Jane Harrison: From Page to Stage to Screen to Opera

Jane Harrison is descended from the Muruwari people of NSW. Her first play Stolen toured Australia and internationally. Rainbow’s End premiered in 2003 and won the 2012 Drovers Award. The Visitors (play) premiered in 2020 with a new production at the Sydney Opera House in 2023, winning the Sydney Critics Award for Best New Australian Work for 2021, the Best Production and Best Ensemble in the 2024 awards. The opera The Visitors premiered in 2023. Her novel Becoming Kirrali Lewis won the 2014 Black & Write! Prize while her latest novel is The Visitors. She is the Festival Director of Blak & Bright First Nations Literary Festival (2016, 2019, 2022, 2024).

Alethea Beetson is a Kabi Kabi/Gubbi Gubbi + Wiradjuri storyteller + dreamer who has worked extensively with Indigenous communities across multiple art forms to inspire new works responding to societal issues, cultural heritage and colonisation. Her research explores the function of insurgence and resurgence in the creative development and production of Indigenous performance.

In 2013 Alethea founded Digi Youth Arts (DYA) is an Indigenous led youth arts organisation sharing the stories of our young people. Her tenure at Digi Youth Arts has seen Alethea write and direct the following productions from a community engaged practice: COOKED (2022, QPAC), ANTHRO-APOLOGY (2018, Queensland Museum), Waiting and Searching (2016, Metro Arts), Don't Read The Comments (2016, Metro Arts), in-dij-uh-nus (2015, Brisbane Powerhouse; 2016 Festival of Pacific Arts in Guam; 2018, La Boite Theatre Company), Losing It (2017, La Boite Theatre Company); and direct Restless Dream (2021, Brisbane Festival), The Truth Is (2014, Twelfth Night Theatre) & Glad Tomorrow (2013, Brisbane Powerhouse).

Alethea also adapted and directed Alexis Wright's Carpentaria as an immersive literary performance for Brisbane Writers Festival in 2017 and 2019. In 2021 Alethea adapted one of her theatre works Losing It into a short-film.

She has worked as a First Nations Music Curator and Producer across BLAKSOUND, Brisbane Festival, BIGSOUND, Horizon Festival, Yonder and Jungle Love.