Irine Vela, Director/Concept
Irine Vela is a director and producer, composer, sound designer, and librettist. Being a child of refugee and immigrant parents of mixed faiths informs a body of work that embodies the vitality that ghettoised voices bring to the Australian arts. She was a founding ensemble member of Melbourne Workers Theatre. Her work for Outer Urban Projects has resulted in many productions including The Audition (2019 and 2024). Her choral opera Little City garnered her an award from the Australian Music Centre for Best Composition by an Australian Composer. Other notable collaborations and productions include Anthem for the Melbourne, Sydney and Perth Festivals 2019-2020.

Bryan Andy, Playwright
Bryan Andy is a Yorta Yorta man from Cummeragunja, NSW. Bryan is a freelance writer, radio broadcaster and theatre maker. He has been published with Lonely Planet, NITV, ABC, IndigenousX, The Guardian, Witness Performance and Meanjin. In 2021, Flock: First Nations Stories Then and Now (edited by Ellen Van Neerven and published by University of Queensland Press) was released and featured a short story by Bryan titled Moama ('Place of the Dead'). Bryan is currently completing a Masters of Theatre (Writing) at the Victorian College of the Arts/University of Melbourne.

Kush Kuiy, Playwright
Kush Kuiy loves building new things and transforming it into something impactful and for positive change. In collaboration with the Nuer Community Foundation of Australia and City of Monash, Kush successfully inaugurated Rise of South Sudan in 2018. This annual benefit concert celebrates Melbourne’s vibrant South-Sudanese and wider African populations, highlighting individual artistic excellence and collective creative capacity. She is also the creator of Blaxcellence, a networking platform for Afro Diaspora, First Peoples and black identifying creatives. Kush has previously worked with Outer Urban Projects as an associate producer.

Sahra Davoudi, Playwright and Actor
Sahra Davoudi graduated in art and architecture at the University of Tehran with a Bachelor of Theatre Art in 2009. Her first professional work as an actor and writer in Australia was with Outer Urban Projects’ dance theatre work Vessel at Arts Centre Melbourne (2017). She then went on to work as a writer and actor in The Audition at La Mama in 2019, remounted in 2024 at La Mama Theatre, The Bowery Theatre, and Bunjil Place. Sahra performed In the Mirror by Mammad Aidani for La Mama Theatre and the interdisciplinary dance work Conquest of the Garden by Nebahat Erpolat.

Samah Sabawi, Playwright
Dr Samah Sabawi is an award-winning author, playwright and poet. Her memoir Cactus Pear for My Beloved has been shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize, The Age Book of the Year award and the NSW Literary Awards’ Douglas Stewart Prize, and was highly commended by the Victoria Premier’s Literary Awards. Sabawi’s theatre credits include the award-winning plays Tales of a City by the Sea (2016) and THEM (2019). In 2020 Samah received the prestigious Green Room Award for Best Writing in the independent theatre category and was shortlisted for both the NSW and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

Patricia Cornelius, Playwright
Patricia Cornelius is a founding member of Melbourne Workers Theatre. She’s a playwright, novelist, and film writer. Patricia has a fierce commitment to class and her work often examines the lives of the marginalised. She has written over 35 plays including: Shit, Big Heart, Savages, Slut, Love and The Call. She co-wrote the feature film adaptation Blessed, based on the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? In 2023, her play Do Not Go Gentle was presented by STC and My Sister Jill by MTC. She is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize and 2019 Green Room award for Life Achievement.

Tara Jade Samaya, Choreographer and Dancer
Tara Jade Samaya is a queer eco feminist and a multidisciplinary artist who teaches, creates, and performs dance. She recently returned to Australia from Europe, where she rehearsal directed at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, danced with Staatsballett Berlin, and created the production I’m Here Now with filmmaker Pippa Samaya for the Komische Oper Berlin. Tara has worked with many companies, organisations and independent creators including Chunkymove, Australian Dance Theatre, Douglas Wright, Prue Lang, and Lina Limosani. Her film collaborative The Samaya Wives with partner Pippa has won national and international acclaim for their short experimental movement films, screening across festivals, galleries and independent cinemas worldwide.

Outer Urban Projects aims to platform the voices, stories and art of our communities from the outer northern and immigrant suburbs of Naarm / Melbourne. We create polyvocal and multidisciplinary works that contain the breadth of experiences and viewpoints of our communities and the artists we work with.  

A series of acts of violence, corresponding protests and vigils provided the impetus to create VIGIL and to ask the question: how safe is our city and for whom?  We gathered community groups, playwrights, dance artists, poets, and actors to examine the acts of public and private terror that confront us daily in what is considered one of the safest cities in the world. 

VIGIL aims to illuminate the lives that have been forgotten, ignored, and taken. To honour them. To seek justice.  

– Irine Vela, Director

Director / Concept: Irine Vela
Playwrights: Bryan Andy, Kush Kuiy, Sahra Davoudi, Samah Sabawi, Patricia Cornelius
Choreographer: Tara Jade Samaya
Performers: Ali Ammouchi, Angela Costi, Georgia Rudd, Joshinder Chaggar, Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Michelle Heaven, Navera Ari, Nyawuda Chuol, Sahra Davoudi, Sermsah Bin Saad, Taj Aldeeb, Tara Jade Samaya, Tariro Mavondo, Rebecca Robinson, with El Amal Women's Group (Banksia Gardens Community Services)
Set Designer: Nathan Burmeister
Costume Designer: Harriet Oxley
Lighting Designer: Richard Vabre
Sound Engineer: Siiri Metsar
Dramaturgs: Irine Vela & Mari Lourey
Script Consultant: Andrea James
Producers: Kate Gillick & Lara Week