CAST & CREATIVES

Cast & Creatives

Ashton Spear - King Edward VIII

A graduate of the acclaimed Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA), Ashton has starred in a handful of short films, several of which have been multiple award winners on the festival circuit. Credits include: Door of Lost Time; Still Young; Our Glorious Continent and Dearly Departed. Ashton just wrapped filming on his first feature lead in The Haunting of Margam Castle (North Bank Entertainment). Most recent theatre credits include: The King in Yellow (The Lion and Unicorn); All’s Well That Ends Well (Oxford Shakespeare Company USA); Boudica (The Barn Theatre); The Frontier Trilogy (The Hen and Chickens). Ashton is also training to become a motion capture performer.

Ramona Von Pusch - Marlene Dietrich

Ramona von Pusch is an actress of stage, screen and film, known for Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and Neighbours, and on German screens in various programs. Australian by birth and German by blood, Ramona was awarded Best Actress for her role in Marlene at the One-Reeler Short Film Competition, Los Angeles in July 2016. In 2012, Ramona toured Australia and New Zealand with the professional production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, and in 2013 she appeared in the exclusive Melbourne season of The Graduate alongside Jerry Hall. Theatre credits include: 4.48 Psychosis (NIDA Directors);  The Tortoise, The Fox, Where it all Begins (Griffin Theatre Company) and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (Human Sacrifice Theatre). Musical theatre credits include: The Wild Blue (St Martin's Theatre) and Chicago and Joseph And the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Catchment Players). Ramona is a versatile performer and was also a part of renowned Australian theatre director Rodney Fisher's Wild in the Heart - A Dorothy Hewett Anthology for ABC Radio National (Australia).

Ron Elisha - Writer

Ron Elisha is a playwright based in Melbourne, Australia. His stage plays include: In Duty Bound (1979); Einstein (1981); Two (1983); Pax Americana (1984); The Levine Comedy (1986); Safe House (1989); Esterhaz (1990); Impropriety (1993); Choice (1994); Unknown Soldier (1996); The Goldberg Variations (2000); A Tree, Falling (2003); Ladies & Gentlemen (2004); Wrongful Life (2005); Controlled Crying (2006); Renaissance (2006); The Schelling Point (2010); Carbon Dating (2011); Stainless Steel Rat (2011, produced in London in 2012 under the title Man In The Middle); The Crown Versus Winslow (2011); Love Field (2013); The Soul Of Wittgenstein (2016); Certificate Of Life (2017); Window (2017); Unsolicited Male (2018) and I Really Don’t Care (2019).  He has also written a telemovie, Death Duties (1991), two children’s books, Pigtales (1994) and Too Big (1997), and hundreds of feature articles and stories in a variety of magazines, newspapers and journals.  His plays have been produced throughout Australia, New Zealand, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, Israel and France, and have won a number of awards, including four Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, the Mitch Matthews Award (2006) and the Houston International Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay.  He has also been shortlisted for many awards over the years, including the Patrick White (most recently in 2019), the Griffin Award, The Victorian Green Room, the Australian Writers’ Guild and various state Premiers’ Awards. In 2020, he has a new play 21 Down opening in Helsinki, and two new works, Donating Felix and Individual 1 opening in Melbourne.

Tama Matheson - Director

Tama is Artistic Director of Poesis: Words and Music in London, and Artistic Director of the Brisbane Shakespeare Festival, in Australia. His directing credits include: Hamlet (Brisbane Shakespeare Festival); Memoirs of a Sailor (JACC, Kuwait); Metamorphosis (Opera Australia); Der Rosenkavalier (Melbourne Opera); Patience, & Amahl and the Night Visitors (Teatru Manoel, Malta); A Christmas Carol (Royal Albert Hall; AMcK Fine Entertainment); Falstaff (Oper Graz); The Force of Destiny, The Love of the Nightingale, La Traviata (Opera Australia); Amadeus (Classic Productions); La Traviata, Don Giovanni, (Sydney Opera Projects); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Garnet Productions); Henry V, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Brisbane Shakespeare Festival); The Tempest, The Night before Christmas, Prometheus Unbound (Classic Productions); Don Giovanni, Tosca (4MBS Festival of Music); Orpheus in the Underworld (Queensland Conservatorium) and Memoirs of a Sailor (JACC, Kuwait). Tama has written and produced several plays, including: When the World Was Wide; Ben, Johann Sebastian; Bright Stars Shone for Us; The White Mouse and Panufnik - His Quest for Peace. He has also written Don Juan, which he performed with Karin Schaupp, and adapted A Christmas Carol and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both of which have been performed in London and Australia. He won ‘Best Production’ for Amadeus and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for The Pillowman at the Matilda Awards and ‘Outstanding Director’ for Metamorphosis at the Opera Chaser Awards in Melbourne and his production of Rosenkavalier won four more Opera Chaser awards. His Metamorphosis was also nominated for Best Opera at the Helpmann’s earlier this year.