Announcing the 2026 Kolyang Program Participants

Mark Haslam
…and then I found you
Studio Boosters

Mark’s practice is a hybrid of technical production, design, direction and performance, with a particular focus upon raw performance styles and the integration of media into contemporary performance.

He has worked with many leading contemporary arts companies and practitioners across performance, dance, music and visual arts, touring work across 4 continents.

He has built major projects with Societas Raffaello Sanzio, erth, Marregeku, Branch Nebula, Stalker Theatre, The Farm, Legs on the Wall, Force Majeure, Company B and Sydney Theatre Company as well as unique festival performances with Wesley Enoch, Nigel Jamieson and Shaun Gladwell.

He has lit some of the world’s top DJs (Fatboy Slim, Carl Cox, Sasha) and fashion houses (Alexander MacQueen; Gucci) and lives in Cockburn, Western Australia, with a mermaid and their kid.

Aki Sato-Johnson
The Maids
Studio Boosters

Aki Sato-Johnson is a Japanese-American performer, theatre maker, and teacher whose work fuses the physical precision of a trained dancer with the vocal and emotional expressiveness of an actor. For 17 years she was a core member of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), performing leading roles including Renée in Madame de Sade, Electra in Electra, Andromache in The Trojan Women, and the Rabbit in Kachi Kachi Yama. Her portrayal of Renée in the 2022 Tokyo revival of Madame de Sade at Kichijoji Theatre earned her the Teatro Theatre Magazine Award for Exceptional Performance.

With SCOT, Aki toured internationally to more than 28 cities across 17 countries, performing at major international festivals including the Theatre Olympics, the Edinburgh International Festival, and the Jerzy Grotowski Theatre Festival.

An experienced teacher of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, Aki has led workshops at the Suzuki Toga Camp and taught internationally in Vladivostok, Jakarta, and Bali. She currently serves as a Lecturer in the Acting and Bachelor of Performing Arts programs at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).

Now based in Boorloo (Perth), Aki is expanding her practice into devising, directing, and the development of her own physical theatre training method. She has begun creating new devised works in Australia, including Passports and Rhinoceros, in collaboration with director Sam Bruce, and is co-artistic director of CENTA co. Physical Theatre. Through CENTA, she facilitates regular physical training for performers in Boorloo and is developing new works that explore the transformative potential of physical theatre.

Scott Elstermann
The Nibbled End of a Pencil
Studio Boosters

Scott Elstermann is a multi-award-winning dancer and choreographer. He is the first Australian and youngest-ever international recipient of the prestigious Pina Bausch Fellowship for Dance & Choreography. Scott graduated as Dux of WAAPA, receiving the Palisade Award for ‘Most Outstanding Graduate’. He has since gone on to perform for the Merce Cunningham Trust (USA), Requardt & Rosenberg (UK), Lucy Guerin, Stephanie Lake, Shona Erskine and Brooke Leeder.

His choreographic work has won numerous awards including ‘Outstanding New Work’ three-times and ‘Outstanding Choreography’ two-times at the Performing Arts WA Awards. He has also been nominated for an Australian Dance Award and Green Room Award. This success has led to commissions for the West Australian Opera, WA Youth Orchestra, Freeze Frame Opera, Breaksea, LINK Dance Company and WAAPA. Internationally, Scott has choreographed for the famed Venice Biennale under the mentorship of Wayne McGregor and in 2026, he will take part in the renowned ATLAS Choreographic Scholarship program at ImPulsTanz in Vienna. Scott has received many personal accolades including the 2025 ECU Young Alumni Award, 2024 Western Australian of the Year finalist, 2020 WA Young Achiever of the Year (Arts & Culture) and ‘Best Performer’ at the Performing Arts WA Awards.

Sam Nerida
Practising Mentorship

Sam Nerida (they/them) is a writer, dramaturg, performer and facilitator, often working in arts x disability and arts x education spaces. They spend creative time with young people via companies including Barking Gecko Arts, WA Youth Theatre Co, Sensorium Theatre and Australian Theatre for Young People, as well as teaching into the Bachelor of Performing Arts: Performance Making at WAAPA. Sam is also currently a 2026 – 2027 WAAPA Guest Artist working on a script commission for the graduating BPA class of 2027. Their most recent performance credits are Oddysea (Sensorium Theatre, 2025) Melville Midwinter (City of Melville, 2025) and TOAST (Black Swan State Theatre Company, 2022). Plays include See You Next Tuesday, (Best New Work and Best Independent Production, PAWA Awards 2019, published by Playlab in 2022), and Gal Pals (published by Playlab in 2026), as well as high-school commissions 40 Years Later (2021) and Rumour Has It (2022) and an APT commission for the Dear Australia monologue project (2020). They were the Creative Learning Coordinator and subsequently Associate Producer for Perth Festival from 2021 – 2024, and served on the Board of The Blue Room Theatre from 2020 – 2024.

Carole Katz
Practising Mentorship

Hailing from Reunion Island, Carole Katz is a Boorloo-based creative, primarily working across music and dance to tell stories inspired by her layered identity.

Growing up on a multicultural French island with parents from Madagascar, Carole was immersed from an early age in a rich tapestry of cultures, music and stories. Living in Boorloo deepened Carole’s appreciation for her island heritage which she honoured over a decade of acclaimed performances in Western Australia and Victoria.

As a singer-songwriter of her band Tchéga, Carole brings to life the sunny, sassy and soulful spirit of the Indian Ocean islands, featuring traditional beats with a contemporary flair. In recent years, she has performed to sold-out audiences across Boorloo, including a praised show at Perth Festival. Her band earned the WAM Song of the Year award in the Global Category (2025).

With an emerging interest in theatre, in early 2026 Carole co-led, Waves Between Us, a performance about growing and maturing away from your roots. As part of the Blue Joy Theatre Company’s creative development New Beginnings, the performance weaves spoken word, music and dance. Carole looks forward to experimenting and growing as a performance maker and storyteller on Whadjuk Noongar land.

Colin Archibald
Practising Mentorship

Colin Archibald is a writer, storyteller, and emerging performance maker whose work explores identity, belonging, intergenerational trauma, and healing through lived experience. Drawing from his Jamaican and British heritage, Colin creates emotionally honest narratives that invite audiences into spaces of reflection, connection, and dialogue. His practice blends, theatre, and personal storytelling and poetry to examine the emotional impact of migration, culture, masculinity, and self-discovery.

Colin’s creative journey has been shaped through community storytelling, live performance, and collaborative arts spaces, where he has continued developing a voice grounded in vulnerability and authenticity. His work often centres on creating meaningful audience experiences that extend beyond traditional performance settings.

He is currently developing Oceans Apart: The Continuation, a new live storytelling work that expands on themes from his original piece Oceans Apart. The work reflects on ancestry, displacement, memory, and the emotional ties that connect people across generations and oceans.

Combining, music, and storytelling, the project aims to deepen conversations around identity, connection, and healing.

Through the Kolyang mentorship opportunity, Colin hopes to further develop his performance-making practice, refine his creative process, and explore new ways of integrating movement and storytelling into immersive and impactful live work.

Mani-Mae Gomez
Practising Mentorship

Mani Mae Gomes is a Boorloo-based independent performing artist who works across dance, theatre, and music, relishing opportunities to blend these passions. They danced and sang in Daisy Sanders’ A Resting Mess (2024), acted and danced in Pavan Kumar Hari’s Child (2025), and sang and danced in Muriel Hillion’s Sanctuary Within (2025). They work regularly with Sensorium Theatre as a musician and actor, delivering accessible stories to children with disability through play.

Mani has a Bachelor of Arts (Dance) Honours and developed their acting and musical abilities outside of formal tertiary-level training. Mani’s intersecting identities (queer, neurodivergent, agender, mixed race African Australian) feed into their practice.

Currently, Mani is working in collaboration with Ainslie Allan on an evolving improvisational movement and vocal practice. It prioritises radical honesty of movement and vocal impulses through interoceptive awareness and mutual trust. The practice is durational, stimmy, vulnerable, intimate, sensual, musical, physical and celebrates friendship and care.

Alexia U-Minn Skipper (Western Australia)
WA–SE Asia Lab

Alexia U-Minn Skipper, 优敏 (She/Her), is an emerging Chinese-Australian Playwright and Performance Maker based in Whadjuk Noongar Country, Perth. Hailing from Singapore, she’s interested in bilingual theatre making, inclined to see how Australian audiences might understand languages they cannot speak. The mixed-race dilemma strongly undercurrent the performances she writes as she explores how to centre collective care and reciprocal cultural safety in her process.

Her recent performances include: “Your Dad is Probably a Racist” [Director/Devisor – Winter Nights TBRT 2026], “HERE/NOW” [Assistant Director/Dramaturg/Performer], “BLOOP BLOOP” [Designer/Devisor/Performer], “Generator: Precipice” [Student Director/Writer/Performer], “Echolocation” [Assistant Designer/Performer], “Nightwalks with Teenagers” [Performer/Devisor – Perth Festival 2024].

Her play, “Those Plates That Look Like Bowls but Are Flat Enough to Be Plates” has been published by Currency Press (2025), and she’s participated in ATYP’s National Studio (2024), CAAP X BSSTC’s Playwrights Lab (2024) and the ConnectUp! Youth Encounter in Forli, Italy (2024). She is currently a member of the Encounter Youth Ensemble, and Co-Founder of BikeLock Art House, a collective grounded in relentless cross promotion and building a vibrant, BiPoc-led artscene across different disciplines in Boorloo.

Isabella Stone (Western Australia)
WA–SE Asia Lab

Isabella Stone is a dance & performance artist whose work spans diverse spaces as a choreographer, teacher & mentor. Isabella centers the performers’ lived experiences within shared stories/experiences & is interested in work that explores intimate, bodily & immense current social themes. She was the Artistic Director of DRILL Performance Company a youth dance company based in nipaluna/Hobart (2020 – 2023). She has performed for national & international choreographers, was a Tasdance company member (2017 – 2019) & has participated in extensive creative research residencies across Europe & Australia & most recently in Tokyo & ATLAS choreographic programme as part of Impulstanz Vienna.

Lea Šimić (Western Australia)
WA–SE Asia Lab

Lea Šimić was born and bred in the suburbs of Western Sydney with a mix of Balkan rigour and late night dancing. Her own works are loud, fun and ultimately an archive of stories that sit in the in-between. These experiences showed her that the best way to connect people was through a good party and has become the premise of her Honours thesis where she is curating a new work titled Zajedno jedemo (Together we eat). Lea’s original work Your Blood Isn’t Better Than Mine was developed through The Blue Room Theatre’s 600 Seconds MAKES program (2024) and during a residency at Krusce Centre in Slovenia (2024). She played Mary as part of Bush Chook at The Blue Room Theatre, Perth and Gasworks, Melbourne which is now being developed in Sydney. Lea also took part in the Perth Festival Lab (2026). She has produced the award-winning show Bush Chook and is now producing How To Stay Married Without Exploding! She also performed as one of the female leads in Katzenmusik (2026) and was awarded the WAAPA Scholarship for Excellence. Beyond the stage, her writing has been featured in WhyNot and has sat on the WAAPA and ATYP Advisory Board.

Leah Mercer (Western Australia)
WA–SE Asia Lab

Leah Mercer is a theatre director/maker/writer/educator. As co-Artistic Director of The Nest Ensemble she directed and co-wrote (with Margi Brown Ash and Zac Callaghan) Wanderings for QTC’s DOOR 3 season (2024); directed Callaghan’s Queer as Flux for MELT Festival at Brisbane Powerhouse (2025 & 2021), Midsumma Festival Theatre Works (2024), Sydney Opera House Studio (2022) and The Blue Room Theatre (2021); Eve by Brown Ash at Brisbane Powerhouse (2017), The Blue Room Theatre and Metro Arts Theatre (2012); Home by Brown Ash for QTC’s DIVA season (2015) and La Boite Theatre (2012); Joey: the Mechanical Boy (co-written with Brown Ash) for The Blue Room Theatre (2014); The Knowing of Mary Poppins (co-written with Dorney, Brown Ash, Callaghan & Schmidt) at Darlinghurst Theatre (2009), Adelaide Fringe (2008) and Brisbane Powerhouse (2006 & 2005); and wrote/performed A Mouthful of Pins at Brisbane Powerhouse (2008). She won Best Director for Joey: the Mechanical Boy at Performing Arts WA (2014) and Brisbane’s Silver Matilda Award for directing The Knowing of Mary Poppins (2007). She coordinates and teaches Theatre Arts at Curtin University and is on the board of Spare Parts Puppet Theatre.

Naoko Uemoto (Western Australia)
WA–SE Asia Lab

Naoko’s practice has grown on unceded Whadjuk land, particularly through the exploratory music scene. As a saxophonist, she most often performs in improvisatory contexts, with organisations such as Tone List and The Blue Room Theatre. Her interests in liveness, play, and queer dancefloors often manifest through the mediums of instrumental performance, theatre, and installation. She has also been supported by programs with the Australian Art Orchestra (VIC), WAYJO, pvi collective, Centre for Stories, Performing Lines, PICA, and Perth Festival. This year, she has been developing her practice in composition and sound design through the CITS Arts Fellowship for Young People, with a focus on the baritone saxophone.

Naoko also enjoys contributing to event programming and facilitation, such as in her role as Creative Coordinator for Propel Youth Arts’ KickstART Festival 2024, and through co-running a youth-led improvised music collective, WWIM.

Rebecca Riggs-Bennett (Western Australia)
WA–SE Asia Lab

Rebecca Riggs-Bennett (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, award-winning sound designer, music producer and emerging curator who creates collaborative, devised and experimental work informed by personal and shared experiences, stories, sites, and moments in history. She writes, performs and produces sonic material, treating sound as an immersive medium that transmits meaning, transports audiences, and transforms environments in real time. Through this approach, Rebecca creates intimate experiences that manifest as performances, installations and participatory artworks, including so once you were here they had you (commissioned by Fremantle Biennale 2023), Our Sandman (Cool Change Contemporary 2019) and my sandman (Crack Theatre Festival 2017).

Rebecca has produced work for 50+ projects in WA and so-called Australia, weaving her artistry and sonic practice into live performances, participatory artworks, installations, short films, theatre productions, galleries and museums. She is currently working as a curator with SPACED for the 2026-27 program Know Thy Neighbour #4: Gestures, tending to eight multidisciplinary, socially-engaged artist projects around Perth/Boorloo.

Rebecca was recently awarded Outstanding Sound Design at the Performing Arts WA Awards in both 2026 for The 7 Stages of Grieving with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company, and in 2025 for Up There (Wayalup) in collaboration with Up There Collective.