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Artist of the Month

Since 2023, we have been making it our mission to highlight a new artist from the Australian theatre scene each month.

This individual could be a performer, director, writer, reviewer, sound designer, musician, lighting designer, set designer, stage manager and so on.

If you feel like you’d know someone who would be perfect, contact us or hit us up on our socials @theatrethoughtsaus.

March - Cassie Hamilton

Writer, Performer, and Director

Cassie is a transgender writer, performer, and director based on Gadigal land, working across theatre, film, and new musical development. Her practice centres queer storytelling with heart, humour, and theatrical ambition, often blending intimacy with spectacle.

As a performer, Cassie has appeared in leading and main cast roles across Australian stages, including A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying (The Old Fitz Theatre; Adelaide Cabaret Festival; Chapel Off Chapel; Hayes Theatre), Symphonie Fantastique (KXT), Our Blood Runs in the Street (Chopt Logic), I Hope It’s Not Raining in London (Bearfoot Theatre),Rent (Pantseat Productions), , The History BoysThe 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Hinterland (Young People’s Theatre).

Cassie’s writing spans plays, musicals, and screen. Her new musical A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying was awarded the APRA Professional Development Award in 2025 and has been developed with Hayes Theatre, Homegrown, and the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Her play Animal was shortlisted for the 2023 Griffin Award and premiered with Brand X in 2024. She was a co-writer on Satranic Panic, which premiered at SXSW in 2023 and was recently released on Shudder. Her queer farce Daddy Developed a Pill debuted at Kings Cross Theatre in 2022 before touring to Theatre Works in Melbourne in 2023.

As a director and dramaturg, Cassie has worked with companies including Griffin Theatre Company, The Old Fitz Theatre, Darlinghurst Theatre Company, and Bearfoot Theatre. She is a founding member of the Trans Theatre Collective, with whom she dramaturged and directed No Love Songs for Lady Basses at the Old Fitz, and she will direct Afterglow by Sheanna Parker Russon at Griffin Theatre Company in 2026.

She is also the co-founder of Bearfoot Theatre, a company dedicated to producing original queer works.

My Story

What inspired you to make art as a career?

I got into a diploma of musical theatre back when I was identifying as a twinky tenor who played romantic leads, and the first thing I did was transition to being a woman. As I was taught rep that was well out of my range and was thrust into into an ill-fitting ensemble costume, I came to realise that musical theatre is actually kinda inaccessible to trans people…

It was this realisation that inspired me to start writing musical theatre with trans characters at the fore, finding new ways of telling trans stories, and new ways that musical theatre could sound.

I have been in love with musical theatre since I was a kid and I was adamant that I would find a way to do what I love despite the barriers in my way, and hopefully help to make it so that the people that come after me don’t face the same barriers.

What have been the highs of your career so far? What have been the lows?

The Adelaide Cabaret Festival Variety Gala was a huge high—an audience of 2000 people, wearing a shit hot gown, performing a song I wrote from my musical, A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying, with the love of my life Virginia Gay waiting in the wings for me. Like that was a moment that little me was so proud of me for.

Winning the APRA AMCOS Professional Development Award for the same musical was also an iconic high moment. But the biggest career highs have come from community performances of my shows where the queer/trans community show up, laugh at every single one of my stupid jokes and get the specificity of the struggles I’m writing about—the pathos & catharsis of being in a room like that is just unparalleled and I’m always so grateful for how my work has been received.

Career lows…look—the theatre industry is kind of hard given the dire financial situation almost all theatrical institutions in this country are in right now, which obviously leads to issues of accessibility. I have a lot of empathy for the position companies are in right now, but it’s always going to kinda suck when you get *this close* to being part of a company’s season and it falls through because there just isn’t enough money to put towards it.

What do you feel is your voice in the theatre industry?

I’d like think that people see me as an advocate for trans stories, artists and the trans community generally. Growing up in Newcastle, I never really had any trans community around me and so I’ve tried to use my voice to advocate for trans people’s place within the theatre community. I worked on the Trans Theatre Symposium for Overflow at Darlinghurst Theatre Company and more recently at the Trans Theatre Festival at Carriageworks. I never want to be some serious theatre girly who loses touch with where she came from—I always want to be there to lift up young queer people and support queer people to create their art.

What helps to keep you grounded in a changing industry?

My friends, my family—I think I have fallen into a trap in the past where I make theatre my everything and become fixated on how I “move upward” in the industry, but I’ve done my best work when I remind myself that it’s only one portion of my life. I do this because I love it, you know? And I want to be able to continue to love doing theatre which means doing it sustainably, and making space in my life to do things that are just for me. 

That means sometimes writing without the expectation that it will go on somewhere, but investing in it because I love the act of doing it. It also means spending time with the people I love, and reminding myself that whatever happens, there will always be people who have my back.

Where do you see yourself going/want to go next?

I like to view myself as a multi-tendrilled creativity beast and as I’m about to open my hyperpop musical A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying at the Old Fitz (shout out), I have a lot of things on the horizon that are not just writing musical theatre (even though I REALLY want to keep writing musical theatre).

I am directing a show called Afterglow by Sheanna Parker Russon & Lillian Hearne at Griffin Theatre Company in a few months, I am playing a lead in a show that I can’t talk about yet and I have just started writing a new princess musical about forced feminisation that I’m wanting to adapt for television. I am also hoping to expand my practice as a freelance theatre producer since recently leaving Griffin Theatre Company after three glorious years, to be able to support works that align with my values.

I also love producing electronic music and will probably put out some more music at some point (maybe I have a cast album in the works, who’s to say!?).

My hope is that in whatever way I move forward, that I can continue to contribute to the ecology of the arts in this country and help guide us towards an industry that is sustainable, inclusive and full of joy and creativity.

Our Artists of the Month Gallery

Wondering who we’ve highlighted in the past? Scroll through our gallery of artists below!

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