Matthew is an actor and writer who has worked extensively in theatre, film and television for the past 20 years. Matthew’s first play Twelve was workshopped at the National Playwrights Conference in Perth, 2006. His second was Silver, directed by Ben Winspear for Belvoir downstairs, in which he also performed solo. In 2010, two further plays premiered in Adelaide; Fugitive (Windmill) and Harbinger (Brink Productions), beginning what has become an ongoing creative bond with the city and its audiences.

In the same year, Matthew was the Philip Parsons Young Playwright Award recipient sparking the development of the play Old Man which premiered downstairs in Belvoir’s 2012 season.

Matthew’s collaboration with Windmill has resulted in four plays, with Girl Asleep being the most recent. Its predecessors are the Helpmann and Sydney Theatre Award-winning School Dance and trilogy stablemate Big Bad Wolf.  All three of these plays were concurrently performed at the Adelaide Festival (2014). Matthew’s two-hander Cinderella garnered outstanding reviews at the close of 2014 in the Belvoir downstairs space, and the premiere of his 2015 play Seventeen was a huge success in the upstairs theatre. In 2017, it had a season at London’s Lyric Hammersmith Theatre.

Matthew’s feature film adaptation of his play Girl Asleep (supported by The Hive Production Fund) debuted at the Adelaide Film Festival and went on to open the 2016 Generation 14plus Programme at Berlin International Film Festival. It also won The Age Critics’ Award for Best Film at Melbourne International Film Festival, the 2016 CinefestOz Prize, the Australian Film Critics Association award for Best Film, and the Seattle Film Festival Grand and Youth Jury Prizes. Its release nationally and internationally was followed by a free-to-air screening on ABC TV.

Matthew’s play Fight with All Your Might the Zombies of the Night, winner of the 2015 Foundation Commission Award, premiered at ATYP in November 2016. Matthew was among the seven Sidney Myer Creative Fellows chosen in 2012, and he is currently adapting his play School Dance to feature. In 2020, Matthew’s play No Need to Hide a Light When it Shines Like Hers was the Inaugural Online Voters’ Prize winner for Griffin’s Lysicrates Prize.

In television, Matthew has written for the Netflix / Fremantle reboot of Heartbreak High and has an original television series in development with Goalpost Pictures.

Jessica is a theatre director and co-founder of The Anchor theatre company. She was Resident Director at Sydney Theatre Company 2018 – 2022, directing productions such as Chalkface, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wonnangatta, Banging Denmark, Mosquitos and Home I’m Darling.

Jessica also worked as Assistant Director on The Harp in the South Part I and Part II, Dinner, Chimerica and Endgame for Sydney Theatre Company, as well as Miss Julie for Melbourne Theatre Company.

Further productions Jess has directed include Two Hearts (King Cross Theatre), The Wolves (Old Fitz) and itx subsequent Belvoir season, Realism (NIDA), Intoxication (La Mama Courthouse) and Unend (Never Never Theatre Company), which went on to play at the Adelaide and Sydney Fringe Festivals.

Jessica also directed for the Martin Lysicrates Prize for Griffin Theatre at the National Theatre of Parramatta. Her most recent production was the world premiere of Lose To Win for Red Line Productions.