Kath Duncan, Writer and Director
Kath Duncan is writer, researcher, SuperFreak with a background in electronic journalism. Kath has written news, unusual features, live comedy, nude disability and amputee fetish performance, made videos, starred in live group shows with confessional and erotic rants. Kath has degrees in Arts Communications (UTS), Sound Extension (AFTRS), BA. Hons Creative Writing (SCU), and Master in Writing (Theatre) (VCA). Kath produced her one woman show Hi Heartbreak in 2016; led the Australian Research Council project, The Last Avant Garde – Deaf/disability performance around Australia (2018-20). Kath won the 2020 Creative Australia Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development.

Jack Brady, Performer - Nurse Irma Grease Jack Brady is a musical and political comedian most passionate about works that ‘critique systems of oppression like Specials! does.’ Jack performs stand-up, musical comedy and cabaret. In 2018, Jack performed, produced and toured their solo show Labelled from Darwin to Alice Springs to Sydney Fringe to Melbourne Fringe. Labelled was about growing up autistic in the 1970’s with audio-visual stand-up comedy. In 2021, Jack’s solo comedy Tardy, Ready And Disabled told the story about the politics of the International Day of Disability, also Jack’s birthday. In 2022, Jack’s solo comedy Gold Star Failure featured at Melbourne Fringe.

Anthony Julian, Performer - Simon West
Anthony Julian is a musical theatre and comedy performer, writer of wild text and poetry and improvisational movement. Anthony’s credits include, in musical theatre: 2023 - Oliver! Mr Sowerberry / Fagin cover, CPP Community Theatre Inc (CPPCT); 2022 -The Addams Family, Uncle Fester, CPPCT; 2018 - The Phantom of the Opera, Monsieur Reyer, PLOS Musical Productions. In Theatre: 2023 - Anywhere But Here, Jye, 1812; 2021 - Specials (staged reading), Simon dir. Tansy Gorman, VCA; 2020 - Waiting for God, Geoffrey Ballard, Peridot. Film: 2021 - Wonder Two dir. David Williams CPPCT. Training: Vocal Training; 2021 Ian Nisbet – Musical Theatre.

Sonia Marcon, Performer - Headmistress Anna Haldon
Sonia Marcon is a singer, dancer and actor who holds a Theatre & Drama degree from Murdoch University. In Perth, Sonia featured in productions like Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing; Kate in Pinter’s Old Times and Eponine in Les Misérables. Sonia was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis four years into her performing life, but this has not slowed her down. Sonia is busier than ever with roles in Flesh Disease at LaMama and Misfit Toys’s When You Wore Braces. She has performed at the Malthouse Theatre, the Melba Spiegeltent and Australian Centre of the Moving Image.

Nicole Smith, Performer - Cheryl Smith
Nicole Smith is a wheelchair user, writer, performer and disability advocate living on Naarm. She has been studying improvisation for four years and has taken scripted theatre classes. Nicole currently works for an accessible housing organisation and facilitates a writing course through Writers Victoria. Nicole brings strength, brashness and compassion to the role of Cheryl Smith.

Tansy Gorman, Mentor – Director
Tansy (she/her) is a director based in Naarm/Melbourne. Tansy’s passion for theatre originates from her deep appreciation for the unconventional and the bizarre. She is drawn to the power of extremes in performance, seeing it as a form of artistic resilience and determination. Through the use of play and montage techniques, Tansy believes that theatre has the unique ability to explore and challenge societal norms, pushing the boundaries of what is considered possible. Tansy has completed her Bachelor in Contemporary Arts and a First Class Bachelor of Fine Arts Hons and a Masters of Theatre (Direction) At the Victorian College of the Arts.

Rhian Hinkley, Digital Designer
Rhian is an animator, filmmaker and artist based in Melbourne who has directed many film projects and theatrical and dance productions.

Bille Parsons, 2D/3D Designer
Bille started out as a trainee scenery builder with Playbox/ Malthouse theatre, and in the early 90s apprenticed with the Australian Ballet. By the mid 90s Billie was a stage technician with the Australian Opera. Freelancing in scenery building in opera, ballet and theatre, by 2003 Billie was working with Fox Studios and Lucas films in Sydney. Now Billie runs the North Preston Lifesaving Club Gallery, curating and hanging ongoing exhibitions. Billie has a Masters in Fine Art from Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, 2020; and a Bachelor of Visual Arts - Hons, Australian National University, Canberra, 2013.

Julie MacNamara, Mentor - Dramaturg online
Julie is a leading actor, writer and theatre performer; an award winning playwright, documentary film and theatre maker, poet and performer. She is also a survivor of the Mental Health system and a vociferous Disability and human rights activist. Julie’s pioneering work explores unheard voices from the political periphery. She has positioned Disabled people’s experiences in mental health, dementia, and other existences centre stage with a determined focus on intersectional work. As a young activist, her chosen ‘tribe’ became the Disabled People’s Movement. She is co-founder and former Artistic Director of Vital Xposure, one of UK’s leading disability-led touring theatre companies within Arts Council England’s national portfolio.

I attended Special School (1963-9) and hated it. I wrote Specials! because I’m attracted to painful and complex stories. I researched Australian Special Ed as a ‘creative autobiographical narrative.’ I interviewed eleven former students, two teachers, and family members.

Specials! is conceived as a disabled kids clap back production. Go to any library and look up ‘Special’ education and you will find stacks on managing ‘problem’ children and our ‘problem’ behaviours but very little from students ourselves. ‘Rarer still to find work that approaches the subject from the perspective of the disabled child’ (Davis, JM & Watson, D, 2001, ‘Where are the Children’s Experiences? Cultural and Social Exclusion in “special” and “mainstream” schools,’ Disability and Society).

The recent Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability final report exposed AGAIN that the feelings of Special School students are very different from those involved in Special Education who are not students. It’s vitally important right now to confront the dominant narratives about the questionable virtues of segregated education. Specials is topical socio politically, and personally. Specials! reflects the struggles that d/ Deaf, Disabled and especially Neurodiverse children are facing now.

I want to spread my 1.5 wings and illuminate a history that’s overwhelmingly been told by the Non-Specials. I'm unpacking Special School from a social model perspective, where the ‘problem’ is not myself or the other kids, but how the system abuses us. Specials! takes us marginalised Australians – disabled adults and children – from the margins to the centre stage. As storytellers and performers we’ve been under-rated and underfunded. Specials! contests the oppression which comes with marginality, moving the action towards liberation.

Specials! is a disability pride production, centring disabled experience and exposing a history that is still with us, including our relative absence in the Australian canons of performance and innovation. We are here and we want to be seen, on our terms. We want to tell our stories our ways. This project is conceived as an example to mainstream arts companies to acknowledge our skills and stories, and for mutual learnings. I’m sick of begging to be represented; I’m convinced we must bite the bullet and make controversial, provocative art that nobody else could make.

- Kath Duncan, Writer and Director

Writer & Director: Kath Duncan
Producer: Veronica Pardo
Performers: Jack Brady, Anthony Julian, Sonia Marcon, Nicole Smith.
Mentor – Director: Tansy Gorman
Videographer and video editor: Angel Leggas 3 Fates Media
Digital Designer: Rhian Hinkley
2D/3D Designer: Billie Parsons
Mentor - Dramaturg online: Julie McNamara