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 Angela Betzien is a multi award winning writer and a founding member of RealTV. Angela received the Queensland Theatre Company/Comalco Young Playwrights award first when she was 16 and then three years running in 1994, 1995, and 1996. She also won the Queensland Theatre Company/Courier Mail George Landen Dann Award in 1998 for Queensland Playwriting.
Hoods, commissioned by Sydney Opera House: Ed and Regional Arts Victoria, is Angela’s most successful play to date. The play premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2006, has toured extensively in Australia and been seen by over forty thousand school children. In 2007 Hoods was included as part of the Come Out Festival for Young People and won an Australian Writers’ Guild Award for Theatre for Young Audiences as well as the inaugural Richard Wherrett Prize for Excellence in Playwriting, Australia’s richest playwriting award. Hoods, enjoyed a return season in 2008 as part of the ASSITEJ International Festival for Young People being performed at the Sydney Opera House and Brisbane Powerhouse and was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Children’s Theatre. In 2009, Hoods was produced by Barking Gecko at Subiaco Arts Centre followed by a tour of Western Australian schools and regional centres.
Angela was commissioned by Queensland Arts Council to write Children of the Black Skirt, produced by Real TV, which toured Queensland and Victorian schools for three years from 2003 to 2005. The play was also included as part of the Come Out Youth Arts Festival in Adelaide in 2005 and was the winner of the 2005 Drama Victoria Award for Best Performance by a Theatre Company for Secondary Schools. Her numerous other plays have had professional and independent productions including Playboy of the Working Class and The Orphanage Project (Queensland Theatre Company) The Kingswood Kids (La Boite Theatre) The Suitcase (Real TV & Stage X) and Princess of Suburbia (Real TV). In 2008, Angela’s play Girl Who Cried Wolf, commissioned by Sydney Opera House:Ed and Arena Theatre premiered as part of the ASSITEJ International Festival for Young People at Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Arts Centre.
Angela was recently commissioned by Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and Camp Quality to write an educational play for school students, The Teenage Alchemist. She is currently in development on several exciting projects including War Crimes, a joint commission with Sydney Opera House: Ed, Regional Arts Victoria and Real TV. Perth’s Black Swan Theatre Company commissioned Angela to write an adaptation of her play Motel, now called The Dark Room, which recently premiered as part of their 2009 Hotbed Ensemble season. Angela is currently writing a libretto based on her play The Orphanage Project.
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Pete Goodwin is a classically trained Composer, Sound Designer, Producer, Performer and DJ. Based in Melbourne, Pete has created the soundscapes for all Real TV productions to date (2000-2009). Pete is also a composer for Film, Television, Advertising and Modern Dance (www.redlightdisco.com). In early 2009, Pete composed and performed five original tracks for the telemovie, “Saved”, by award winning director, Tony Ayres, commissioned by SBS and Film Victoria, and starring Claudia Karvan. “Saved” screened on SBS television on Easter Sunday 2009. Currently Pete is working as composer, sound designer and soundtracker on the Sydney based film, “Drowning”, funded by Screen Australia and directed by Craig Boreham. Pete’s DJ outfit, Red Light Disco, is a regular fixture on the Melbourne party scene (www.myspace.com/redlightdisco). DJ highlights include live DJ sets on JJJ (The Club Sep 2006. Mix-Up Mar 2005), creating a catwalk soundtrack for Aurelio Costarella’s spring/summer collection launch at New York Fashion Week (Sep 2007), and producing a boutique mash-up album, called “Mush-Up”, for Festival Mushroom Records and Warner Music in 2006. Pete also writes and performs original electronic dance music under the name, The Sweats (www.myspace.com/getthesweats).
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Leticia Cáceres - Director |
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Leticia Cáceres has directed for many professional theatre companies, production houses and festivals across Australia including Barking Gecko: Hoods (2009); Queensland Theatre Company: The Orphanage Projectby Angela Betzien (2003) Far Away by Caryl Churchill (2004), and The Memory of Water By Sheelaugh Stephenson (2005), for which she received a Matilda Award nomination for Best Director; For Sydney Opera House: Children of the Black Skirt (2005); Hoods (2006); La Boite Theatre and Energex Brisbane Festival: The Kingswood Kids (La Boite, 2002); Magdalena Australia Festival: Princess of Suburbia (2003); Stage X Festival: The Suitcase (2001); University of Southern Queensland Shakespeare Festival: The Taming of the Shrew (2005).
In 2000 she co founded of nationally acclaimed Real TV with writer Angela Betzien, and their work has toured extensively across the country with Regional Arts Victoria, Queensland Arts Council and to the Come Out International Children’s Festival (Hoods and Children of the Black Skirt, 2003-2007).
Their latest work HOODS won the 2009 Matilda Award for Best Independent Production and the 2007 AWGIE Award for Theatre for Young Audiences. HOODs toured to ASSITEJ World Congress, as well as Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney’s Opera House. It also received a Helpmann Nomination for Best Children’s Theatre (2008). Leticia was the Artistic Director for TANTRUM Theatre in Newcastle (2006-2008) for which she directed Cosi by Louis Nowra (2008) which one the City of Newcastle People’s Choice Award, We Came In Chains (2007) Winner of Newcastle City Drama Award for Best Dramatic Production; Riot! (2007); Savage Naked Love and Powerforce Live (2006). Leticia’s other professional appointments include Intern Director and Associate Director for Queensland Theatre Company (2003-2004).
In 2005 she was awarded the Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor’s Fellowship for Excellence in the Arts, to study Direction in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Nominated as one of the nation’s 1000 “Best and Brightest”, Leticia was invited to participate in the Creative Stream of the Prime Minister’s 2020 Summit. In 2008 she was a recipient of a British Council Realise Your Dream Award. She is currently a Creative Fellow for the State Library of Victoria where she is developing a new location based games with Real TV. Real TV is also under commission from the Sydney Opera House and Regional Arts Victoria to develop a new work for young audiences. In 2009 Leticia was invited by ASSITEJ Germany to attend their bi-annual International Director’s Seminar in Hamburg. She has a first class Honours degree in Direction from the Queensland University of Technology. |
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Jodie Le Vesconte - Actor |
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 Jodie Le Vesconte initiated her training at Queensland University of Technology and received a performing arts scholarship to study at the Shakespeare & Company Summer Training Institute (Boston). She has appeared in numerous plays including The Shape of a Girl (Sydney Opera House) Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset, The Memory of Water, The Orphanage Project, Phedra, The Threepenny Opera, Love Puke (Queensland Theatre Company); The Suitcase, Princess of Suburbia, Children of the Black Skirt, Hoods (Real TV); The Man Who Sold the World, Macbeth, Unleashed (Zen Zen Zo); Wicked Bodies, Third World Blues (La Boite Theatre); Dracula, Richard the Third, Scathac and Aoife (Fractal Theatre) and The Knowing of Mary Poppins (The Nest) Bigger Than Tina (Backyard Productions). In November, Jodie will appear at the Malthouse in Africa, a new work by Melbourne company My Darling Patricia. In 2010, Jodie will tour internationally with Hoods and nationally with Shape of a Girl (Sydney Opera House).
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