Ahmarnya Price
For over two decades Ahmarnya has exhibited and performed locally and internationally. Her first multi-disciplinary solo performance RUMPUS debuted at Footscray Community Arts Centre in 2016 as part of the Festival of Live Art. Since 2016 Ahmarnya has been a teaching artist at St Martins Youth Arts. From 2019 to 2020 she was Acting Artistic Associate at Back to Back Theatre, directing/ co-writing the animation series FIRST RESPONDERS (currently on ABC-iView). She began developing THE SPLENDID ANOMALY at Arts House in 2018, traveling to Battersea Arts Centre and The University of Sussex/ACCA to undertake research residencies in 2019. In 2021 Ahmarnya performed her short solo show RIDE ON TIME at La Mama Theatre’s War-Rak Festival. In 2023 she completed a Masters of Theatre (Writing) at VCA/Melbourne University and with it the first draft of a new performance.

Susie Dee
Susie has worked extensively in theatre as a performer, devisor and director both in Australia and overseas for the past forty years. She has created many site-specific works and was Artistic Director of three companies: Melbourne Workers Theatre (MWT), Union House Theatre (UHT) and Institute of Complex Entertainment (ICE). She has also directed works for MTC, Malthouse Theatre and many independent theatre companies. Susie has won numerous Green Room Awards for directing, was a recipient of the Ewa Czajor Memorial Award for female directors and in 2022 she received the prestigious Australia Council Award for Theatre. Most recently she directed My Sister Jill by Patricia Cornelius for Melbourne Theatre Company, receiving a Green Room Award for Direction and Outstanding Production.

Kelly Ryall
Kelly is an award-winning composer, musician and sound designer for theatre, dance and film.  Kelly is recognised internationally for creating immersive and multi-layered musical landscapes for the stage and screen.  He is composer for the six-part TV series MORE THAN THIS with Paramount + with launched in 2022. He has worked for most major companies throughout Australia, including Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre,  State Theatre Company South Australia, Belvoir, Malthouse Theatre, Bell Shakespeare, Chunky Move, Australian Ballet, Dance North, Force Majeure. He is the recipient of 4 green room awards and multiple nominations in both Melbourne and Sydney.

Rhian Hinkley
Rhian is a filmmaker and artist. He has worked with Back to Back Theatre for many years creating the video components for most of their shows including The Shadow Who’s Prey The Hunter Becomes  2019 and Ganesh Versus The Third Reich 2011. He has developed and directed many of B2B’s The Democratic Set and Radial film projects locally and internationally. In 2020 he was the director of photography and editor of their short feature Shadow which premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin Texas 2022. His own films have won awards at the New York animation festival and Tropfest Film Festival. In 2023/2024 Rhian was a guest artist together with his daughter Ivy at the Humboldt Forum Berlin where they directed Break It Make it Fake it.

Richard Vabre
Richard Vabre is a freelance lighting designer who has lit productions for MTC, STC, Malthouse Theatre, Belvoir Street, Black Swan State Theatre Company, Back To Back Theatre, Victorian Opera, Circus Oz, Windmill Theatre, Arena Theatre Company, NICA, Barking Gecko, The Darwin Festival, Stuck Pig’s Squealing, Chambermade, Rawcus, Red Stitch, Polyglot, Melbourne Worker’s Theatre, Aphids and many productions at La Mama.

Awards: Richard has won 5 Green Room Awards including the Association’s John Truscott Prize for Excellence in Design (2004). He has also been nominated for 10 other Green Room Awards.

Jo Leishman
Jo is a freelance stage manager who works across multiple art forms and events.
Companies and organisations include: Big hART (Songs for Freedom), Lucy Guerin Inc (Pieces), Back to Back Theatre (Soft, Small Metal Objects, Food Court, Ganesh vs the Third Reich), Windmill Theatre Company (Grug and the Rainbow – north American tour), Union House Theatre, working with Susie Dee and Petra Kalive, St Martins Youth Arts Centre,  Immediate Theatre (London).

Events include: RISING, Dark Mofo (Blacklist/NightMass - the after-hours club), Mona Foma (club nights and individual events), The Falls Festival, White Night, Moomba, Commonwealth Games, The Royal Melbourne Show.

Artists include: Genevieve Lacey (Consort of the Moon, One Infinity), Aseel Tayah (A’amar), Susie Dee (White With Wire Wheels), Gideon Obarzanek (One Infinity), Kelly Alred (Temporal Proximities), Jodee Mundy (Imagined Touch), Ross Mueller and Ahmarnya Price.

I first pitched the idea for The Splendid Anomaly in 2016. Global narratives seemed grim. The blurb said something like ‘I want draw and animate the social model of disability: a theory that identifies the ‘problem’ not with the individual but with the limiting assumptions about what that person is or isn’t capable of. Basically, it’s a theory about a lack of imagination. I then want to apply this model to larger stories we’re telling ourselves about our collective capabilities in the face of profound crises and change’.

A lot has happened since then. What we are capable of continues to be revealed.

This performance draws from my own experience of disability and chronic illness during a time of significant systemic disruption. Over the past eight years, in collaboration with my creative team, we’ve been asking - where in our universe’s timeline has crises and change functioned as an anomaly, essential not only to the thing we call evolution but our shared resilience and capacity to better imagine the future?

Creator, Writer, Drawer, Animator and Performer: Ahmarnya Price
Directorial Eye/Dramaturg: Susie Dee
Musical Composition and Sound Design: Kelly Ryall
Projection Design: Rhian Hinkley
Lighting Design: Richard Vabre
Stage Manager and Production Manager: Jo Leishman
Technician/Fabricator: Ed Rossi
Costume Alteration: Lindy Macauley
Access Support/Outside Eye: Tamara Kirby