♡ About Crush Collective ♡

Crush Collective is a performance and mixed media collective run by Bella Whitcher, Leah Herbert and Ellen Houghton. We produce contemporary works by emerging artists and foster community art making practises for Queer and Feminist art practioners.

Crush Collective was a recipient of Wollongong Council’s Creative Wollongong Quick Response Grants (2022), where we provided community writing workshops to women. The culmination of writing from the workshop participants was then adapted into a show at Society City, titled Feral Women (2022). This sellout show allowed actors and non actors to showcase their work to the community. In 2023, the Collective hosted workshops, scratch night-esque events and shows at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, KXT Bakehouse on Broadway, QTOPIA and Merrigong Theatre Company. We partned with PACT and City of Sydney council to produce a Mouse Magazine, allowing emerging writers to collaborate and contribute to a published work.

In 2024, the members of Crush Collective will be involved in Factory Theatre’s Big Gay Entree Festival for Mardi Gras and Shopfront’s ArtsLab event at 107 Projects.

♡ MEET THE CRUSH CREW ♡

  • Bella Whitcher

    THEY/THEM

    Bella Whitcher is a performance practitioner and mixed media artist residing on Gadigal Country. They have completed a Bachelor of Performance (2018-2020) and a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) (2022) at the University of Wollongong. In 2021, they co-founded Crush Collective with the hopes of creating an arts collective that supports emerging writers to create contemporary work. They are the co-host of Crush Nights with Ellen Houghton Merrigong X, KXT Bakehouse and PACT). In 2023, Bella was the editor for Mouse Mag. Bella is interested in the ways live performance and online interactions connect with each other, and how this experience can be translated to audiences. This is demonstrated in their Honours work, girlblogging (2022), as they host vignettes of scenes devised by the cast inspired by early 2010’s internet culture. This show was then produced again in 2023 at QTOPIA: Live At The Bandstand.

    Their mixed media art has been showcased in PACT’s Extra Extra Newspaper (2020), Shopfront’s children’s book, Exquisite Corpse 2022) and their collage work won the People’s Pony Award for Twenty10’s Show Ponies: Queer Youth Art Festival (2023).

  • Leah Herbert

    SHE/HER

    Leah Herbert graduated from the University of Wollongong in 2021, receiving a Bachelor of Performance. Since graduating Leah has been an active producer in the arts group, Crush Collective. Leah’s work in Crush Collective has included facilitating weekly writing workshops, Night Writers (2023) and producing the bi-monthly short work event, Crush Nights.

    Leah’s passion for feminist and queer writing was best honed during Crush Collective’s Feral Women (2022). Leah has also written and performed monologues for shows such as The Red Room (2020, dir. Malcolm Whittaker) and Crush (2019, dir. Bella Whitcher). Leah also starred as a collaborator in honours production girlbblogging (2022, dir. Bella Whitcher). Leah’s experiences in these works has allowed her to remain continuously engaged with experimental and emerging theatre, she admires work that pushes the boundaries of identity, sexuality and gender.

  • Ellen Houghton

    SHE/HER

    Ellen Houghton is a director and live artist living and creating on Dharawal Country. Ellen graduated from a Bachelor of Performance (Theatre) from the University of Wollongong in 2019 and has since completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts Honours (2022). Ellen is a Core member of Crush Collective which aims to promote a gig culture in contemporary theatre. Ellen has most recently hosted and performed in Crush Nights at KXT Bakehouse and at 93 Crown St as a part of the MerrigongX 2023 Program. Ellen was a Coeditor and writer for Crush Collectmve’s magazine, Mouse Mag. As a part of this project, Ellen performed at PACT’s Sound Out the Street (2023) as a mouse influencer.

    Ellen directed Unspecified Sad Donkey (2022) at the University of Wollongong which explored task-based melancholy from the perspective of three budget Eeyore donkeys and a “Void Manager”. Ellen enjoys creating work that is messy, semi-scripted, low-fi and rooted in a gig culture that encourages active audiences that are involved in the process of performance making.