CANBERRA Youth Theatre has announced its four new resident artists for 2021.

Linda Chen, Caelan Kaluder, Annika Kendall and Natsuko Yonezawa will enjoy a year-long incubator for early career theatre makers who are passionate about creating new works, becoming part of the company and participating in a program of creative developments, performances and individual projects.

Chen is a performer and writer who often explores migrant stories and stories of displacement and identity. She has just completed The Street Theatre’s Early Phase program, where she has been in concept development for her play, “Linger”, and was a recent resident artist with Shopfront Arts, where she presented a one-woman show turned audio-visual installation due to covid.

Kaulder comes from a farm near Tamworth, NSW. He’s in his final year of a BA at the ANU and has had his passion for theatre awakened by coming to Canberra, becoming co-artistic director of the National University Theatre Society in 2020.

Yonezawa, whose physical theatre work, “Mess”, featured in these pages when it premiered at Belconnen Arts Centre in October 2020, graduated from the ANU School of Art and Design, trained in contemporary dance with QL2 Dance and directed her first short dance work, which premiered at the 2019 Art Not Apart Festival.

Kendall is a drama teacher and has previously worked as co-artistic director of NoRoom Theatre Company, where she co-devised, directed and performed “A Cat’s Tongue” at Melbourne Fringe Festival, and her original solo work, “Objectophilia” as part of her university research.

Artistic director and CEO of the company, Luke Rogers, says, “These artists come from a diverse range of performance practices, and I can’t wait to see what new discoveries they make working together, and the contributions they make to the arts sector, both in the ACT and on a national level”.

He said the program had been made possible thanks to the Jeremy Spencer Broom Legacy, Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres, and Creative Partnerships Australia through Plus1.