Creative Engine's Launchpad Showcase #2

The Water Done Gone
Bloomshed

James Jackson’s The Water Done Gone by Bloomshed reimagines the Murray–Darling Basin as an epic of environmental collapse and political satire, tracing the contested histories of water, land and survival across regional Australia. 

Drawing on the sweeping Epic romance of Gone with the Wind, this project reimagines the familiar structure of that classic civil-war epic through the lens of Australia’s own environmental and cultural battleground. 

CREDITS

James Jackson
Tom Molyneux
Lauren Swain
James Malcher

1910 The Charm Campaign
Chi Vu

‘Just like my gold-mining ancestors, I am trying to climb a new mountain.’

1910 Australia is reimagined via the tropes of Reality Television using a mixture of historical facts and anachronistic references to contemporary society. Politics and Popular entertainment intermingle in this history-adjacent romp that reintroduces the diversity of diversities found on our streets today into the black&white photos from Australia’s past. Ham Hop is a Reality Housewife in New Gold Mountain who, along with her Australian-raised husband John Poon Gooey, campaigns for an exemption to the Restrictive Immigration Laws, also known as the White Australia Policy. She explores this brave new world after leaving everything she knows in Southern China behind to be with John, a greengrocer with a stall in Geelong’s Market Square. The aspirational migrant couple must try to win over the hearts and minds of everyday Australians to succeed. Along the way, they meet with unexpected characters who help them in their quest. Will Ham Hop be allowed to stay in Australia with her husband John? As their relationship is pushed to the limits, will this couple find Love or Likes? 

Warnings: Contains themes of racism.

CREDITS

Chi Vu
Writer/Producer

Beng Oh
Director

Keith Brockett
Actor

Amanda LaBonte
Actor

Luke Leong-Tay 
Actor

Rebecca Vincent 
Actor

Keziah Warner
Dramaturg/Script Mentor

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, Geelong Arts Centre's Launchpad 2.0 program and the City of Greater Geelong (2026). This project was supported by Geelong Arts Centre’s Creative Engine and Australian Plays Transform’s Playwriting Groups (2025).

Mother Grid
Leah Baulch

Leah Baulch’s Mother Grid is a crime-inflected text-based theatre work set within a digital parenting app that becomes a site of surveillance, misinformation and community fracture across the Geelong region. 

Warnings: Birth, post-partum depression, loud music.

CREDITS

Lead artist: Leah Baulch
Actor, Creative Producer, Writer

Larissa Agosti
Composer, Musician

Ashlea Pyke
Director, Collaborator, Dramaturgy

Troy Campbell
Graphic Design and Consultation

Johnson-Tuan Nguyen
Visual Effects

Tara Nieuwenhuys
Voice Consultant

Tara Mokhtari
Dramaturgy and Cultural Consultant

Negative Gearing 
Kath Dolheguy 

Negative Gearing is a two-person play about a brother and sister who are loaded. Not with money unfortunately, but with a lifetime of trouble through no choice of their own. They find themselves, as adults, with the opportunity to right some wrongs but will they fix things or make it worse? This performance will be the actors, Dana and Nick, reading the first two scenes of the play. 

Content/Production Warning: 
This piece references the occurrence of childhood sexual abuse and contains a LOT of swearing. Stage lights may be dimmed several times while a black light is used. 

CREDITS

Kath Dolheguy
Creator and Writer

Dana Miltins 
Collaborator and Performer

Nick Barkla
Performer