About The Workshop

  Jasmine Baker is a poet, bilingual storyteller and performer, writer and educator based in Western Sydney. Her creative practice spans page, stage, and community spaces, drawing from poetry, prose poetry, memoir, speculative fiction, oral storytelling traditions, performance, and emerging playwriting practice.

Drawing on a multilingual and multi-faith background, her work explores belonging, identity, spirituality, grief, migration, and cultural inheritance, with a particular interest in voice, memory, and the stories people carry across generations. As a performer and storyteller, she creates work that brings together language, imagination, and lived experience for audiences of all ages. 

Jasmine is the founder of Beaux Petits Enfants, a storytelling and educational program delivering workshops and performances across schools, libraries, and cultural institutions throughout Sydney. She is currently undertaking further studies in child psychology, deepening her interest in storytelling as a tool for connection, learning, and emotional development. 

Jasmine is a WestWords alum and participated in the Varuna Emerging Writers’ Residency (2025). Her hybrid prose poetry manuscript was selected for Cultivate Writing NSW (2026) and the Kill Your Darlings Mentorship Program (2026). She has presented at major festivals, schools, and libraries across Sydney and has appeared on SBS World News. She has also developed her first playwriting draft, marking an expansion of her practice into theatre writing. She is currently developing new work for literary and performance audiences. 

  Sunny Grace is a writer, director and creative producer whose storytelling began at fifteen with her first short film made through Open Channel. After earning a BA from Swinburne University in 1991 she worked across media and film, from journalism to actors’ representation, before two decades of experience producing online content, music videos and short films, including the multi-award-winning dik. 

In 2016 she completed an MFA in Dramatic Writing at NIDA and has since won awards for her shorts Trigger Happy and Charging. Her play The Angelica Complex is published by Australian Plays. Selected development and industry credits include the Screenworks/Australian International Screen Forum Write From Home Program, finalist in the AACTA Screenworks Regional Landscapes pitch for her feature Never the Bride, and a Screen NSW Momentum attachment in the script department on the STAN series Year Of.

In 2022 she received the Erin Thomas Prize for Playwriting and was chosen for both the Screenworks Writers Intensive and Directors Intensive. Her TV show Almost Paradise was long-listed for the AWG Monte Miller Award, feature The Bower Girl was long-listed for the AWG Insite Award and TV series co created with Richie Black, Dadhood, received Screen Australia development funding. 

Currently she is adapting Kim Lock’s novel The Other Side of Beautiful for film and co-wrote the play The Bridge, which premiered at KXT in September 2025. Sunny brings lived experience to stories that centre women, challenge gender norms and interrogate capitalism.

    Kate is an actor, writer, theatre maker and educator, known for emotionally grounded, ensemble-driven work. As a writer, she tells intergenerational stories through a feminist lens and has a particular interest in uncovering overlooked perspectives of history. Her work commonly examines themes such as the moral and social pressures placed on women across time, the resilience of ordinary individuals, and the persistence of hope through adversity.
In recent years, Kate's practice has centred on place-based interactive theatre and polyvocal works with a strong social conscience. In 2022 her play, TO THOSE | LEFT BEHIND was awarded Best Production (Judge’s Choice) at Short + Sweet Sydney and selected for inclusion in Dire Theatre's Company 100 Minutes Short Play Exhibition. Inspired by Kate’s own
experiences as an early-career teacher, the work was developed in direct response to interviews conducted with current and retired NSW educators, and was highly praised by members of the NSW Teacher's Federation. In November 2022, the play's success in amplifying the voices of those in the teaching profession was made clear, when Kate and the work were
both publicly recognised by Tanya Davies MP, State Member for Mulgoa in a Community Recognition Statement delivered in parliament.
Most recently, Kate has been exploring how theatre activations of historical sites can deepen audiences’ engagement with national and local history. This led to the immersive one-act play THE SECRETS OF CARMICHAEL MANOR, performed across National Trust properties in Western Sydney and Maitland with locally based casts.

     Dilroop Khangura is an Indian-Australian playwright, actor, and writer from Western Sydney. 

Her work blends comedy with emotional depth, often exploring themes of identity, grief, and resilience through a distinctly cross-cultural lens. Most recently, her mockumentary ‘The Khanguras’ was shortlisted for Tropfest 2026. 

She also participated in the National Theatre of Parramatta’s Staging the World program, where she developed her craft under leading theatre practitioners. As a result of the Australian Theatre for Young People's National Studio in 2022 she had her first play published with Currency Press and performed at Intersection 2023. 

Other publications include a monologue that was published with Playlab Theatre last year. In 2022, she was also selected as the Home and Away & Equity Foundation internship recipient and had the opportunity to spend time with Home & Away's writers and producers.

Josephine Lee is a theatre and audio producer, director, actor, writer and filmmaker creating thought-provoking work for diverse communities. 

They were an ATYP National Studio 2025 participant, with an excerpt from Day in the Life of Instagram showcased at Serpent Secrets – A Lunar New Year Festival (Slanted Theatre in partnership with National Theatre of Parramatta’s True West Program). 

Producing credits include Various Characters (Plus Minus Productions), assistant producer on Snowflake (Good Time Theatrics & JB Theatre Co.) and Girl Band (New Ghosts Theatre Company), and assistant director on Snowflake (Good Time Theatrics & JB Theatre Co.), Atlantis (New Theatre) and As You Like It (Sport for Jove Theatre Company). 

Acting credits include The Eternal Quest to Make Yourself Happy (Or Die Trying) (Q Theatre), Boom (Slanted Theatre), Attempts On Her Life (Montague Basement), As You Like It (Sport for Jove Theatre Company), Julius Caesar (Little Spirits Theatre Company) and The Glass Menagerie (Sydney University Dramatic Society).

     Originally from the town of Murwillumbah, Bundjalung Country, Pirie graduated with distinction from QUT’s BFA in Acting (2025). An artist with a strong foundation in movement, Pirie is passionate about creating work that explores the tenderness of the human experience through humour, playfulness, and absurdity. She is drawn to stories that challenge audiences while fostering connection with a tenderness. 

As an actor, Pirie has built a diverse body of work across theatre and screen. Her theatre credits include Tirra Lirra by The River (dir. Kate Wild), Shakespeare in a Suitcase (dir. Frankie Savage), Bakkhai (dir. Flynn Hall),DNA (dir. Kate Wild), Sickbay (dir. Tom Anderson), Space Cowboy (dir. Wesley Enoch), and La Boite Encores’ X-Stacy (dir. Courtney Stewart). Pirie has also secured leading roles in the following films: Sickbay (dir. Tom Anderson), Sydney (dir. Oliver Motum) and Flowers for Bridie (dir. Sally Osterberg).

Alongside studying acting at university Pirie also took an array of creative writing units which she excelled in such as Genre Writing and storytelling, Writing the Short Story and Introduction to Creative Writing. 

Pirie also has extensive experience in collaborative and community-based creative practice. She has co-written and co-directed the 2022 end-of-year productions for The Small School, choreographed dances for multiple groups for Wollumbin High School's MADDD performances and written original prose for children in one on one drama tutoring environments. She also co-produced the short film Sickbay which she helped secure funding for through co-writing a grant application for the Jennifer Blocksidge Memorial Award Scholarship which she and her production team were later awarded. 

Having so much experience working in team oriented environments with both children and adults Pirie prides herself on the idea that everyone has something to offer creatively from any lived experience.

Linh Pham is a Vietnamese-Australian theatre-maker, playwright, and creative producer working at the intersection of performance, cultural memory, and audience engagement. Specialising in site-specific and multisensory theatre, she creates work that dissolves the fourth wall, transforming audiences from passive observers into active participants within a living narrative.

Linh is the founder, director and scriptwriter of Những Thuở Xuân Vương, a multisensory "Emotional Escape Room" project reimagining Hanoi's cultural heritage through immersive, site-specific storytelling. Now in its third season, the project has been featured on Vietnamese National Television and recognised at the Hanoi Festival of Creative Design as part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. She is also the scriptwriter behind Ca Dao Hồn Việt, an immersive theatrical experience breathing new life into centuries-old Vietnamese folk poetry for contemporary, Gen Z audiences. As Director and Playwright for G'LAMS Musical, Linh wrote and directed two original large-scale productions: “The Seekers of Calm Waves”, set against the 1972 bombing of Hanoi, and “Sunshower Rain”, inspired by Japanese kitsune folklore, each drawing sold-out audiences of 1,000. She has also worked as an editor at W’SUP - WSU’s student publication newspaper. 

Currently completing a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Festival, Events & Drama) at Western Sydney University, Linh serves as a Performance Space Young Ambassador 2026 and has contributed to arts administration, digital storytelling and creative marketing across both Hanoi and Sydney. Her practice is driven by a passion for connecting people, heritage, and place through interdisciplinary, cross-cultural storytelling, and a belief that the most powerful stories are the ones audiences step inside of, not just watch.

Kobra Sayyadi is a Western Sydney–based theatre maker, arts worker and interdisciplinary artist. Her practice spans theatre, poetry, film and audio, and her works aim to invite audiences to step into other worlds and discover or rediscover something new. 

Kobra holds a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English Literature and a minor in Anthropology. Her work is informed by research, lived experience and ethical collaboration, with a particular interest in migration, memory and contemporary Australian identity. Her artistic practice has emerged from Western Sydney, shaped by communities and creative spaces in Fairfield, Liverpool, Cumberland, Campbelltown and Parramatta. 

Most recently, Kobra co-devised a 15-minute theatre show titled “Zeynab’s Visit to Afghanistan” for Addi Road Writer’s Festival and performed two original poems “Faces of Fiji” and “Meditations on a Shawl” on the theme of “Beauty, Truth”. She also wrote a segment and performed alongside Mahdi Mohammadi in Paul Dwyer’s CMI Revival! program at the PACT Centre for Emerging Artists. 

In 2025, Kobra co-wrote and assistant directed Detention with Callan Purcell, an adaptation developed with Monkey Baa Theatre Company and opened at the Riverside Theatres in November 2025. She also completed ATYP’s Emerging Dramaturgs program, further developing her skills in dramaturgical analysis, collaboration and new work development.

Previously, Kobra was co-writer and assistant director of Tuân’s Party (dir. Neda Taha), a new Australian work devised by young Western Sydney artists as part of the 2023 Powerhouse Youth Theatre Company program, which returned for a sold-out second season in 2025. She has also completed the Page to Stage playwriting program with National Theatre of Parramatta and NIDA, facilitated by Donna Abela, showcasing a short play at the program’s conclusion. 

In 2022, Kobra undertook a residency at Bankstown Arts Centre and published her first feature essay, Unveiling through Art, on Turkish-Australian contemporary artist Cigdem Aydemir for the Sydney Review of Books.

More than 70 playwrights have applied to be a part of The Parramatta Play Project.

The Expression of Interest for the WORKSHOP was open for a period of 3 weeks.

The EOI invited emerging and early-career writers living or working in Western Sydney to indicate their interest, experience and availability.

Following an assessment of applications, 12 writers were shortlisted for interview, with eight playwrights ultimately selected to take part.

The eight selected writers represent a broad cross-section of Western Sydney's creative community. 

Together they bring experience across theatre, screen, poetry, fiction, immersive performance, community arts, education and multidisciplinary practice. 

Collectively, the writers draw on a wide range of cultural backgrounds, languages, professions, ages and lived experiences, ensuring the work can explore Parramatta through multiple lenses rather than a single narrative voice.

Equally important was each writer's demonstrated openness to collaboration. The workshop methodology relies on rapid writing, shared authorship, generosity of spirit and a willingness to experiment. Selected writers showed curiosity, flexibility and a commitment to contributing to a collective creative process in which ideas are developed together rather than in isolation.

The aim was to create a cohort where different writing styles, artistic interests and ways of thinking could sit alongside one another productively. Rather than seeking consensus, the project embraces difference, allowing contrasting voices to intersect. 

It is through this conversation between writers and their styles that the work will be created and developed.