The End of Winter

Siren Theatre Co commissions and produces new Australian plays, classics, work for young people and families, and partners with producing and presenting organisations to give our vital artists and audiences bold imaginative experiences.

Siren is always evolving but these things hold true: the work would look ridiculous in other mediums; always tell a good story; keep the actor at the centre of the work; don’t add to the crap in the world; the work is beautiful, rigorous, imaginative, and timely.

Telling female-centred stories; interpreting plays through a female-centred lens is as important as supporting exciting female artists.  Not exclusively. But preferably.

Noëlle Janaczewska is a playwright, poet, and essayist. She is the author of The Book of Thistles (UWA Publishing)—part environmental history, part poetry, part memoir—and the collection Scratchland (UWA Publishing Poetry Series). A graduate of Oxford and London Universities with a Doctorate from University of Technology Sydney, she is the recipient of multiple awards, fellowships, and residencies, including the 2020 New South Wales Premier’s Digital History Prize, a Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, the Griffin Award, ten AWGIE (Australian Writers’ Guild Industry Excellence) Awards and a Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale for her body of work as a dramatist. Noëlle’s recent productions include Mrs C Private Detective (ABC Radio National, 2022); Experiment Street (ABC Radio National, 2019); Yellow Yellow Sometimes Blue (Q Theatre /Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, Sydney, 2018); audio scripts for the National Museum of Australia and the British Museum’s Rome: City and Empire exhibition, and Good With Maps (Siren Theatre Co, multiple seasons 2016 – 2021).

Producer & Director

Kate Gaul is a theatre and opera director, creative producer, festival director, and designer based in Sydney, New South Wales.  Kate has established herself as a distinctive and inventive director, with directing credits including plays, opera, physical theatre, devised works, and classics for theatre companies and schools in Australia. Most recent directing credits include a new play CAMP for a sell-out season at Sydney World Pride 2023 and an acclaimed interpretation of H.M.S Pinafore, which toured extensively and played Sydney Festival. The End of Winter by Noëlle Janaczewska, on national tour in 2023/4; Kate completed a play, Girl Running, Boy Falling (Shortlisted Stoddard Playwright Award and Longlisted Monte Miller Award) Kate directs a new production of The Magic Flute for Opera Australia's Summer Season and will play Geelong later this year and premieres a new play by Noëlle Janaczewska, The Past is a Wild Party. As an Artistic producer Kate works closely with Clockfire Theatre Company whose current production Plenty of Fish in the Sea tours internationally this year.

Performer

Jane has toured many shows nationally and internationally, voiced radio plays for ABC and Eastside and worked on several new scripts with Playwriting Australia. For Those Who Can Tell No Tales (directed by Jasmila Zbanic) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013 and Jane was awarded Best Female Lead at the Sydney Indie Film Festival for Entailment (directed by Cam Smeal). From 2005-2014, Jane devised and performed in all of version 1.0’s major works including The Table of Knowledge, THIS KIND OF RUCKUS (Helpmann Award, Best Physical/Visual Theatre) and Deeply Offensive & Utterly Untrue (Drover Award, Best Touring Show).

Designer

Soham Apte is a Sydney-based production and costume designer. He is of Indian heritage and grew up in Dubai, before moving to Sydney. After moving to Sydney, Soham studied at a specialized visual arts and design school where his love for art history and design practices grew exponentially. That love kept growing during his time at the National Institute of Dramatic Art studying Design for Performance (BFA, 2022).

Composer

Nate is an international, multi-award-winning composer, sound designer, musical director, and occasional video designer for film, television, radio, advertising and stage. Nate originally trained as a classical and jazz trombonist, and pianist, in addition to fronting several bands as a multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter, and arranger.

Currently based in New York City, Nate has worked extensively in the theatre and live events industries and his detailed music scores and sound designs can regularly be heard on stages around the world.

Lighting Designer

Becky is a theatre and events professional with extensive experience in artistic, technical and project direction. She has focused her career in regional Australia, working on countless productions, festivals and community projects in a variety of roles including; artistic director, project director, event mentor, as well as providing technical and production support for regional artists and communities.