Wonderverse

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).

Elisha Umuhuri is a member of DEM MOB, an Aboriginal hip hop group formed in Pukatja APY lands in northern South Australia. Young DEM MOB front men Elisha Umuhuri and Jontae Dare are the first rappers to perform and record in the ancient Pitjantjatjara language, challenging expectations and becoming community role models along the way. Working on Wonderverse is Elisha’s first time composing for live theatre and he thanks CASM for initiating this opportunity and supporting this journey.

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.

Alex is an Adelaide-based technician, working across lighting, sound, and av; specialising in technical/system design. Alex started tech at high school to try and skip class, but it ended up becoming something he fell in love with and eventually turned into a career. Since then, he has worked across theatre, film, live music and events for companies including Patch Theatre, Windmill Theatre Company, Australian Dance Theatre, Restless Dance Theatre, Gravity & Other Myths, Marvel Studios and more. He first worked with Patch during a high school work experience placement. He came in for a week of creative development on The Moon’s a Balloon and helped to build set and lighting elements of the show. After getting into the industry as an adult he found his way back to Patch and has become the System Designer, Touring Technician and Operator on most of Patch’s shows/productions.

Since graduating from Adelaide College of the Arts’ technical production course, Darian has gained valuable experience through his time working in local venues, for theatre and dance companies, festivals, installations, and events. Darian has worked as a head venue technician and electrician for the Adelaide Festival, assisted with the lighting of Adelaide Fringe Festival’s opening night parades, and toured with Anna Goldsworthy’s Piano Lessons. Recently he has worked on such productions as Windmill Theatre Co’s Beep, Slingsby Theatre Company’s Emil and the Detectives, Australian Dance Theatre’s Construct, and worked on interactive installations for Adelaide creative Sandpit.

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.

Sheri McCoy aka ‘The Costume Creator’ has been designing and creating costumes and millinery for around 28 years.

Usually found creating bespoke costumes and theatrical millinery for Drag, Burlesque and Circus artists, Musicians and private clients. She has recently designed and created costumes for Dunnart Productions – Bettongs and Buddies 2022/23, Massaoke 2023, Smashed-Brunch and The Nightcap 2023/24; Kween Kong – Drag Race Down Under 2022 and Global Allstars 2023; Sound of Circus 2024.

Sheri loves playing with unconventional materials, learning new techniques and watching her creations help a performer bring a character to life. 

Rachel is a graduate of Flinders University Drama Centre in South Australia. She has performed in The Dictionary of Lost Words (STCSA/STC), Macbeth, A Doll’s House, In the Club, Sense and Sensibility (STCSA Ensemble), Jasper Jones and Decameron 2.0 (STCSA), Angelique (isthisyours?), Cranky Bear, The Lighthouse (Patch), Limit, Red Sky Morning (STCSA Umbrella), Tartuffe (STCSA/Brink), The Wolves (RUMPUS), Speak Out (ActNow), Foolz (Flinders University) and This Storm (The Unrest Cure). Her puppeteer credits include the Australian and USA tours of Bluey’s Big Play (Windmill Theatre/HVK), Beep (Windmill Theatre) and on screen in Beep and Mort (Windmill Pictures). She directed Di and Viv and Rose (RUMPUS), worked as assistant director on Girls and Boys (STCSA), As One (Tiny Bricks) and Love and Information (Flinders Drama Centre) and was an Intimacy Consultant on Requiem (Adelaide Festival).

Ezra graduated from AC arts in 2006. Since then has had the great pleasure performing all over Australia and around the world including London, Canada, USA and China. Ezra is a proud Australian Filipinx performer and one of the highlights of his career was writing and performing in Blood, Sweat & Karaoke a modern Australian story that focuses on cultural identity.

Other works you may have seen Ezra in include: The Wizard of Oz, Beep, Rumpelstiltskin, Grug and the Rainbow, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, That Eye, The Sky, Rip Cord, Hibernation, Chalk Face, Candide.

Ellen Steele is a theatre maker, performer and director based in Adelaide. 

As a performer Ellen has toured extensively throughout Australia, Asia and North America with companies including Patch Theatre, Windmill Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Vitalstatistix, Slingsby and Belvoir Theatre.  

As an independent Ellen has developed work with Aphids, TerryandTheCuz, Handspring Puppet Company, The Border Project, Larissa McGowan, Spilt Second and Zoe Meagher for Next Wave Festival, Arlo Mountford, Misery Children and Sanctum Theatre. Her latest work See You at the Dance is currently in development.

She is a founding member of isthisyours?, a collective committed to creating new and unconventional performance. Since their inception in 2007, isthisyours? have created five original full scale works, toured nationally and won multiple awards.

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).