Finding a Voice That Tells the Truth

One of five Western Sydney creatives selected for In the Room, Greek Australian writer and actor Danielle Stamoulos brings courage and heart to diasporic stories in a special feature film collaboration between Co-Curious and Powerhouse.

Midway through her Master of Screenwriting course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School earlier this decade, Danielle Stamoulos felt herself gaining many of the necessary tools of her craft, including story structure, arc and theme. But one thing seemed to elude this emerging Greek Australian writer and performer from Western Sydney. Stamoulos had started out with work experience for director Baz Luhrmann during the very early days of The Great Gatsby, switched to an acting degree, and ended up as a script coordinator on the ABC/Netflix comedy The Letdown. But then at AFTRS, she found what was missing was her own writing voice.

To help guide her, Stamoulos sought out the advice of external tutor and scriptwriter Jessica Redenbach, known most recently for the 2021 miniseries The Unusual Suspects. ‘She really taught me a lot about writing and how it’s not just about the tools,’ says Stamoulos. ‘It’s about making sure that it’s this continuous process of treating your writing with respect, and making sure that you have a sacred container over your work and your voice and what you want to say.’

Stamoulos dug deep and found the courage to tell her own story. Inspired by her yiayias, or Greek grandmothers, who emigrated to Australia in the 1960s, she conceived Gorgo, the short film she wrote and starred in on graduating from AFTRS, which carries an epic emotional journey that belies its 20 minutes. Stamoulos plays Medousa, a wide-eyed and sensitive young woman who follows her best friend to Australia, both to marry men they had only seen in photographs. What was a common experience for Greek Australian women of her grandmothers’ generation is embodied and made particular in Stamoulos’ deeply felt performance, enacted entirely in Greek. ‘I am different,’ Medousa tells her husband-to-be when they first meet, and Gorgo plays fluently with the idea of difference without othering the diasporic experience, revealing a resilience in the face of personal horror.

‘There’s the courage in that it’s personal,’ Stamoulos says of Gorgo, which was selected for screening at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, ‘but there’s an even bigger courage when, especially with Greek migrant women in Australian stories, their voices are quite silenced if not erased. I was also very aware that in telling this story there would be people from my own community who wouldn’t like it. A lot of people loved it. I also know there were people who didn’t, because it’s hard to watch. So, that’s the courageous part of it: knowing that you can’t please everybody. But for me you’ve got to be able to tell a story that tells the truth.’

Stamoulos was a perfect candidate for In the Room, the special project partnership between Powerhouse and production company Co-Curious (Here Out West), which brings together five Western Sydney creatives to write the screenplay for a feature film set to premiere at Powerhouse Parramatta in 2025. She was already well-versed in the process, common to TV, of writers collaborating in a room to dream up a story. ‘A writers’ room is all about bouncing off other people,’ says Stamoulos. ‘It’s also about being interrogative about the work in a really respectful and honest way. And sometimes the more honest someone interrogates your work, the better it is, because it allows for courage to come into the room, and vulnerability.’

As a writer and performer, Stamoulos couples vulnerability with strength. Like her In the Room cohorts, she is a multi-hyphenate juggling myriad projects, including an upcoming cringe comedy titled Curse of the Virgin – for which she recently received script development funding from Screen Australia. ‘I heard this quote from [actress, director, producer] America Ferrera who I saw at Santa Barbara in February,’ says Stamoulos. ‘And she said something that really resonated with me, which was: “I can’t be the leader I am meant to be without all of the parts of who I am.” And I just thought: “That is me!” I have all these parts of me and I’ve got to use them, express them and integrate them in some way.’ In Stamoulos’ case, through words and action, with feeling and intent.