Creative Team
Dr. Lynne Bradley
Artistic Director
Dr Lynne Bradley has worked as a festival director, live performance director, artistic director and academic in Brisbane and abroad for the past 30 years. From 2019 to 2021 Lynne was the Artistic Director of the Horizon Festival on the Sunshine Coast, before taking on her current role as the Artistic Director of the Sunshine Coast Chamber Music Festival. Prior to this, Lynne designed and ran the Performing Arts Masters program at USC from 2016 to 2019. She is also a renowned innovator, having co-founded one of Australia’s first physical theatre companies in 1992 (Zen Zen Zo). Lynne’s specialty areas as a director include music-theatre, large-scale physical and visual theatre, as well as immersive, site-specific, and transcultural performance work. Over the past decade Lynne has been involved in several major intercultural exchanges, with a particular focus on Hong Kong and Japan. As a director, choreographer and performer, Lynne has won a number of awards, including Matilda Awards for Cabaret (Best Musical) and The Tempest (Best Independent Production). Zeitgeist was also short-listed for a prestigious Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2009. In 2016 she won the national Philip Parson’s Prize for In the Company of Shadows, an Intimate and Immersive Theatre work presented in collaboration with Dairakudakan and the Deep Blue Orchestra. In 2017 she directed Alchemy for the Commonwealth Games Festival in South East Queensland. Lynne travels regularly to direct and teach nationally and internationally, mentoring emerging and mid-career artists, and speaking at conferences. She is a passionate lover of classical music.
Photo Credit: Simon Woods
James Lees
Executive Producer
James is an event and festival producer, musician and generally a creative facilitator and agitator. In some or all of these roles, he has delivered a highly diverse range of acclaimed events and performances including the concert events Ziggy Stardust (Brisbane Powerhouse/Melbourne Cabaret Festival, 2016), Transformer: The Album In Concert (QPAC/Brisbane Powerhouse, 2015-16), In The Warm Room: The Music Of Kate Bush (Brisbane Powerhouse, 2017) and Fire Walk With Us: The Music Of Twin Peaks (The Junk Bar/Melbourne Cabaret Festival/Brisbane Powerhouse, 2017-19). In 2018, he musically directed and co-produced the Matilda Award winning stage work The Sound Of A Finished Kiss (Brisbane Powerhouse) which featured the music of Brisbane music legends The Go-Betweens. He has also produced for World Science Festival Brisbane (2017-18) and was the Festival Director for MELT: A Festival Of Queer Arts & Culture (Brisbane Powerhouse 2015, 2017-18). He has also produced a diverse range of projects for Griffith University and Queensland Conservatorium including Crossbows: A Festival Of Small Ensembles (2012 and 2014), Encounters: India (2013), World Forum On Music (2013), Floods Opera (2014) and the university's major ideas festival Integrity20 (2016-2019).
Photo Credit: Morgan Roberts
Aunty Helena Gulash
Festival Elder
Helena is a Kabi Kabi (Gubbi Gubbi) woman whose extensive career in First Nations Affairs spans almost 40 years. Currently Helena works as a Consultant in Indigenous Arts and Cultural Management through her own business - Helena Gulash Consulting. Helena has provided strategic leadership in various senior positions, within federal and state Government agencies. She worked as the Director of the Queensland Indigenous Arts and Marketing and Export Agency (QIAMEA) within the Queensland Government, National Aboriginal Education Committee (NAEC) and Assistant Director, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Queensland, - Federal Government, before moving to the Sunshine Coast. Helena is passionate about the potential of the First Nations Arts and Cultural industry to effect positive change for Indigenous peoples in Australia. She currently serves as a member of the inaugural Indigenous Advisory Committee to the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA and is a member of the Sunshine Coast Arts Advisory Board and of the Vice-Chancellors Arts Acquisition Advisory Committee University of the Sunshine Coast. (USC). Helena has been involved in the establishment of several Indigenous community cultural organisations and has had a long involvement in Native Title research and in Kabi Kabi Native Title claim processes. She has been engaged in several key Arts & Cultural projects in the Sunshine Coast region.
Photo Credit: Simon Woods
Kari Scott-Matthew
Associate Producer
Kari Scott-Matthew is a performer, educator, director, and producer driven by a passion for live performance. Her work draws upon theatre, voice, and music as powerful tools for storytelling, healing, and transformation—an approach shaped by her early training with Augusto Boal in Theatre of the Oppressed and voice studies with esteemed coaches Diane Eden, Frankie Armstrong, and Zygmunt Molik of Jerzy Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, culminating in her master’s thesis, Voice Training in Australian Theatre.She co-founded Cracka Theatre Company, developing and touring an Australian drama program to schools across Queensland. Awarded the Australian Postgraduate Award for high academic achievement, Kari furthered her theatre studies, deepening her practice through a two-year exchange in Singapore, where she performed on stage and appeared on television.
Beyond performance, Kari has built a successful corporate career in project management and actively trains in hapkido, taekwondo, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In 2024, she undertook a summer intensive with the esteemed Butoh company Dairakudakan in Japan, performing in Prayer in Summer. She now focuses on producing and curating multidisciplinary performances that fuse physical theatre, martial arts, dance, music, and accessibility, creating transformative live experiences.
Photo Credit: Simon Woods
Kellie Peta
First-Nations Producer
Kellie Peta is a songwoman, performer, non-fiction writer, creative director and producer originally from Logan in Brisbane South. Her deep passion for space, celebration, community, music and healing drives her creative outlets. She is the founder and creative director for Strawberry Fields Parklands Project inc, a charity that is championing the restoration of culturally significant land in Brisbane. Her passion and purpose lies in raising the positioning of land in our communities as a central focus, understanding that when Mother nature and all forms of creative expression are prioritised within the community, we are a healthier, happier, wealthier and more connected society.
She has studied Psychosomatic Therapy, is a certified Yoga Instructor and a representative of Women's Health Qld. She is a writer and has written a self-help book titled, You're Just Not That Into You. She has produced many local music events through Strawberry Fields and is one of the founding members and producer of Yaggara Kakka, Welcome to Naidoc annual community event. Kellie has a passion for transforming space through design and has worked with multiple live music venues in Brisbane.
Maxi Mossman
Marketing Manager
Maxi Mossman is a Brisbane-based emerging marketing manager and theatre maker with a focus in holistic, sensory theatre design and contemporary performance curation and promotion. She works as a freelance marketing manager for independent arts projects, helping creatives expand their reach and impact. Maxi is passionate about developing her marketing practice, continually refining strategies that support innovative and experimental work in the arts. With a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Drama), Maxi is also company member and Schools’ Program Coordinator of physical theatre company, Zen Zen Zo - discovering a deeper dedication for intrinsic and multifaceted storytelling, engaging with a high energy impulse towards creating art. She entered the independent theatre scene with her award-winning directorial debut, A Drop Too Many (2023) and strives to create rich, sensory art that combines different facets of the Creative Industries and connects to community. Maxi's diverse skillset and passions in design-led direction, movement, performance, marketing, visual art, stage design, costume design and stage management, cultivates theatrical worlds which aim to swallow audiences whole. Beyond the stage, Maxi continues to grow her marketing expertise, collaborating with independent artists and companies to develop engaging promotional campaigns that authentically capture the unique flare of each project.
Photo Credit: Simon Woods