July 2025 Residency Create Space
The July 2025 Create Space Residency partners with Milk Crate Theatre (MCT) — a leading company working with artists who have experienced homelessness, mental health challenges, and disability. For over 25 years, Milk Crate has championed these voices through bold performance, artist development, and community engagement, challenging perceptions and affirming creative excellence.
This residency supports Kamini Singh, Owen Gill, Kerry Bashford and Tejas Lorenco — four Milk Crate Theatre Collaborative Artists who, with the guidance of individual mentors, are creating and presenting their new works for the first time.
COLLECTIVE is an intimate showing of these works-in-progress:
- Kamini Singh, mentored by Natalie Rose, presents a woman’s journey through love, loss and line dancing.
- Owen Gill, with mentor Hayden Wright, shares sketch comedy scenes paired with live music.
- Kerry Bashford, mentored by James Brown, performs a queer country-inspired musical sermon.
- Tejas Lorenco, guided by Charles Wu, explores layered character narratives.
The project is directed by MCT Artistic Director Margot Politis, supported by Assistant Director Bethany Simons, and produced by MCT Creative Producer Jessica Saras.
Image credit: Lucy Parakhina, “Hello, Are You Still There?” co-production with Shopfront Arts Co-op and Milk Crate Theatre (2024)
About the artists and mentors
Natalie Rose (she/her) is one third of the performance collective POST, Creative Director/CEO at Shopfront Arts Co-op, and has been involved in Australia’s Contemporary Arts scene for the past 24 years. Her work has been seen nationally and internationally at Sydney Festival, Belvoir, Sydney Theatre Company, and Cambridge Junction (UK). Most recently with POST, Oedipus Schmoedipus has toured to Santiago Chile, West Kowloon Cultural Precinct Authority in Hong Kong and in 2020 was to be showcased as a part of AsiaTOPA at Arts Centre Melbourne. Their 2017 Sydney Festival work Ich Nibber Dibber was remounted at Sydney Opera House and Malthouse Theatre. Nat has facilitated workshops for the past 24 years for Young People and emerging artists with and without disability. Nat has a Bachelor of Arts (Theatre-making) from the University of Western Sydney, Nepean and has previously trained at PACT and Urban Theatre Projects as a member of their ensembles. In 2022/23, Nat began developing My First and Last Solo Show supported by Performing Lines and Creative Australia. She was selected by Creative Australia as a 2022 Arts Leader recipient, spending time abroad exchanging with artists in Indonesia. Most recently, she devised The Lies We Were Told with an ensemble of Young People. This production was awarded the 2023 Sydney Theatre Award for Best Production for Young People. In 2024, Nat has embarked on a new project Si’ Malamalama La’ititi (This little light), with fellow Arts Leader recipients, Grace Vanilau and Bethany Ashley-Ward exploring the intersection between motherhood, community and the arts. Nat will also continue developing My First and Last Solo Show, a further investigation of her creative practice and motherhood. She is on the Board of Directors for Voices of Women and a Board Member on Create NSW’s Community Arts and Cultural Development Panel.
Kamini Singh is a performer, visual artist, singer-songwriter and major line-dancing enthusiast. Kamini’s first show with Milk Crate Theatre was 2016 forum show the LINK Housing Project, and she was then devisor/performer for That’s the Spirit in 2017. In 2022 she orginated the key role of Elixir in Milk Crate Theatre’s major show DUST, performed at The Richard Wherrett Studio, Sydney Theatre Company.
She has a background in painting and photography, has exhibited artworks at Deutsche Bank and Australia Square, and received a scholarship at Point Light Gallery for photography. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from UWS, majoring in mass media and creative writing, with a minor in Australian history.
Kamini is a qualified English teacher currently teaching at TAFE and studying Law. Born in Canada, Kamini is a proud dual national. She is a proud mother and auntie, and an ecstatic grandmother and friend. She sees life as precious and each day of life as a gift.
James Peter Brown is known for his highly evocative, original and diverse music scores and sound design.
Having worked professionally across a large range of genres, from mainstage theatre, film, documentary, animation, video games and virtual reality, his process often involves creating music and sound in synchronicity with the development of the project, creating a strong connection between the material and sound.
His collaborations with directors and producers are often explorations of ethereal emotive experiences that become part of the deeper exploration of character and subject storytelling.
He has formed ongoing artistic collaborations with artists and companies such as Sydney Theatre Company (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Stolen, Constellations, Lord of the Flies, Mosquitoes, The Deep Blue Sea, The Real Thing, Home I’m Darling) Bethesda (Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Fallout Shelter) Victoria Hunt (Tango Wai, Copper Promises) ERTH (Duba, Badu, Winter Camp, The Liminial Hour, Prehistoric Aquarium VR) SOIT (The Lee Ellroy Show, Messiah Run, We Was Them, Nomads) POST (Ich Nibber Dibber, Oedipus Schmoedipus) and Kristina Chan (A Faint Existence, Mountain, Brightness)
For 4 years he worked as the composer for the Belgian based performance group SOIT, with Hans Van Den Broeck, and performed works in Belgium, Austria, France, and the United States.
In the world of commercial music, he has composed scores for brands such as Heinz, Bethesda, Atlassian, Dermalogica, Giff Gaff, and Greenpeace.
He holds a visual arts degree from Sydney College of the Arts, where his focus was on composing and sound design for animation, and a Masters Degree in Acoustic Physics from Sydney University, where his thesis was on the physiological effects of low frequency sound on the body and mind.
In 2020 he began a mentorship program for BIPOC composers and sound designers, in order to help deconstruct the power structures that exist in the Australian Screen and Stage industries, which continues in 2021.
He is now based in Sydney, Australia.
Kerry Bashford (he/him) is a writer and performer from Awabakal land, up Newcastle way. He's a semi-retired journalist but these days writes for performance, with a leaning towards creative non-fiction. A regular contributor to Queerstories, his most recent works have featured at the Naughty Noodle Fun Haus and the revival of cLUB bENT as part of the Performance Space retrospective at 2023 Liveworks. He came to Milk Crate Theatre through their queer elders program and found himself at the age of 60, taking to the stage professionally for the first time in SOLACE (2023), and again with Milk Crate Theatre in co-production with Shopfront Arts Co-op, Hello, Are You Still There? (2024)
Charles Wu is an award-winning actor, musician, and writer. He graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 2014 and is well known for his work on the popular series Doctor Doctor. Charles’ other television credits include Summer Love, The Letdown, Harrow, Here Come the Habibs, and Secret City. Charles can also be seen in the feature film Australia Day alongside Bryan Brown, and the web series Liberty Street.
Charles’ theatre credits include The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui alongside Hugo Weaving, The Lifespan of a Fact, The Importance of Being Earnest, Mosquitoes, Three Sisters, Chimerica (Sydney Theatre Company), The Cherry Orchard alongside Pamela Rabe, An Enemy of the People, Jasper Jones, Scenes from the Climate Era, Ms. Peony, Samson, The Overcoat: A Musical (Belvoir), Golden Blood (Griffin Theatre), The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (Darlinghurst Theatre), The Questions (State Theatre Company South Australia), Bernhardt/Hamlet and Torch the Place for which he won a Green Room award for Best Actor (Melbourne Theatre Company).
He was a finalist for the Heath Ledger Scholarship in 2024.
Charles is the lead singer/songwriter of Sydney indie rock band Earthquake Magnificent. He is currently co-writing his debut feature film.
Tejas has done various bits of acting work since high school, with most of his experience on screen. More recently he has expanded his skill set, working with a variety of different art forms. He has been involved with companies such as The Genesian Theatre, Shopfront Arts Co-op and Milk Crate Theatre. He is very excited to take to the stage in the 2024 productions Hello, Are You Still There? with Shopfront Arts Co-op and Milk Crate Theatre and Shopfront’s Young Company.
Hayden Wright (he/him) is a comedy writer, performer, and producer with training from theatres in New York, Chicago, LA, and all across Australia. He performs regularly in TINYPROV, a two-person improv comedy showcase, and teaches at Improv Theatre Sydney.
Owen Gill is an actor, musician, composer and poet living in Sydney. His theatre credits include: The Glass Menagerie (The Drama Studio), Farndale Avenue’s Macbeth (Darlinghurst Theatre Company), One of Nature’s Gentlemen (New Theatre); and for Milk Crate Theatre:
Natural Order (2019), Surely Shirley (Writer, Director 2018), Wasted (2016), Under Construction (2016), No Place Like (2015), You Are Here (2014), Full Circle (2013) and Fearless (2012). For the latter, Owen was a key lyricist and collaborator on iconic song, ‘The Hell Room’, which is currently published for use in the HSC curriculum.
Owen also appeared as the priest in Looking For Alibrandi (2000). Owen has a great love for music, storytelling, and words, and the power they have to improve the world.
