The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
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Meet the Magnify: Live Arts cohort for 2026!
We are proud to present 6 artists that will be undertaking a creative developement in Blacktown and partner locations where they will develop a range of works including theatre, performance, dance and music works, with mentorship by Blacktown Arts team and invited guest creatives.
Each artist is working across a range of artistic practices, exploring powerful themes including class, queerness, migration, grief and trauma.
Fei Gao: Inward
Inward is a solo experimental dance work by emerging performance artist Fei Gao. Embodying a childhood RPG mage character on a fantastical quest, the work traces a journey of reckoning with and healing from complex trauma (C-PTSD). Navigating change, grief, and searching for chosen family.
Lea Šimić: Durry Girls
Durry Girls is a contemporary comedic drama centred around four girls from Blacktown in their final year of High School. The work is set over a year on the back of their cherished hideaway, their school oval. Each day, these girls hang to share their sacred ‘Durry’. What happens when the Durry opens a portal into their lives and allows them to dream of something that is too foreign to grasp.
Madelaine De Leon: Molten
Molten is the debut album by Madelaine De Leon, based on the artist’s explosive 20’s. It’s a symbolic concept record of molting, shedding skin, and putting the broken pieces back together again. This development period will consider how Molten can become a multimedia performance incorporating artworks, videos, dance, and live music.
Red Rey: W-ALIS
W-ALIS is a live performance work about grief, assimilation and the reconstruction of cultural identity. It takes its name from the Tagalog words ‘walis’, meaning broom, and ‘alis’, meaning departure or removal. The core idea stems from the image of the artist’s mother sweeping their father’s grave. After what they lost through cultural assimilation and heteronormative conformity, cleaning becomes an allegory for cultural acceptance, queer acceptance, and self-reclamation.
Ryan Vox: Last Train to Penrith
Last Train to Penrith is a new contemporary theatre work exploring queer life in Western Sydney through a series of interconnected stories unfolding during the final train journey home from the city.
Shobana Suresh: Echoes of Home
Echoes of Home explores the experience of losing home through displacement and war, and the lifelong search for belonging. It draws on the artist’s lived experience as a Sri Lankan Tamil who grew up in Australia, while carrying the stories, memories and experiences passed down by her mother. This search for home is a shared experience for many Sri Lankan Tamils. Through this emotionally engaging work, she hopes to invite audiences of all backgrounds to reflect on what home means to them, and what it truly means to belong.
Bios: Artists
Fei Gao is interested in using game-inspired characters and otherworldly scenarios to interrogate and understand tender yet difficult experiences. Their practice spans embodied movement with objects, kinetic costume-making, and digital game design. They’re drawn to the psychology of trauma and family estrangement, and, in turn, the search for healing, growth, and chosen family.
You can find Fei on Instagram here
Lea Šimić was born and bred in the suburbs of western Sydney with a mix of Balkan rigour and late-night dancing. Her own works are loud, fun and ultimately an archive of stories that sit in the in-between. These experiences showed her that the best way to connect people was through a good party and became the premise of her producing company.
You can find Lea on Instagram here
Madelaine De Leon is an indie/alternative, folk, soul, and jazz singer-songwriter hailing from western Sydney. One day, she found out right before the ripe age of 21 that her eczema medication was actually the reason why her eczema was getting worse, leading her in a years long process called Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW).
You can find Madelaine on Instagram here
Red Rey is the artist name of Redmond Reyes, a Filipino-Australian performance artist. Their practice holds the body as its central focus, using movement, costume, objects and video which unfold as intimate, site-responsive, roving or participatory encounters, inviting the audience into a performance world.
You can find Red on Instagram here
Ryan Vox (they/them) is a western Sydney-based performer, writer, producer and multidisciplinary entertainer whose work explores queer identity, suburban life, community and inclusion. Working across contemporary theatre, cabaret, comedy, drag and live performance, Ryan is also known as Burger Queen, a larger-than-life drag persona whose work combines humour, storytelling and social commentary with an unmistakably western Sydney perspective.
You can find Ryan on Instagram here
Shobana Suresh is a Sydney-based Bharatanatyam artist, choreographer and creative storyteller whose practice bridges tradition and contemporary exploration. A performer for over two decades, she is particularly known for her expressive depth in Abhinaya (expression and storytelling), which forms an integral part of her artistic voice.
You can find Shobana on Instagram here
This project is presented by Blacktown Arts and supported by Blacktown City Council and the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Special thanks to our venue partners The Granville Centre, Dance Makers Collective, Think + Do Tank, Outloud, Utp, and Common House Studio.
