DANNY MULHERON

New Zealand actor, writer, and director Danny Mulheron has worked in theatre, television and film.

In 2011 Danny directed Rage, a Platinum Fund television drama about the 1981 Springbok Tour.

In 2008 he released The Third Richard, a feature length documentary in which he tells the story of his Grandfather, a Jewish German composer whose music was banned by the Nazis, rejected in New Zealand and is now being rediscovered. In 2008 and 2009 he directed children's drama series, Paradise Cafe for BBC, Emu for ITV and Time Trackers for Seven Network Australia.

In 2007 he was a Finalist for Best Director Drama in the Qantas Awards. In 2005 Mulheron co-wrote, directed and produced the comedy series Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, about an aging reactionary schoolteacher who gets a job working in a high school. The character began as a theatre piece, with Mulheron playing Gormsby. Melbourne Age critic Ray Cassin called the television version as "resolutely politically incorrect as it is possible for a television series to be".

The same year Mulheron directed the play The Tutor, written by his Gormsby co-writer Dave Armstrong. The play won the award for Outstanding New NZ Play at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in 2005. Mulheron has acted in, written and directed award winning plays for more than twenty years. He has also worked on plays with New Zealand novelist and scriptwriter Stephen Sinclair, and writer/cartoonist Tom Scott, another of the Gormsby co-writers.

Mulheron's career has seen him host a television show about automobiles, AA Torque Show, play the part (and piano) of Shostakovich in Masterclass, at Circa Theatre and play a traumatised hippopotamus in Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles, for which he was nominated for an award for best female performance. Mulheron was also responsible for writing some of the hippopotami dialogue, along with some of the other animals in the cast.

SIMON CUNLIFFE

Simon Cunliffe is a playwright and journalist. A former deputy editor of both The Press and the Otago Daily Times, he is also a weekly current affairs columnist. His column "Smoko" earned him the award of New Zealand's "Best Columnist'' at the 2012 Canon New Zealand Media Awards. He now writes the weekly "Final Word'' column in the Sunday Star-Times.

He has contributed comedy sketches to the satirical TV series Facelift, had a half hour drama The Wild Bunch made for local TV in Dunedin, has an unproduced feature film script and several plays-in-progress under the bed. The Truth Game is his first full-length stage play.

Born on the West Coast in 1954, he grew up partly in Western Samoa, went to boarding school on Hamilton, and travelled home to Trinidad and Tobago for the Christmas holidays. He fell into journalism in London in the mid- eighties following a peripatetic 1970s – BTech at Massey University, stint in an Australian mining camp, six months travelling through Asia, working as an aid driver in Africa, hotel hand in France, warehouseman and cheesemaker in England. He completed an MA in Film Studies in London and began contributing articles to publications such as the New Statesman, the Guardian, Time Out and The Face.

He joined the staff of Robert Maxwell's Sunday Mirror Magazine as a sub-editor, before moving in the late eighties to the UK national The Independent. With its Sunday stablemate, staff included writers such as Blake Morrison, Sebastian Faulkes, Allison Pearson, Zoe Heller, Lynn Barber, Anthony Lane, Robert Winder, Peter Walker, Ian Jack, Isobel Hilton and many others.

Returning to Christchurch in early 1994, he joined The Press as a feature writer, leaving as deputy editor in 2002. Moving to Dunedin in 2003, he contributed articles to the Listener, North and South and the Sunday Star-Times before joining the Otago Daily Times in 2007. In 2012 he moved to Wellington and works as a sub-editor for Fairfax.

He lives in Seatoun Heights, Wellington, with wife Mary O'Dwyer. They have three children, a dog and a cat. When time and holidays allow they spend as much time as possible at Parapara in Golden Bay.

ALAN LOVELL

1998 Winner of Best Comedy and Best Original Score for Trop Fest

THEATRE

Sydney-based, Alan has performed in a plethora of plays for theatres in Sydney, Melbourne and Wellington, including Belvoir Street Theatre, Bay Street Theatre, Universal Theatre Melbourne, Bondi Pavilion Theatre, Hunter Valley Theatre Company, Parramatta Theatre Company, NIDA Productions, and Circa Theatre, Wellington.

TELEVISION

His Australian, New Zealand and American television credits include Bikey Wars: Brothers in Arms, Underbelly, Tough Nuts 2, Home and Away, Palace of Dreams, Miami Vice, Rafferty's Rules, Sons and Daughters, A Country Practice, G.P, Money or the Gun, Swap Shop, Comedy Company, Let The Blood Run Free, Live and Sweaty, E-Street, The Distant Home, Heartlands (Mini Series), Fast Forward, Heartbreak High, Echo Point, Water Rats, Big Sky, O'Loughlin on Saturday Nights, Airtight (telemovie), Karaoke High, Until Proven Inocent, Shortland St, The Hothouse, Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, Stingers, Young Lions, Don't Blame Me, The Coast (Pilot) and All Saints.

FILM

A flood of film credits include Wish You Were Here, Separation City, Family Values, Happy Birthday My Dear, Fatal Contact, Bird Flu in America, Australian Summer, All In A Row, The Missing Link, Kadaicha, Kokoda Crescent, Glass, Sexual Assault, Truth, Mad Bomber In Love, The Custodian, Powder Burn, Siam Sunset, Mission Impossible, Russian Doll, The Finder.

STAND-UP COMEDY

Alan has performed stand-up comedy in all of Australia's premier comedy venues including The Comedy Store, Last Laugh, Le Joke, and The Comedy Club.

Television appearances include The Money or the Gun, Live and Sweaty, and regular appearances in the third series of The Comedy Company.

In Melbourne he performed The Dead Comics Society at the Comedy Café, the original one-month season extending to four months.

Alan's performances at the Los Angeles Comedy Store were so well received that he was invited to stay as a regular performer.

His "Al of Africa" is a one-man show based on his experiences during the three-month shoot of Gorilla's in the Mist with Sigourney weaver and a bunch of gorillas. Al of Africa was performed at the Universal in Melbourne as part of the Melbourne International Comedy festival.

Tales of a Transient Alien was performed at the Stables Theatre Sydney and includes his story of being deported from America, which makes PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES look like a country drive in a Volvo.

JESSICA ROBINSON

Since graduating from Toi Whakaari: The NZ Drama School in 2005 Jessica has appeared at Circa in The Glass Menagerie, Dumb Show, Mammals, The Year of the Rat, and A Streetcar Named Desire for which she was nominated Best Supporting Actress at the Chapman Tripp Awards. More recently at Circa she performed in Dick Whittington and His Cat, Dead Mans Cellphone, The Great Gatsby, Our Man in Havana, Eight and Aladdin. She has also appeared in the BATS Productions The Singularity, Live at Six, Everything is OK, Idiots, Christ Almighty and Toys. This year Jessica has performed in The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later at BATS Theatre, Live at Six at Downstage Theatre, All My Sons and West End Girls at Circa Theatre.

BRIAN SERGENT

Brian Sergent has been a professional actor since 1979. In that time he has appeared in well over a hundred shows including many at Circa. His many film and TV appearances include Lord of the Rings, Eagle vs. Shark, The Flight of the Conchords, and Outrageous Fortune. As well as being an award winning actor, Brian wrote the play The Love of Humankind, winning him a Chapman Tripp award for best new playwright.

JANINE BURCHETT

Janine is an experienced and awarded actress with a successful career in New Zealand and Australia. She began her performing arts career as a dancer with The Limbs Dance Company and Dance Pacific in New Zealand.

She then furthered her training as an actor at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, and after graduating in 1996 she was nominated for the Chapman Tripp Newcomer Actress of the Year. In 2002 her co-devised play Convict Women won the Enerco Cultural Award in Australia.

She has written and produced several successful short films, most recently the multi award winning children's film Gabriel. Some of her recent acting credits include: Harry (NZ), Legend of the Seeker (USA), Spartacus (USA), Billy (NZ) and Rage (NZ).

Janine is one of the founding directors of Easy Tiger Creations whose aim is to create and produce quality entertainment for children. She currently teaches drama for DramaWorks and is well known amongst the little folk as Fairy NinaBelle ;)

Awards
Best Film, Oberhausen International Film Festival, Germany
Best of the Fest, Palm Springs Short Film Festival, USA
Best Film, Dare to Dream, Giffoni, Hollywood
Best Film, Giffoni Children's Film Festival, Italy
Silver, New York Children's Film Festival, New York
Silver, International Family Film Festival, USA
Enerco Cultural Award, Convict Women, Australia

PAUL McLAUGHLIN

Paul McLaughlin is a graduate of Otago University (Allen Hall) and Toi Whakaari. He has appeared in over 50 professional theatre productions in a 15 year career as a full time actor and director. Notable performances include Colin McColl's celebrated production of Cabaret! at Downstage, Speed-the-Plough, The Bach and Peninsula at Circa and Speer at BATS, for which he was named Actor of The Year in 2007. Paul has appeared in core-cast roles in TV drama such as Jacksons Wharf and comedy - Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby. His last engagement was at Centrepoint Theatre, Palmerston North, directing the critically acclaimed Enlightenment. Paul is also the Artistic Director of Site Specific Theatre NZ; the team behind the shows HOTEL and SALON; which continue to tour the arts festival circuit.

ACUSHLA-TARA SUTTON

Originally from New Plymouth, Acushla-Tara is a third year business student at Victoria University of Wellington. She has spent a few years in amateur theatre but The Truth Game was her first professional show..