Monday 2 March 2026, 7pm. Macquarie Conservatorium, Dubbo. One night only.

The Orana Every Woman Festival opened with a Wiradjuri Welcome to Country by Aunty Diane McNaboe — sung, not spoken. And in it, Aunty Di spoke of the women who came before us: Pearl Gibbs, and the significant women of this Country.

That set the terms for everything that followed. Because here is what made the night more than a good line-up:

Every single element on that stage was a new work, made in response to women who came before.

• Aunty Di sang the Welcome, and named the women of this place.
• Eleanor Limprecht read from her historical fiction — novels built from the lives of real women history had nearly let go.
• Rachael Beck performed In Her Own Words: interviews and songs drawn from the lives of famous women.
• Erifili Davis set the brief — make something new, inspired by the women before us — eight local women answered it, and she wove their work through the show itself.

A novelist, a performer, an Elder, and eight women from the Orana. Different forms, different scales of career, one instruction. Nobody was there as the support act to anybody else, because everybody in the room was doing the same thing: taking a woman who came before, and making something new from her.

That is what Inspired by Her means. Not a theme printed on a programme. The actual method of the night.

The night was called In Her Own Words: Stories & Stage — a fusion of story, song and projection. It was the opening of Inspired by Her — the festival’s annual creative programme, which invites women artists and writers to make new work inspired by the lives, voices and stories of women from our region’s past.

Eleanor Limprecht — the spine of the night

Eleanor Limprecht has spent her career doing what Inspired by Her asks of every woman who picks up the brief — excavating the lives of women history nearly forgot, and bringing them back in full. Her novels — What Was Left, Long Bay, The Passengers, The Coast and Cul de Sac — are works of deep research and deep feeling. Women who were overlooked, silenced, or simply not written down. Eleanor writes them back into existence.

On the night she read from those novels — the women inside them, spoken aloud in a room in Dubbo. Which is the brief, performed: a real woman from the past, turned into new work, given a voice again.

And she didn’t just appear. Eleanor led the programme’s research and inspiration phase — an online author talk on using historical events to spark creative fiction, open to every woman in the region, months before the festival. The local women who went on to make work for the exhibition had been in the room with her first.

She is also a friend of long standing — and turns up elsewhere in this Journal. She gave permission to read from her Guardian piece on fear at a Taco’Bout on uncertainty: “People mistake certainty for right and uncertainty for wrong. But life is much less black and white.”

Rachael Beck — In Her Own Words

One of Australia’s most celebrated stage performers — Les Misérables, Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret — Rachael Beck brought a specially condensed version of her Sydney Festival show In Her Own Words to Dubbo.

The show is built from interviews and songs belonging to famous women — their words, their music, carried by someone else and made into something new. Same brief again, in a different key.

And here is the part that mattered most. Rachael normally tours with her own pianist. For this night, she performed with local musicians — a deliberate choice, made so that a regional woman musician would be paid to work alongside a performer of that calibre. A one-off collaboration that existed only here, and only once.

That is the Better Together philosophy applied to a stage: don’t import a show, build one with the people who are already here.

Erifili Davis — the connective tissue

The brief Erifili wrote was simple and hard: look to the women who came before us — the history of this place — and make something new from them. Not a tribute. Not a reproduction. A new work.

Erifili Davis curated the Inspired by Her exhibition, co-created the opening night experience, and moderated the Fireside Conversation between Eleanor and Rachael. Then she answered the brief herself, writing Tin Town Tess — a monologue from Dubbo’s Depression-era Tin Town.

“Events held as part of International Women’s Day often focus on women’s health, finance, or carry a corporate lens. These are all important, of course — but working with Sharon Quill and the 2026 Orana Every Woman Festival, I wanted to bring a creative element to the conversation. One that honoured the experience of womanhood in all its forms.”

Erifili Davis, Curator, Inspired by Her 2026

Erifili has since reflected on what the programme asked of her, and gave her. As a writer, she valued the chance to develop a historical fiction monologue and collaborate with a local performer to bring it to life. As a curator, she watched what it did for the others — one participant found the process became a way of working through complicated, conflicting feelings about generational relationships; another found her piece grew into a full exhibition of its own.

And she named the thing that sits underneath all of it:

“Space and resources remain an ongoing challenge for regional artists. Although our resources were limited, they were nonetheless vital in making this exhibition possible. Opportunities like Inspired By Her, however small, make a meaningful impact on our local creative landscape, particularly for women.”

Erifili Davis

A further aim of hers was to encourage the women who came through the exhibition to explore, create and share their own stories. Conversations with audiences suggest that is exactly what happened — many left intending to start or continue creative work of their own. Which was the point.

The exhibition wasn’t separate — it was the show

This is the part that’s easy to miss from a programme. The eight local works weren’t hanging quietly in another building waiting to be visited afterwards. Erifili wove them through the show itself.

The written works were read aloud on the night — three local women, selected through an open call, performing first-person readings from Eleanor’s novels and from the exhibition texts, in the same breath, on the same stage. The visual works were projected. Story, song and projection, folded into one another.

So a local woman’s monologue sat directly alongside a passage from a published novelist, and a Dubbo artist’s drawing filled the space behind a performer who has played the Sydney stage. No hierarchy of billing. The same brief, answered at different scales, presented as one continuous piece of work.

The readings were also recorded by local women voice artists so the works could travel beyond that room — which is why you can still listen to them here. And the works didn’t pack up with the stage. The exhibition carried on for the full seven days at The Greens — the festival’s free hub on Wingewarra Street — where anyone could wander in off the street and stand in front of them. No ticket, no gallery hush. The same works that had opened the festival, sitting in the middle of the week, free, for whoever turned up.

Eight women, eight answers

Curated by Erifili, the works were united by place. Some spoke directly to history. Others reflected on women’s interactions with the world — identity, resilience, expectation, belonging.

• Tin Town Tess — Erifili Davis — monologue
• Something New — Kalina Davis — reflection
• COVID Lockdown — Nisaba Merrieweather — poem
• Homecoming — Nisaba Merrieweather — rumination
• Nonna. Mother. Daughter. — Milena Sallustio — visual art
• Icon — Jude Morrell — photography
• A Bouquet of Flowers — Phoebe Maroulis — visual art
• Wambuul: Echoes of the Turning Tide — Sophia Johnson — textile art, inspired by Pearl Gibbs

For one participant, making the work became a way of moving through complicated feelings about generational relationships. Another found her piece grew into a full exhibition of its own.

And one thread closed a circle in the room that night. Aunty Di named Pearl Gibbs in the Welcome — Wiradjuri woman, Dubbo resident, one of the architects of the 1938 Day of Mourning. Hours later, hanging in the exhibition, was Sophia Johnson’s textile work: the Macquarie River, with the Pearl Gibbs bridge running across it. The Elder spoke her name; a local woman had already spent months making something new in her honour. Neither planned around the other. That is what happens when a whole festival is pointed at the same question.

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The brief is open again

Inspired by Her returns for Monday 8 March 2027 — International Women’s Day. If you are a woman writer, artist or creative practitioner from the Orana, or a regional woman whose story deserves telling, the call-out is open. Express your interest →

See the full Inspired by Her 2026 programme →