In Tune With Miss Q (2023)
Developed alongside a group of Abbey’s fellow drama graduates (Dylan Hynd, Samuel Rety, Sophie Bigum, Mak Harris, Kaitlyn Youngs, Ella Ulhmann, Tayla Rankine and Tia Reynold), the ‘In Tune with Miss Q’ podcast is a musical-comedy following a failed Broadyway star and her rise as a primary school teacher. Despite the audios seemingly arbitrary and comical exterior, it was produced with the soul focus of exploring how mediatisation ingrains inauthentic human relationships. Linked heavily to Abbey’s mission of exploring unique human relationships, this listening experience gives light to the notion of ‘fame’ and the modern part it plays on one’s identity.
Embodying the lead role of ‘Miss Q’ alongside being a part of the writing team, Abbey was heavily challenged by this project. As this was her first singing role in an audio production, she partook in disciplinary vocal lessons. Conjunctively, being her writing debut, she spent extensive time developing character profiles and story arcs. Powerfully, it was this project that inspired Abbey to pursue scriptwriting in her professional career and taught her the value of collaborative synergy. Although Abbey enjoys independent creativity, this project shaped her artistic thinking where she discovered she thrives in environments of cooperative brainstorming and devising.
‘In Tune with Miss Q’ is set to be adapted by the same group of creatives and become a musical theatre stage production in 2025.
City Chat (2024)
Produced by Alysha King and Maeve Sloss, this casual and conversational podcast was produced for the girls, the gays and the theys, dicussing the hottest confessionals and ‘tea’ in and around Brisbane. Abbey social media marketed and co-hosted the podcast alongside fellow performer, Kate Kydd. Reaching out to Brisbane locals via Instagram, QUT platforms and in-person, the podcasting team compiled hilarious anonymous confessions, whether that be roommate horror stories or late night expeditions in Fortitude Valley. While the podcast picks fun at self-deprecation and stereotypes that are ‘uniquely Brisbane’, Abbey wanted to create this podcast to highlight the universal nature of human embarrassment and the intricacies of growing-up. Engagingly, ‘City Chat’ explores Abbey’s value of human connection by recounting stories which explore divergent relationships one encounters in their twenties. Whether that be platonic, romantic or familial, Abbey aims to normalise that a persons twenties is a time of self-discovery and tribe finding.
Since the projects release it has significantly altered Abbey’s professional career, where her involvement in social media managing has landed her various other marketing jobs for theatre events and exhibitions. Abbey found a new niche and love for creatively experimenting with aesthetics for shows. In a different way, the incorporation of true storytelling in the podcast has altered her fixed view on developing realism theatre where she is now relishing in being a part of, and writing, verbatim style productions to follow real people on their journey of human growth.
Pitching a Tent (2023-2024)
Originally created in early 2023, ‘Pitching a Tent’ was a collaboratively devised theatre production aiming to evoke nostalgia through comedy, with the main objective being to delineate the emotional whirlwind that is being a teenager. Produced as a final graduation assessment piece, Abbey acted as character ‘Penny’ and co-wrote the play adjacent to her fellow creatives (Tia Reynolds, Henry Dollar, Tayla Rankine, Leilani Kirkpatrick, Maddy Connors, Alex McRae, Ella Cranny and Ella Uhlmann). This show is incredibly close to casts heart where each character was predominately based on the individual and their own high school experience. Aligning with Abbey’s adoration of minimalism and realist styles, ‘Pitching a Tent’ has shaped Abbey’s prospective work in making her a more vulnerable and open artist. Recreating her school captain experience and the very friendships and toxic relationship she experienced in the past was both challenging and liberating. In it’s entirety, this show achieves Abbey’s mission of exploring human connection via the embodiment of her own relationships, how they affected her and what she learnt from them. Abbey enjoys telling anecdotes of others through her work, however, ‘Pitching a Tent’ prospectively encouraged her to not be afraid to share her own story.
Receiving a sell-out audience, ‘Pitching a Tent’ was picked up by BackDock Arts, to be extended and put on in May 2024. Rewritten by Tayla Rankine, this was Abbey’s first professional production for a work she had collaboratively created. What started out as two tents on a stage, became a show with a generous budget and five sold out performances. Abbey powerfully built authentic relationships in the cast and continues to partner with these creatives to adapt and produce more realism based work that shares the intrinsic struggles of growing-up.
