Paul Cordeiro has been performing for almost four decades, appearing on just about every major stage in Australia. He has spent more than 35 years dancing, creating and choreographing, performing in clubs, making solo and ensemble works, directing large-scale dance parties, touring major musicals and working as assistant choreographer on the Sydney 2000 Olympic Opening Ceremony. For the past eighteen years he has toured extensively with Melbourne’s Finucane and Smith, while continuing to grow his practice as a singer, collaborator and storyteller.

Paul is currently developing ‘Foreign Body’, a new autobiographical work that blends monologue, dance and song. This story reflects on his life as an Asian immigrant from a large Catholic family, his sexuality, his artistic path and his search for a sense of home. It explores themes of family, identity, loss and becoming, with moments of tenderness, humour and reflection. Between the jacaranda and the chopsticks there is grief, discovery and the ongoing question of who we allow ourselves to be.

Krishna Patel is the eldest daughter in a Kenyan-Indian family raised in Townsville, Queensland. She approaches stories like a manic dinner party host, adding a little something to please everyone, though it still may end up too spicy for most. Krishna is presenting a new stage work excerpt that plays with South Asian futurism through an absurd comedy lens, to explore the legacy and accountability of the Indian diaspora. 

‘The Death of Dev Patel’ thrusts audiences into a post-Western Australia run entirely by the Asian diaspora (cry about it). The dynastic Patel family share a meal and a customary viewing of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’, in celebration of their beloved figurehead Dev Patel. Between inter-generational jabs and second helpings of chaat, the Dev-ali celebrations take a turn when ostracised cousin Sonal arrives, moments before breaking news of Dev Patel’s assassination. A provocatively funny look at culture, complicity and the performance of success in a post-colonial world.

Keng is a playwright who has written for La Boite Theatre’s Assembly initiative and participated in CAAP’s Playwrights Lab. He has been longlisted for the Griffin Award and was the recipient of the Daphne Roemerman Prize. 

For Works in Progress, Keng will present Interior Exterior, a dark comedy about dreams, dual identities and the contradictions of belonging. Think Hollywood, home and headstrong daughters. The monologue follows Reverie Ku, a Singaporean actress in Los Angeles, as she navigates the polished surface of celebrity life alongside the quieter truths of family and cultural inheritance. The work explores the homes we build for ourselves and the homes we can never fully leave, wrestling with the pressures of being a third culture individual and the ongoing effort to reconcile values, expectations and identity within the family.