Meet the Team
Ariella (they/she) is an emerging writer and interdisciplinary interactive and immersive theatre-maker from Romania, Italy, Australia, and now the UK.
Ariella creates playful, speculative stories through a queer, intersectional lens, valuing joy, care, kinship and imaginative possibility. They write plays, films and poetic games.
Ariella was long listed for the BBC Writersroom Popcorn Writing Award 2023 for their play ‘Hive’ (4* The Scotsman). Additionally, their play ‘To be a bat’ was shortlisted for Theatre503’s 2023 International Playwriting Award and long listed for the 2023 Paines Plough Women’s Playwriting Award.
Ariella trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama where they’ve also worked as a Visiting Practitioner, developing new writing as a director and dramaturg.
Ariella has presented work at VAULT festival (dir. Not Another One (WIP), Hive - APOV) Southwark Playhouse (The dusk before - R&D and showcase), Omnibus Theatre (The dusk before - Engine Room Program) Assembly Roxy (Hive), Theatre Deli (A Quest for Rest, You wake up/octopus - SHIFT+SPACE), The Space (To be a bat, Hive, You wake up/octopus), Camden People's Theatre (You wake up/Octopus - SPRINT Festival) and Summerhall (A Quest for Rest, Summerhall Surgeries).
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Susie MacDonald (she/her) is an award winning director and theatre practitioner with a passion for storytelling, experimenting with music, lighting and DIY special effects. Susie has been developing her understanding of dramaturgy and audience experience through recent projects devising immersive/interactive/co-created experiences as part of Mushmoss Collective (alongside long standing collaborators Ariella Como Stoian and Zygmund de Somogyi) in partnership with Theatre Deli. Susie has collaborated on new plays that have gone on to be longlisted for The Popcorn Award for New Writing and The Women's Prize for Playwriting.
Particular highlights include 'Colossal’ by Patrick McPherson; following award-winning runs at Edinburgh and Perth Fringe (Theatre Weekly’s Best Show of the Edinburgh Fringe 2022 and Best Theatre Show 2023 Perth Fringe), Susie oversaw the sold-out transfer to Soho Theatre, and is due to tour Australia again 2024.
Susie has a background in devising shows for social impact, including ‘Finding Percy Erebus’ (Shortlisted for Edinburgh Untapped Award 2022), a family show supported by Arts Council England, Applecart Arts and the charity Child Bereavement UK. Susie regularly collaborates with composers to incorporate original song and composition and has directed radio plays including ‘Your Unfortunate Servants’ in partnership with The National Archives.
Zygmund de Somogyi is a composer, performer, and writer currently based in London, UK. Their work explores expressions of metamodernism, digital folklore, and the recontextualisation of genre and form, and has encompassed psychological-horror opera, 31-TET string quartets, immersive sound-art theatre, unfiction, and graphic-score-video-games.
Zygmund is a Soundhub Associate Composer with the London Symphony Orchestra. They have recently been commissioned by organisations such as Gaudeamus Screendive (NL), Access Contemporary Music Chicago (US), Composers Conference (US), and Opera in Oborne (UK). In 2022, their debut opera 'hikikomori!' was premiered in Oborne, Dorset; their second opera 'URSA MINOR' (with librettist Alexia Peniguel) premieres in June 2024 at Milton Court, London, in association with the Royal Opera House.
Zygmund is currently pursuing an MA in Opera Making and Writing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where they study with Toby Young and Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh; they previously studied at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with Ed Bennett, Edwin Roxburgh, and Howard Skempton. Zygmund is also artistic director and editor of contemporary music magazine PRXLUDES, and vocalist & guitarist in punk quartet Trouble Sleeping.