At PICA we recognise that we are situated within the unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation. We pay our respects and offer our gratitude to Elders past and present. We acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the importance of their care and continued connection to culture, community and Country.

Always was, always will be.

Galleries are open 12–5pm. Our exhibitions are always free.

Izzy McDonald

Studio Booster Program: Diving for Dust

Studio Booster Program: Diving for Dust

Diving for Dust explores the emotional toll and gendered dynamics of FIFO (Fly-In, Fly-Out) life on a young, heteronormative relationship during WA’s late-2000s mining boom. Set between a white tiled Perth suburban home and red desert work sites, the play follows Olive and Trent, a couple pushed to the edge by mundane routine, private addiction and late queer self discovery.

Based on interviews with FIFO partners and workers, Diving for Dust is a lyrical, character-driven work about identity and compromise. With a local and talented team of independent artists, Izzy McDonald hopes to tell the story of thousands of WA couples who are married to this hard-core working arrangement.  

Credits: 

Writer and Director: Izzy McDonald 
Sound Designer: Kieran Gulvin 
Set Designer: James McMillan 
Performer: Phoebe Sullivan 
Performer: Haydon Wilson 
Dramaturg: Alexa Taylor 

About the artists

Izzy McDonald is a WA writer, director and political advocate. Izzy graduated from UWA with a degree in English and Cultural Studies in 2015, the same year she co-founded the award winning independent theatre company Rorschach Beast and directed the company’s premiere show Girl in the Wood. This work won Fringe World’s Best Emerging Artist and the Melbourne Fringe Ready to Tour Award. That year Izzy also participated in the Australian Theatre for Young People’s National Studio for Young Writers. Her piece Dive was performed in Sydney and published by Currency Press. The following year she wrote, produced and performed in Bus Boy which went on to win Fringe World’s coveted Martin Sims Award, the Theatre Award, the Best Emerging Artist Award and went on to tour internationally to Brighton Fringe. In 2020 Izzy wrote and co-directed French Over in the State Theatre courtyard, which was nominated for the Theatre Award that year. Most recently she directed SIT! Or I’ll Make You Sit as a part of the Blue Rooms 2022 program winning their Members Choice Award and PAWA Outstanding Direction of an Independent Production. In 2022 Izzy completed her Honors in Performance Making at WAAPA. Izzy has been developing Diving for Dust since through her artist residency at PICA and a script development in 2024 through the Perth Play Writing Festivals Inklings writings program. She is also a current member of the Black Swan writers group FORGE.

Kieran Gulvin is a modular synthesist, sound artist and composer. His practice is centred upon microsound, an approach to composition which draws from the historical lineage of musique concreté and uses digital signal processing to play with sound at the edge of human perception. Using these techniques, he takes a collaborative approach to composition, creating improvised immersive soundscapes that respond in real time to creative direction. Kieran has previously provided composition and sound design for Sit! Or I’ll Make You Sit at the Blue Room Theatre and performed in the Goolugatup Sounds exploratory music program as part of the Caravan of Contingency.

James McMillan is an artist based in Boorloo (Perth). Having worked as a writer, director, designer and performer he is currently undertaking a PhD at WAAPA. James recently co-created Mi-Meme a part of the 2023 Prague Quadrennial and was an artist in the 2024 Perth Festival Lab. In 2024 he undertook a 6-week residency through the City of Albany developing  GPS locative sound work Out Here. James has worked as designer on Homeward Bound (2022) and SIT! Or I’ll Make You Sit (2022), as director, writer and designer on Court my Crotch (2018) and director and writer on Arteries by Ancestry (2017).

Phoebe Sullivan is a Boorloo based theatre-maker and performance artist. Phoebe’s artistic inquiry is concerned with contemporary ideas of rabid, conspicuous consumption. Consumption within contemporary culture, her local community, her body and her personal narrative and more broadly how art audience consumers can find agency and participate more holistically in her projects. She holds a Bachelors in Performing Arts from WAAPA (2016) and has presented and performed work with Black Swan State Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre, Perth Festival, pvi collective, ATYP, Erth, WA Youth Theatre Company, The Blue Room Theatre and more. Phoebe also has experience working as a producing artist, having managed independent projects such as WALK (2023) as part of The Blue Room Theatre’s Development Season and has worked for CircuitWest as an Assistant Tour Coordinator. Recent works include The Tempest (2021), Step On All The Men (600 Seconds Development) (2023), Queer PowerPoint (2023).

Since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2015, Haydon Wilson has spent the last decade with his feet planted in Perth, working as a theatre-maker and performer. Cutting his teeth as an Indie maker, he cofounded Static Drive Co., collaborating on projects as deviser, actor and director. Working with local and national companies as an actor, he has found himself performing in a swathe of settings, from the mainstage to the mine-site donga. He currently works in education, as a puppeteer for Camp Quality’s Primary School Cancer Education program and as a digital puppeteer (It’s a real thing!) at Murdoch University’s SimLab. Witnessing the power of theatre in educational settings, roleplay and forum theatre has encouraged him to return to study postgrad education. Outside of this, Haydon works as a freelance actor and loves collaborating with passionate artists in developing rigorous, performance-based work. 

Dr Alexa Taylor has been making, thinking about and Supporting the making of theatre and performance in Boorloo for the last 15 years (with the occasional foray into elsewhere, like Ludus Festival Leeds or ArtCOP21 Paris). Alexa works as a director, dramaturg and maker, with recent works including See You Next Tuesday (Static Drive Company, 2019 and 2022); Growing Voices (WAYTCO 2022); Watch and Act (Katie McAllister 2021 and 2023); Love (Eat Life Productions, 2021 PAWA Award for Best Independent Director) and Two Canaries (Alexa Taylor Productions, 2019). Alexa is a Lecturer in the Bachelor of Performing Arts – Performance Making course at WAAPA, where she loves being part of the development of creative devising practice/s – from overseeing site specific projects to mentoring the graduating cohort’s annual season of TILT at The Blue Room Theatre. She has worked on research projects about creativity and sense of place, new media dramaturgy and theatre and politics; and in 2016 completed a PhD at Murdoch University exploring how art and performance can spark and enable responses to global challenges like the climate crisis. She is still thinking about this, and appreciates the immense privilege of doing so on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar. 

Supporters

The Studio Boosters have been made possible through partnership between the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and Performing Lines WA as part of the 2025 Kolyang Program of Industry Development Initiatives, supported by the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries.