dance Theatre], One [Tutti], Skip Miller [Brink Productions], The Little Green Tractor [Patch Theatre], Ruby Bruise [The Misery Children & Vitalstatistix], Harbinger [Brink Productions], Man Covets Bird [Slingsby], Superheroes [Stone/Castro Productions], The Hypochondriac [Brink Productions], Freaky [Cirkidz & Circus Monoxide], After The End [Adelaide Fringe 09], Beetle Graduation [Brink Productions), The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy [Slingsby 2007], and Three Men in a Tub [Fringe 2009]. Other roles have included Designer and builder of Travelling Street Theatre, Assistant Designer for the Persian Garden, [Adelaide Festival of Arts Nightclub 2008 & 2006]. Site Coordinator [WOMADelaide 07], Prop Maker & Scenic Artist [Moonlantern Parade 2007–2009, Fringe Parade 2009, Windmill Performing Arts, State Theatre Company of SA, Australian Dance Theatre and Performing Lines Wicked The Musical].

Edgell Junior is a proud Ni-Vanuatu man (from Pentecost Island, Vanuatu). From 2011 until 2019, Edgell Junior was a core ensemble member of Vanuatu’s internationally renowned Wan Smolbag Theatre (WSB), who work year-round producing, performing, and touring plays, films, educational resources, and workshop. Alongside performing, Edgell also has extensive experience as a film and stage production crew member and assistant lighting designer.

Edgell has been based in Adelaide, SA since 2020 and undertaken various crew and site build positions for Bamboozled Productions, Gluttony, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, Adelaide Festival and FEAST Festival.

From 2021–2023 Edgell was a member of Slingsby’s Flying Squad – creating and touring workshops and new works The Memoryologist, This Tree is a Story and Light Creatures across SA venues, schools, and festivals and most notably ‘The River That Ran Uphill’ which premiered as part of the 2023 Adelaide Festival and was based on Edgell’s story of his experience and survival of cyclone Pam that devastated Vanuatu in 2015.

Most recently, Edgell has been working with Patch Theatre on delivering their Sea of Light installation and new in-school touring work Glow & Tell. Edgell looks he forward to finding new projects and artistic collaborators where he can share and build on his experience, and proudly share Pacific Islander stories, perspective, and culture.

Astrid is a performer/theatre maker and teacher who works predominantly on collaborative, new works. She has worked with most South Australian companies and many independent artists. She co-created and performed in Me & My Shadow, Emily Loves to Bounce, Mr McGee and the Biting Flea and performed in Sharon Keep Ya Hair On and Pigs, Bears, Billy Goats Gruff for Patch Theatre. For Ladykillers Astrid wrote and performed in the award winning Cake, The Pyjama Girl and Based on a True Story. She has also worked extensively with Restless Dance and Vitalstatistix. Astrid sang for the re-score of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis for Sydney Opera House, Mona Foma, AFF & Fed. Square. She runs workshops for arts organisations and schools. Astrid is currently working on an original solo work – WIDOW WEIRDO with long term collaborators Ingrid Voorendt and Zoë Barry.

Evyenia “Jennifer” Stefanidis is a multidisciplinary Greek-Australian artist working on Kaurna Country, South Australia. An alum of the Flinders University Drama Centre, she continued her collaborative, ensemble-based practice as a member of Slingsby’s Flying Squad.

In 2022, Jennifer undertook a directorial secondment with State Theatre Company South Australia on Antigone, for which she performed various offstage roles before stepping in as an understudy. Evyenia finalised her work with Slingsby Theatre in The River That Ran Uphill, as part of the 2023 Adelaide Festival and Slingsby’s By Request program, touring metropolitan, rural and regional South Australia.

She is enthusiastic to join Patch Theatre’s Spark program as a Glow & Tell creator and performer. Her recent credits include The River That Ran Uphill, This Tree is a Story (Slingsby Theatre), The Seagull (Dir. Connor Reidy) and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (Dir. Anthony Nicola).