Miriama McDowell

Ngati Hine

Miriama McDowell has been working in theatre film and television since she graduated from Toi Whakaari in 2002. As an actor she has worked with some of Aotearoa’s most acclaimed playwrights including Hone Kouka “The Prophet”, Miria George “Vultures”, Albert Belz “Te Karakia” and Briar Grace Smith “100 Cousins, Paniora, Potiki’s Memory of Stone”.

Along with Rob Mokaraka and Jason TeKare she wrote “Cellfish” that opened the International Festival in Auckland in March 2017. She also won the award for Best Actress at the NZ Film Awards for her lead role in The Great Maiden’s Blush. Miriama’s screen credits include No.2, Dark Horse, Mahana and most recently, Waru. Over the past 15 years she has appeared in numerous television series, including This Is Not My Life, Hope and Wire and Terry Teo.

Miriama won the award for Most Promising New Director at the Chapman Tripp Awards in 2015 for her directorial debut, the 20 year anniversary production of Nga Pou Wahine, and since then has enjoyed great success as a director for theatre – she co-directed The Island, an emerging artists production with Massive Company that toured to The National Theatre of Scotland Youth Exchange Program in 2016, and in 2017 she directed Much Ado About Nothing for Pop Up Globe, which played to over 35,000 people in Auckland with a two week extension, and has now transferred to Melbourne.

Miriama is passionate about working with rangatahi, having worked as a tutor and director for Massive Company for the past ten years. She was part of Massive’s first Directors Lab in 2015, which gave her the confidence and practice to start directing, and continues to enjoy tutoring MNE, Massive’s Emerging Artists Ensemble.

Fiona Graham

Fiona Graham is a freelance dramaturge and performance writer. She is now the Convenor for the MA in Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, London University. For the last thirty-five years she has collaborated with performance makers in Britain and New Zealand. Her theatre commissions include Passage (The Herald Theatre, Auckland 2010), Breaking China (which toured Britain with Theatre Centre in 2002 and played the Singapore International Theatre Festival in 2004) and Legacy (which was written for Auckland’s Massive Theatre Company in 1998).

Denyce Su'a

Denyce Su'a is a Samoan actor, director and tutor. Having been with Massive Company for six years, she has been apart of both The Wholehearted and The Island casts, devising and creating original works for both shows. This time around, she hangs up her performing boots and is picking up a pen as a writer for Massive's latest show, Sightings.