Creative

[selected works]

Cross-Media Games > Commissioned Writing and Design

Hung-Long, LAMP, Perth, May 2006
Commissioned game for team-bonding and developing cross-media design skills for the Laborartory of Advanced Media Production, Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Writing and Game Design: Christy Dena and Jackie Turnure. Website Design: Catherine Gleeson. I did an academic presentation on this game for CyberGames 2006:

Curse Cleanse, Australian Film, Television and Radio School, March, 2006
Commisioned game for the induction of Australian Film, Television and Radio School students. Writing and game design by Christy Dena (initially), Jackie Turnure and Gary Hayes. Website Design by Gary Hayes.

Time Splicer, LAMP, Sydney, Nov, 2005
Commissioned game for team-bonding and developing cross-media design skills for the Laborartory of Advanced Media Production, Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Writing and Game Design: Gary Hayes and Christy Dena. Website Design: Gary Hayes.

Cross-Media Games > Game Writing and Design Consulting

[to be revealed], Wieden + Kennedy, Feb 2008/…
Currently consulting on a proposed global, cross-cultural, gameplay tiered [casually accessible yet hard-core rewarding] alternate reality game. I’m providing research and global game design ideas.

[to be revealed], Pemberton Films, Oct 2007 - Feb 2008
Sonya Pemberton, one of Australia’s leading science directors and executive producers commissioned me to consult on the development of a ’serious alternate reality game’. I developed the game design and writing, working with Sonya, producer Keren Flavell of OMG.tv, filmmaker and digital producer Carla Drago and Dan Thorsland, new media producer from Martins Design to develop the concept for their Australian Film Council funding.

Love Referendum, Adelaide Festival, Feb 2007
I was called in by TallStories in Adelaide to consult as a game designer and writer for their cross-media project. I contributed to the development of the alternate reality game design & writing and integration with other art forms such as installation art, mobile gaming and location-based gaming. A prototype was enacted during the 2007 Adelaide Festival.

Cross-Media Short Story > Own Project

The Villager Girl and the Teenbot, 2004-2007
This short story begins in print and guides the reader to a website, where they’ll find a character that tells another version of the story. The print story is a folk-tale version of a coming-of-age initiation for a young villager girl, while the website version is a coming-of-age story for a teenage robot. The website character is actually a chatbot (an interactive chat program) that the reader has to chat with to extrude the story (IF-style). The reader is moved between the website and print in a spiral traversal. The site uses Alicebot, Pandorabots and Oddcast technologies. It was

  • Reading at the Talk Fiction Colloquium, University of Melbourne, for the 2005 Age Melbourne Writers’ Festival.
  • Selected for panel discussion and exhibition at: ’Original Hypermedia, Net.Art, Mods, Flash’, disjunctions 2005: Theory Reloaded , University of California, Riverside.

Print Short Stories > Own Projects

Coma Clown, 2005

  • Won 2nd Prize Prose, University of Melbourne Postgraduate Association Creative Writing Competition
  • Included in the Muse Anthology of Postgraduate Poetry & Prose, Univeristy of Melbourne Postgraduate Association
  • Selected for reading at the launch of the publication

The Girlfriend, 2002

  • Highly Commended Prose Competition Winner
  • Published in Postgraduate Review, Univeristy of Melbourne Postgraduate Association, vol. 8, no. 2, p.33 (Highly Commended prose competition winner)

‘Growth’, ‘Mother’, ‘The Gap’, 1992

  • Poems published in Judy’s Punch, University of Melbourne

TV Segment Writer & Presenter 

  • Armstrong Live, Christy’s Happening Places, 1997-8. Optus TV
  • Under Melbourne Tonight, 1995. RMITV 

Director

  • (1994) Directed the first multi-media theatre production at Monash University: HeSheIt. In ‘93 I took an inherited collection of short comedies from the 1900’s and ‘rewrote’ their meaning by presenting them in an experimental performance. The set was specially designed (by Scott Felstead) with UV lights and a television, and was all white to assist the slide projections on the walls and actors. The actors were Christian Leavesley , Vivienn Walshe , Melanie Field and Keira Lyons. The production explored issues of gender, androgeny and identity by altering the gender of the character. It was an awkward first production but some audience goers managed to elicit my intentions!:

    ‘…The most oustanding aspect of Christy’s work has been in performance-related projects where she has shown simply excellent creative potential, matched by considerable skill. In particular, her experimental play/production, Hesheit , (Student Theatre, Monash University, October 5-9, 1993) was undoubtably the best show to be seen at Monash University in many years, and, indeed, more bravely and imaginately conceived than much of the professional theatre I have witnessed recently. The production, which combined video/slide projections with live performance, was visually exciting and crisply directed. At the same time, the ideas informing Hesheit were complex and challenging but clearly communicated…’.
    Gilbert, Dr. H., Lecturer in Drama at Monash University 1994, Reference for Dena, C., 18 July.

  • (1993) Director’s Secondment, Playbox Theatre Company. To encourage my directorial aspirations, Monash Student Theatre placed me in a Director’s Secondment with Playbox Theatre Company at the Malthouse Theatre. I was under Director William Gluth in a play, ‘A Dicken’s Christmas’ by Barry Dickens.

Theatre Writer & Actor

  • McMahon, K. (dir) 1994, Time Out, Monash Uni Student Theatre, Union Theatre, Clayton. Also toured Sydney University for the Festival of Australasian Theatre. A collaboratively written performance about suicide.
  • Kaemevar, F. (dir) June 22-26, 1994, Suspended Extended, Monash Uni Student Theatre, The Courthouse Theatre, Carlton. A collaboratively written feminist comedy cabaret.
  • Kaemevar, F. (dir) 1992 & 1993, Suspended, Monash Uni Student Theatre, Union Theatre, Clayton. A collaboratively written feminist comedy cabaret that toured extensively around Victoria.
  • Joseph, B. (dir) 1992 & 1998, Wanton Women. Comedy collective that toured: Melb International Comedy Festival show, Rosebud Secondary College, Women’s Health East Body Image Day, Craigieburn Community Health Care Day, Family Planning Seminar, Int. No-Diet Day Media Launch. 

Some Short Film Acting

  • Burgin, T. (dir) 1999, Forsaken short film, Screened: ABC 2001;Edinborough Film Festival 99, UK premier of Praise 99, Provincial Fest 99. Tim Burgin and Luke O’Neill approached me to act in their short film Forsaken in 1999. They wrote,directed and edited the 5 and 1/2 minute colour film. I ‘co-starred’ with Greg Ulfan and Maree White. Sound by Richard Girvan. It was screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the UK premier of Praise and the Cafe Provincial Comedy Film Festival as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 1999. In 2001 it was broadcast on the ABC. It won the Special Jury Award in the Best Short Film category at the Altin Portakal Film International Film Festival - Antalya, Turkey in 1999. And in 2000, was Best Film at the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
  • McKee, A. (dir) 1998, NorthEaster short film, Magoo Productions, Screened at Revolver 99 for Melbourne Underground Film Festival. In 1998, Adam McKee of Magoo Productions asked me to perform in his short film: North Easter. It was submitted to TropFest with no success, but was screened at Revolver in 1999 as part of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. I ‘co-starred’ with Irene Kallen, Julia Martin, Tania Chandler, Brett Tucker, Jeff Richards and Gerry Pettifer. The 1st Assistant Director was Hilal Bayer; D.O.P. : Greg Gozdz; Clapper Assistant : Chrisopher Trott and Camera Assistant : Shaun Tregear.

Super 8 Writing & Claymation

‘Destiny Unknown’, White Gloves Film Festival, St Kilda, 1992 (short film) - writer, director, animator (claymation)

  • (1992) Interviewed on Carpet Burns, SBS for White Gloves Festival short film entry