Associate Coaches

Miranda Harcourt ONZM

Film & Television

Miranda is an acting coach, an actor and a director.

Her speciality is screen naturalism. Her approach is based on years of writing and performing Verbatim theatre in prisons in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, as well as her work as an on-set acting coach with renowned actors and directors on films all over the world.

Miranda has coached Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA-award nominated and winning performances in films as diverse as Lion, Big Little Lies, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Beguiled, Boy Erased, Destroyer. She was the dedicated coach for Sunny Pawar (young Saroo) in Lion and was Director: Background Action on Garth Davis’ Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara and Joachim Phoenix.

Her first feature film The Changeover, co-directed with Stuart McKenzie, was released to acclaim in NZ, the UK and the US.

For seven years Miranda was the Head of the Acting Department at Toi Whakaari — New Zealand Drama School.

Directors she has worked with include Jane Campion, Peter Jackson, Morten Tyldum and Garth Davis. Actors include Nicole Kidman, Juliette Binoche, Dev Patel, Josh Hutcherson, Saoirse Ronan and many others. Her daughter is the winner of the US NBR award for Breakout Talent 2018, Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace — Jojo Rabbit — Lost Girls — Last Night in Soho)

She works, usually via Skype, with clients all over the world.

Miranda has taught at TIFF in Toronto, at NFTS and NYU Tisch, The London Film School and Directors UK in Britain, at AFTRS and The Hub in Sydney, at Toi Whakaari, The Actors’ Program, Otago University and Victoria University in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

She been awarded the ONZM (for services to theatre and the community) and the Centennial Suffrage Medal. Other awards include NEXT Arts Woman of the Year, the 2018 Woman of the Year (Arts) and the 2018 Women in Film and TV Achievement in Film. She has also won many awards and nominations for acting and directing.

Her training was as an actor at Toi Whakaari — New Zealand Drama School and as a Dramatherapist at CSSD, the Central School of Speech and Drama.

In her work with actors and directors Miranda aims to shift paradigms, empowering creatives to realise their own talent. She introduces simple but innovative ways of thinking about and achieving connection and character. She has developed a series of tools and exercises for use in rehearsal and on-set that get actors to where they need to be, fast.

Jo Briant

Film & Television

Jo Briant is a Casting Director at Fountainhead Casting and has been a successful actor for 35 years. She has worked extensively in theatre, film and television in New Zealand and Australia appearing in shows such as Psychoanalysis, Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am, Home and Away,The Moodys, All Saints,Water Rats, Murder Call, Big Sky, Shortland Street and numerous commercials and voiceovers. She is also an experienced Director, Acting Coach, Success Coach and Energy Healer. She loves combining acting and casting as her wealth of experience and intimate understanding of an actors world both on screen and off enables her to guide other actors in a fun and nurturing way. As a working actor she strives for authenticity in her own work and demands no less from the actors who come into the casting room.

Darren Gilshenan

Acting / Comedy

After graduating from The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in ’88 Darren began his career in Musicals before spending ten years with The Bell Shakespeare Company. Sketch comedy followed with three years on Full Frontal followed by some great TV series;  Dossa and Joe (BBC/Granada), the AFI Nominated  Chandon Pictures and the Logie nominated Derrick which he wrote and starred in.

Darren returned to the theatre for seven productions with The Sydney Theatre Company before again returning to the small screen for A Moody Christmas and The Moodys, as Uncle Terry, Top of the Lake created by Jane Campion and Gerard Lee, The Elegant Gentleman’s Guide to Knife Fighting, Rake 3,  Janet King, The Killing Field, Old School, Devils Playground and recently Maximum Choppage .

Film credits include Women He’s Undressed in which Darren played Orry Kelly in Gillian Armstrong’s documentary drama on the man himself, Save your legs, The Outlaw Michael Howe and the AACTA nominated Liebermans in the Sky. Recently Darren returned to the stage with Mother and Son, playing the role of Arthur and will continue in the theatre later this year as Piggsy, in a festival version of  Monkey – Journey to the West and Absent Friends by Alan Ayckbourn at the Ensemble Theatre.

Linda Nicholls-Gidley

Vocal / Dialect Coach

Linda is a voice and dialect coach with over 15 year’s experience, teaching across many of the nation’s drama schools in addition to having a strong corporate training profile, including presentation skills for Channel 9, 10, the ABC, SBS and Fairfax Digital. Linda has just been appointed dialect coach for ‘Mary – The Making of a Princess’, the story of Mary Donaldson and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, which begins shooting mid-July.

Recent productions include: Legends – Australian Tour, Dirty Dancing – The Musical and The Rocky Horror Show 2015 for Gordon Frost; The House of Ramon Iglesia for Mophead; Deathtrap and Constellations for Darlinghurst Theatre Company, Stop Kiss at ATYP, The God of Hell at the Old Fitz, On the Shore of the Wide World at Griffin, The Rocky Horror Show Australian Tour 2014 for Gordon Frost, the World Tour of Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon – Arena Spectacular, the Australian Tour of Annie – The Musical, starring Anthony Warlow, the Sydney and Brisbane productions of 4000 Miles for Catnip/MopHead, Pantsguys’ award winning production of Punk Rock, and for Opera Australia The Merry Widow. She is a current member of the full-time staff at NIDA.

Nadia Townsend

Film

Nadia has been working as an actress in Australia and internationally for the last 17 years. Nadia first trained with Atlantic Theatre Co in NYC then set up her own theatre company Wolf Whistle, producing independent theatre and learning her craft on the boards. Since that time Nadia has produced many independent shows, new works and adaptations of literature.

Nadia is a co-founder of Turtle Lab a Melbourne based performance laboratory. Nadia completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Performance Creation (Directing) in 2008. More recently expanding into film dramaturgy her credits as Dramaturg are Soul Mates (ABC), Secret Daughter (Ch7), Ready For This (Winner ACCTA & Logie Nominated), Ghost Bull (Winner, MIFF, SFF), Northkidsand Assistant Dramaturg on Mad Max 4 Fury Road. Her most recent theatrical productions have been Helter Sketler by Neil Labute and a one woman performance piece Ulrike Meinhof Sings by Christopher Barnett. Nadia has trained with Ivana Chubbuck, Larry Moss, Ellen Burstyn, Roy Hart school of Voice. Nadia has been part of the main cast in television shows such as City Homicide, Fireflies,Headland, Headstart.Other credits include SeaPatrol, Chandon Pictures, Rush, Old School and Home and Away. Her film roles include, Knowing,Zombie Monologues, Puppy, Concealed and Danny Deckchair.

Stevie Ray

Film

Stevie Ray has worked as a Casting Director for the multi-award winning McGregor Casting for 11 years. Some of Stevie’s film and TV credits include: (Oscar nominated) The Eleven O’Clock (Short film), Here Come the Habibs! (TV Series), High Life, (TV Series), Roman Empire (TV Series), The Moodys (TV Series), Down Under (FF), along with many MANY Television Commercials.

Josh McConville

Theatre/ Character Development and Scenework

Josh graduated from The National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2008.  Since graduating he has worked extensively in theatre, his credits include Cloud Nine, All My Sons, Midsummer Nights Dream, Loot, Arcadia, Hay Fever, After Dinner, Cyrano De Bergerac with Richard Roxburgh, Noises Off (for which he won the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor), Romeo and Juliet, In the Next Room (for which he was nominated for the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor), directed by Pamela Rabe, and the much acclaimed Gross Und Klein, opposite Cate Blanchett and directed by Benedict Andrews all for Sydney Theatre Company. After a successful season in Sydney the show toured Europe to critical acclaim.

Josh played the lead role of Brett Sprague, the violent and psychopathic brother in the Griffin Theatre Company production of The Boys (also for the Sydney Festival) directed by Sam Strong in which he received the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Other productions for Griffin include The Call, directed by Lee Lewis, and Strange Attractor, directed by Nick Marchand – both of which he received the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Newcomer.

In 2016 Josh toured Bell Shakespeare’s Hamlet nationally in which he was nominated for a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actor. He has also toured King Lear nationally, directed by Marion Potts and performed as ‘Truffaldino’ in The Servant of Two Masters, directed by Darren Gilshenan, at the Coogee Arts Festival.

His other theatre credits include The Sublime for The Melbourne Theatre Company (which he was nominated for a Green Room award), The Sugar House for Belvoir, Death of a Salesman for Black Swan Theatre Company, and Moving Parts where he performed alongside Colin Friels and Russell Boyd. Josh is currently in rehearsals for Shelagh Delaneys A Taste of Honey at Belvoir which opens 25th July.

Television credits include Southern Star’s production of Wild Boys, Channel Nine’s multi-award winning drama Underbelly II: A Tale of Two Cities, ABC’s multi-award winning series Redfern Now and Cleverman, both directed by Wayne Blair, Channel Seven’s The Killing Field, and Home and Away.

Josh’s film credits include The Infinite Man which won over audiences and critics at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival, as well as The Turning: Commission alongside Hugo Weaving and directed by David Wenham, Down Under directed by Abe Forsythe, Sotiris Dounoukos’ Joe Cinque’s Consolation, and David Michôd’s War Machine. He has three films to be released in 2018; 1% starring alongside Ryan Corr, Standing Up for Sonny alongside RJ Mitte, and The Merger written by Damian Callinan.

Daisy Hicks

Film

A proud member of the Casting Guild of Australia and the youngest member to have received multiple Casting Guild Award nominations for her work, Daisy’s credits as a Casting Director span across Film, TV, Theatre & Musical Theatre. Selected credits include: She Loves Me (Hayes Theatre Co.), The Australian premiere of The Wolves (Belvoir Theatre & Red Line Productions), News To Me & Break the Future (ABC), Good Omens (Squabbalogic), The Funny Ones (ABC/Unko), Dreamweaver (Conti Bros. Films), Summer Rain (New Theatre) Dogfight (Neil Gooding Productions), Miracle City (Luckiest Productions) along with many MANY Television Commercials & Music Videos.

Kate Gaul

Theatre

Kate Gaul is a Freelance Theatre Director/Designer. Her credits include: NIDA 1996 (Directing Course), Anne Bogart SITI Company NYC 2005. Associate Director Ensemble Theatre 2004/5. Festival Director World Interplay 2009/11.  Festival Director Short Play Festival Canberra 2013 – 2015, Cabaret Sydney 2014, Mardi Gras Parade Creative Director 2015/16. Kate’s directing credits include plays, opera, physical theatre, devised works and classics for theatre companies and schools in Australia. Kate has won numerous awards across the fields of directing and design. She is Artistic Director of Siren Theatre Co where her passion is for text-based drama challenges artists and audiences to have bold imaginative experiences. Kate’s play – Fatboy has been produced twice and she has written and directed two short films – Embrace and Cake. In 2017 Siren Theatre Co was nominated for 14 Sydney Theatre Critics Awards:  Kate produced and directed The Trouble with Harry (by Lachlan Philpott) and The Ham Funeral (by Patrick White).  Misterman (by Enda Walsh), Good with Maps (by Noelle Janazsewska) and One Hander (by Thomas Campbell) all toured internationally. Additionally, Kate inaugurated PLAYLIST in partnership with Seymour Centre and Mardi Gras and was the Sydney producer for the UK production of Joan (which also played at Seymour Centre). Good with Maps toured to regional NSW in 2018.

In 2019 Kate produced and directed The Moors (by Jen Silverman) and PLAYLIST both in conjunction with Seymour Centre and Mardi Gras. Kate is working with Opera Australia to remount By the Light of the Moon for schools touring and is directing a production of the Danish play Nothing for Blue Cow in Tasmania. At the end of this year Kate directs a gender-bending HMS Pinafore for Hayes Theatre.

Kriv Stenders

Film

Kriv Stenders is one of Australia’s most renown, respected and prolific film directors with numerous critically acclaimed and award winning shorts, documentaries, music videos, television commercials, television series and feature films to his credit. His early feature films include Blacktown, The Illustrated, Family Doctor, Boxing Day, and Lucky Country.

His fifth feature, Red Dog, released by Roadshow in August 2011, has earned over $22 million at the box office, making it the ninth highest grossing Australian film of all time. It has also become the highest selling Australian DVD of all time. Red Dog won both Best Director and Best Film at the 2011 IF Awards and Best Film at the inaugural 2012 ACCTA Awards.

In 2014 Kriv directed Kill Me Three Times, starring Simon Pegg, Bryan Brown, Alice Braga, Teresa Palmer, and Sullivan Stapleton. That same year he directed The Principal, a four- part television drama for SBS, starring Alex Dimitriades and Aden Young, plus the feature- length documentary, Why Anzac with Sam Neill.

In 2015, he directed Red Dog : True Blue, the sequel to Red Dog which was released by Roadshow on Boxing Day 2016 and went on to earn more than $7 million at the local box office. In 2016, he directed Australia Day for Foxtel, Hoodlum and Icon which starred Bryan Brown and Sean Keenan and was the first film release on the Dendy Demand platform.

Last year Kriv directed Wake In Fright, Stephen M. Irwin’s contemporary re-imagining of the Australian classic which aired as a two-parter on Channel TEN in October. Kriv ‘s critically acclaimedfeature-length documentaryThe Go-Betweens: Right Herepremiered at the 2017 Sydney Film Festival and also screened at the Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane Film Festivals ahead of a successful theatrical release in September. Earlier this year, he completed production onThe Pacific With Sam Neill, a six-part documentary series retracing Captain Cook’s journeys across the Pacific which co-directed with Sally Aitken. It aired on Foxtel in September. Kriv is currently in post-production on the Vietnam War epic,Danger Close : The Battle Of Long Tan, which was shot in Queensland and is due for release through Transmission Films in early 2019.

Wayne Blair

Film

Blair’s first recorded on-screen appearance was in a 1997 Australian TV film called The Tower. The following year he appeared on All Saints and Wildside. He has also appeared in Water Rats and Fireflies. 1998 was also the year he was one of the first four film makers to be mentored under the Metro Screen Indigenous Mentor Scheme for which he made a short film called Fade 2 Black. Ten years later he was to become a mentor himself under the same scheme.^[4]

Blair starred in the original stage production of Tony Briggs‘s play, The Sapphires in 2005.^[5] This play was later turned into a filmscript to be directed by Blair.

In 2007 he starred as Othello for Bell Shakespeare, a show that toured Australia with stops at Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra as well as other cities. He also directed three episodes of Lockie Leonard with a further four in 2010.

In 2008 Blair directed all thirteen episodes of the Australian children’s TV series Double Trouble, about twin Indigenous girls separated at birth. In 2009 he wrote an episode of the second season of The Circuit. 2010 saw Blair direct four episodes of the Australian-British children’s supernatural comedy TV series, Dead Gorgeous. He directed British-Jamaican Debbie Tucker Green’s play Dirty Butterfly and co-directed the biographical play, Namatjira, with Scott Rankin who also wrote the play, both plays at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre.^[6] He was also chosen in the same year as one of the stars of the Sydney Theatre Company‘s revival of Sam Shepard‘s True West, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman.^[7]

Wayne Blair was awarded the Bob Maza Fellowship for 2011 by Screen Australia to provide opportunities for career development.^[8] 2012 was a big year which saw the making of his hit film, The Sapphires, which brought him recognition around the world with a very positive response at Cannes.^[2] Later in the year he starred in three episodes of the ABC’s TV drama series, Redfern Now and directed another of the episodes. To finish the year Blair was included in Variety Magazine’s top ten directors to watch in 2013.^[9]

Claire van der Boom

Theatre/Film

Claire is a Silver Logie award winning actor who graduated from NIDA in 2005. She has worked extensively across theatre, film and television in Australia and in the USA. In her eleven years of residency in America she trained consistently under Nancy Banks and Larry Moss, Movement and Voice specialists Jean Louis Rodriguez and Kristoff Konrad, and also with renowned voice coach Fran Bennett (Linklater technique).

Australian theatre credits include; Shakespeare in Love, Double Indemnity (Melbourne Theatre Company) The Cold Child (Griffin Theatre Company)

USA theatre; Sam Shepard’s Heartless (Signature Theatre Company, off-Broadway); David Rabe’s An Early History of Fire (The New Group, off-Broadway) and Scott Caan’s The Trouble with Where We Come From (Falcon Theatre, LA).

Film credits include Chronic; Broke; Battlecreek; 5 Flights Up; Love is Now; Red Hill; The Square, Palm Beach. For television Hawaii Five-0; Game of Silence; Constantine; Masters of Sex; The Pacific; Pulse; Rush (Silver Logie nomination); The Underbelly Files; Love My Way; East West 101, and Sisters of War (Silver Logie)

When Covid 19 struck Claire was due to start rehearsals in New York City for the Shakespeare in the Park season of Richard II for The Public Theatre. For now she is thrilled to be teaching, workshopping friends’ plays and scripts and is in a scene study class herself.

Matt Levett

Film

Matt graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). He most recently starred in the US feature film Cavier and Belvoir’s Things I Know To Be True. Matt’s other credits include the AACTA and Logie winning miniseries The Devil’s Playground, A Place To Call Home, Wolf Creek, The Secret Daughter, Winners & Losers, Dance Academy, Rescue Special Ops, Bed Of Roses, Two Twisted, Home & Away, All Saints and the independent feature films Drown and Sunset People. He was also the 2015 recipient of the prestigious Heath Ledger Scholarship and was awarded the Glorias Fellowship in 2020.

Donald Woodburn

Voice

In 1996 Donald studied voice at NIDA. Originally from South Africa, he has taught in several countries around the world, focusing on the influence that culture and environment have on social and self expression.

Outside of the entertainment industry he runs voice training sessions for professional speakers in vocally demanding fields such as education, politics, law and the corporate sector.

Donald also taught voice across 19 radio stations and 4 television channels at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to presenters, journalists, anchors and DJs. He ran voice workshops and individual training with other independent national and regional South African TV and radio broadcasters, as well as teaching at the The Electronic Media Institute of South Africa. Donald majored in acting at the Wits School of Arts and on graduating worked as a freelance actor and director with the Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal.

Qualifications

• Certificate IV in Training & Assessment, Edith Cowan University, 2013.
• Graduate Diploma of Dramatic Art in Voice Studies, The National Institute of Dramatic Art, 1996
• Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Art, School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, 1993.