ABOUT OUR STEWARDS.

CHAIR: Vanessa Dumbrell 

Vanessa Dumbrell brings extensive expertise in governance, strategic planning, and financial oversight across government, education, and nonprofits. She has a proven track record of streamlining operations, enhancing transparency, and driving impactful initiatives.

A passionate advocate for social justice, Vanessa is dedicated to supporting women in custody and those exiting the prison system, working to develop policies that create real, positive change.

Her experience in Government Justice includes advocacy, policy development for victims of crime, and governance structures. She has supported government boards, ensuring accountability and effective decision-making. Vanessa’s leadership roles—Manager of Governance and Assurance at NSW Department of Education and Chief Product and Quality Officer at TAFE NSW—demonstrate her ability to navigate complex governance structures, lead multimillion-dollar projects, and advise senior leaders on governance and risk management.

TREASURER: Lloyd Alexander is the Founder of Tribe Accounting and an experienced Fractional CFO, finance professional, and trusted advisor with a passion for helping organizations build strong financial foundations. With extensive experience supporting Small-Medium Enterprises, family offices, and not-for-profit organisations, Lloyd specialises in financial management, governance, compliance, cash flow strategy, and business sustainability. As Treasurer of The Living Room Theatre, Lloyd brings a combination of financial expertise, governance experience, and a genuine commitment to supporting the arts and ensuring the organisation’s ongoing financial sustainability and growth.

SECRETARY: David Turner
David is a long-time devotee of adventurous music, with decades of attending and appreciating performances of improvised music, jazz, modern classical, and other eclectic genres. More recently he has also been a performer of improvised music and a member of the Splinter Orchestra. David maintains the emus.space listing of exploratory music events in Sydney and curates the Jetsets performance series.

Professionally, David has spent most of his working life as a Commonwealth public servant, honing skills in administration, delivery and organisation. Combining his love for music with his professional expertise, David is committed to contributing to LRT and its home at 21 Shepherd, helping to make it part of a thriving artistic community.

Board Member – Fundraising, Partnerships and Sponsorships

Kalinda Atkinson is a global marketing leader with extensive experience driving brand growth, commercial strategy, and business transformation across international markets. Alongside her executive career, she is passionate about advancing equity and ending violence against women. Her board focus is on strategic partnerships, helping purpose-driven organisations grow their impact by connecting people, brands, and communities around meaningful change.

MEMBERS:

Cara Anderson is a creative and dynamic arts leader with extensive experience across publishing, music and the performing arts. Since 2018 she has been CEO and Managing Editor of Limelight Arts Media, publisher of Limelight, Australia’s leading independent performing arts magazine. She has held corporate and not-for-profit roles with global and national organisations in New York, London and Sydney, including Director of Engagement at Music Australia and positions with Opera Australia and theatre company Version 1.0, specialising in strategic engagement, governance and advocacy. Cara is President of the Sydney Improvised Music Association and passionate about independent arts organisations and the amplification of women’s voices in Australian cultural life. 

Billy Cotsis
Billy  is an experienced economic development and diversity specialist focused on stakeholder engagement, media relations, community development, event management, and strategy implementation. He recently managed economic development and place management at Inner West Council for nearly six years and has international experience.

As a prolific writer, he has published over 350 articles and is currently working on his eighth book. He has also written and directed documentaries, a miniseries, and short films.

In addition to his work in media, he was a presenter for five years on the award-winning Meraki TV on Foxtel. Billy has received several international film festival awards and was a finalist for the Cultural Diversity Story at the NSW Premier’s Multicultural Media Awards and Best Journalist of the Year at the NSW Multicultural and Indigenous Awards.

Suzi Dougherty

Suzi Dougherty is an actor, director and arts leader with more than 20 years’ experience across Australia’s theatre and screen industries. A WAAPA graduate and founding member of Bell Shakespeare, she has worked with major companies including Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company. She founded Wallace Co-Op Theatre Company and established the City of Sydney’s long-running acting program for over-55s. As a director, she has staged more than 20 productions and directed To Be or Not To Be, which screened at the St Kilda Film Festival. Suzi also designs communication and executive presence programs at NIDA for leading organisations.

Lian Loke
Roost Associate Artist with The Living Room Theatre (2026-2027)

Louis WIshart
Roost Associate Artist at The Living Room Theatre (2026-2027)

SCALP
Contemporary Composition Resident Organisation at The Living Room Theatre (2026-2027),

The Living Room Theatre (LRT) was born back in 2000 with the frustration of the prevailing arts scene. Dissatisfied with the sector’s expectation of the stories that imbued St Anne’s body, LRT soon became a home for her unique voice and methodology that she has pioneered for over twenty years.

Through LRT, St Anne’s early works explored personal trauma which developed into the investigation of violence within homes, landscapes, and systems where she pioneered the artistic pedagogy ‘composing self’. Composing self is an embodied approach to collaboration that prioritises constructing safe and self-determined spaces where artists can take risks, extend their practice and reckon with their own methodologies with care and comfort. Justice or rather injustice underpins LRT’s work as St Anne and her diverse collaborators forge new ways, give voice to the vulnerable and speak truth to power by shedding light on systemic patriarchal structures.

LRT draws on the principles of ‘Composed Theatre’ (methodology coined by David Roesner and Matthias Rebstock) where theatrical stage and its elements are approached as ‘musical’ material. Extensive development stages, focus on sensorial, and putting the emphasis on collaboration across disciplines are the usual staples of the LRT productions.

“My work is not about the straight narrative, nor the theatrical arc but rather what is heart driven, illogical with the narrative meted out through image, light, sound and language.” – Michelle St Anne.

Over the last decade LRT has forged partners with international scholars who are fascinated in our approach and aesthetic that has filtered into their publications.

With sell-out shows and high audience engagement, LRT produces ambitious and powerful site-responsive performance. The organisation has a strong sense of integrity, artistic excellence, and innovation, and creates unexpected, poetic experiences that captivate audiences, unleash emotions, and give voice to the most vulnerable. LRT’s work strives to change systemic attitudes towards violence, trauma, and the female body by shifting audience perception, so these insights create small changes within themselves, community, and society.

As the journey continues, LRT remains committed to creating inclusive and experiential contemporary performance works that transcend time, explore space and frame images in hurt and abandoned spaces. We tell stories about women by women to support and develop female voices within the arts, cultural and academic sectors.