Our Core Team and Collaborators
Co-Creative Directors
Phillip Gleeson (he/him) and Emily Ryan (she/her), both formerly of Strange Fruit (and now actively working together at SWAY Productions), where Phillip served as Creative Director and Emily as Associate Director. With nearly 30 years of expertise in creative direction, technical design, and performance safety, they have shaped SWAY Productions into a globally recognized force. Under their leadership, the team has delivered performances at over 400 international festivals across more than 30 countries, at one point representing Australia’s largest and most prominent arts export.
Creative Producer & Co-Creative Director
Martin (he/him) is the current Managing Director and Creative Director of ARREST Production House. APH is a unique organisation dedicated to fusing voice, live music, multimedia, aerial and dance within non-theatrical venues. He has over 30 years of experience in events, from managing music artists and large-scale events to theatre and music festivals nationally and internationally.
Through directing, producing, performance management, creative direction, writing and performance across many continents, Martin has honed his theatre and innovative events skills by working with diverse cultures in many areas of the entertainment industry and has collaborated on over 350 live performances.
Martin has an Undergraduate and Masters in classical voice/theatre (Bel Canto, Trinity, London), acting (Tisch NYU, Ecole Phillipe Gaulier, Paris), and a Doctorate from Middlesex University in London. He is currently doing post-doctoral studies at Harvard Kennedy In Boston.
Director
Cristabel Sved (she/her) is an award-winning director and has worked professionally as a director, dramaturg, performer and teacher for over twenty years. She has collaborated with some of Australia’s leading artists and arts organisations to develop scripts and new performance works, direct theatre productions, and deliver programs for theatre companies, educational institutions and community arts and cultural development organisations.
Cristabel is a founding member of the award-winning Darlinghurst Theatre Company and of Milk Crate Theatre, which uses performing arts to change the story of homelessness. She was the Artistic Director at Milk Crate Theatre between 2015 and 2016, an Associate Artist at Belvoir Street Theatre (2010-2011), and inaugural Resident Director at the Griffin Theatre Company (2009-2010).
As a director, Cristabel has worked with the Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir Street Theatre, Griffin Theatre Company, Stalker, Australian Theatre for Young People, Milk Crate Theatre, Sydney Opera House, National Institute for Dramatic Art (NIDA), The Actors’ Centre Australia, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Carriageworks, Sydney Festival, Red Stitch Actors’ Company, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, The Victorian Museum, The Maritime Museum, University of Western Sydney and Playwriting Australia. Her Sydney Festival production of Alice In Wonderland was nominated for Best Production for Children and Young People in the 2018 Sydney Theatre Awards and toured throughout NSW.
Cristabel’s qualifications include a Post Graduate degree (Directing) from NIDA, a BA in Performing Arts (Theatre) from Theatre Nepean, a BA in Honors (Performance Studies) from the University of Western Sydney, and most recently completed level 1 and level 2 in Consent Based Work courses, Intimacy Direction at IDC, New York City.
Choreographer
Benjamin Hurley is an acclaimed, award-winning choreographer. He identifies as queer and gender-fluid performer, dancer, choreographer and teacher who graduated from the VCA in 2016. His practice is deeply rooted in collaboration, and he sifts through and unpacks what these varied and shared experiences mean to him ‘in the now’.
His work teeters on the edge of philosophical existentialism and practicality. He combines everyday life experiences with open-ended acquired knowledge to develop new practices to shift his choice-making and create new choreographies. His most notable and ongoing collaborations include Phillip Adams BalletLab, Chunky Move, Strange Fruit, Deanne Butterworth, Lee Serle, Victoria Chiu, Emma Riches, Isabelle Beauverd and Arabella Frahn-Starkie, whom he continues to work with over long durations. He has performed in local and international festivals, including a remount of Set and Reset/Reset by Trisha Brown Dance Company as part of the Venice Art Biennale Danza Program and Glory by Phillip Adams BalletLab as part of Dance Massive.
He has presented a body of works for events, fundraisers and music festivals, including ‘Dancing Conversations For Anna’, ‘ToTo’, and ‘Strawberry Kisses’ and is due to present his first full-length solo show at Temperance Hall ‘UpAndUpAndUpAndUp’ as part of their curatorial seasons in 2022.
Musical Director
From the age of fifteen, Jillian (she/her) has worked as a freelance sessional musician playing French Horn. She has performed with the Queensland Theatre Orchestra, The Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra, The Australian Philharmonic Orchestra and the Australian Pops Orchestra. At age nineteen, she began her studies with Dr Graham Clarke at the Victorian Music Theatre. To this day, their collaboration continues in training and performance.
Jillian has trained in mixed media theatre, including mime, mask work, puppetry, gesture work, laban and creative dance. She is recently completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the Australian Catholic University. Jillian has performed in an array of shows including, “Carmen” for the Melbourne City Opera, “Nunsense the Musical” for Hayden Productions, “Madame Jojo” the Cabaret in London, “Harrys Duck” in Paris and “To Melt The Ear And Charm the Eye”, for the Early Music Consort.
She has performed with the Bell Shakespeare performance group, the Victorian Music Theatre, the Victorian State Opera, Opera Australia and the Victorian Early Music Guild. Jillian is passionate about excellence in music education and teaches voice, creative dance and piano.
Jillian has performed as a soloist over the last two years in over 15 concerts within Australia and has also toured internationally, including recital concert programs throughout North America and Broadway touring performances in the US.
Executive Producer
Tracey (she/her) has over 30 years of experience in the entertainment industry. Her career began in the record industry with BMG before joining CBS. She later worked with Entercom and is Vice President for National Partnerships and Investment with Audacy Inc.
Tracey has a deep knowledge of events, marketing, organisational strategy, partnerships, sponsorship, investment and sales and has worked as part of the senior management group to develop and see the growth of CBS/Entercom/Audacy Inc. into one of the two leading organisations in music and radio in the United States.
Tracey brings great love and passion for music, theatre and events to ARREST Production House and is excited to oversee its strategic development and further expansion within the United States, Latin America, the UK and the EU.
Jillian Gundermann
Performance SoundShell
Soundforms is an award-winning, iconic, open-air performance enclosure, a staging product which provides a high-quality acoustic environment for outdoor music events.
The form comes from the notion of a seashell that mystically is able to project the sound of the sea to a listener. The form is often considered one of the most beautiful in nature, and a perfect match for the acoustic principals of the design, that of a throat, that projects sound.
Soundforms is a premium quality staging product for musicians, audiences, festivals, promoters, broadcasters, orchestras and sponsors, who demand exemplary acoustic and aesthetic standards.
Multimedia Artists
teamLab (f. 2001) is an international art collective. Their collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, and the natural world. Through art, the interdisciplinary group of specialists, including artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects, aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world, and new forms of perception.