Australian Theatre-Maker • Director • Performer • Improviser • Writer • Actor • Coach • Public Speaker • Presenter

Creating original live performance at the intersection of theatre, comedy, community, accessibility, and experimentation.

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Theatre that is impossible to replicate.

Born to Singaporean and Indian immigrant parents, Mandy Plumb is an Australian cross-disciplinary theatre-maker whose practice focuses on improvisation, and spans across theatre, musical theatre, physical theatre, circus, and screen performance.

Mandy is a theatre major who creates original improv formats, performs, directs, and produces work across Australia and internationally. As founder and Artistic Director of Blah Blah Blah Improv, her work explores the extraordinary stories that emerge when performers create together in the moment, combining theatrical craft with spontaneity to create unreplicable performances.

Mandy has produced, directed, and performed in improv shows at many comedy festivals and theatres, including the Brisbane Comedy Festival, Darwin Fringe Festival, Improv Theatre Sydney Comedy Festival, Curious Comedy Theater (Portland, Oregon, USA), Queensland Theatre (for Undercover Artist Festival / Brisbane Festival), HOTA, Anywhere Festival, Bris Funny Fest, Brisbane Improv Festival, New Zealand Improv Festival, Big Fork Theatre, Drill Theatre, and more.

A Selection of Original Works

Two actors at the front of the stage singing and wearing sparkly costumes. There are bubbles around them and two dancers dressed in white behind them

An improvised musical satire of Eurovision

Part song contest, part improvised comedy, Improvision transforms the spectacle of Eurovision into a completely spontaneous theatrical (mock) song competition.

Performers represent different countries and create scenes, big characters, and song performances live from audience suggestions, competing for points and the coveted Improvision title. Combining the postcard structure and theatricality of Eurovision with the unpredictability of improvisation, the format gives the audience an active role in shaping both the performance and its outcome.

IMPROVISION

Woman wearing glasses, a red top and black striped pants holding a clipboard and looking imperious while someone to the side is talking to her.
Woman wearing glasses, a red top and black striped pants holding a clipboard and looking imperious while someone to the side is talking to her.

Immersive improvised theatre meets social media at a town hall

Inspired by real posts from community Facebook groups, Small Town Council transforms the complaints, obsessions, characters, and peculiarities of small-town life into a completely improvised long-form play where the audience are part of the town hall meeting.

Using audience-submitted Facebook posts for the town hall agenda items, the work discovers interconnected characters and stories in the moment, finding emotional truth, humanity, and comedy in the seemingly ordinary.

SMALL TOWN COUNCIL

Four people lined up in a profile against a set that looks like a prison wall line up. Another person is singing and facing the audience

An entirely improvised crime-suspect musical

Whodunnit: The Made-Up Musical combines long-form improvisational theatre, musical theatre, Brechtian techniques and “whodunnit” genre in an original format in which every character, song, clue, and revelation is created live.

Events are revisited through different characters' perspectives, with the theatrical aesthetics transforming along with them, before the performers must somehow bring every improvised clue together and solve the crime.

WHODUNNIT: THE MADE-UP MUSICAL

Improvised theatre meets live caricature art

Real Sketchy combines improvisational theatre with live quick-sketch caricature to create a theatrical world literally drawn from the audience.

Audience suggestions inspire caricatures created live by a quick-sketch artist before their eyes. Those drawings then become characters for a full-length improvised comedy play, bringing visual art and spontaneous theatre together in a form where neither the performers nor the audience know what will emerge.

REAL SKETCHY

Accessibility is not an addition to Mandy's artistic practice — it is fundamental to it.

Mandy casts, directs, and coaches performers with diverse abilities, disabilities, neurodivergence, and lived experiences. Mandy also brings her own lived experience, having sustained two traumatic brain injuries — the first only 10 months after founding Blah Blah Blah Improv. Her rehearsal rooms are built around the belief that artistic excellence and accessibility are not competing ideas.

Mandy believes improv has an extraordinary capacity for inclusion because performers can work from their individual strengths rather than conforming to a predetermined way of performing. By adapting processes rather than lowering artistic expectations, she creates environments in which artists of diverse abilities can develop creative agency, confidence, and professional-level performance skills.

Theatre Belongs to Everybody.

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INCLUSIVE PRACTICE

DIRECTOR • PRODUCER • PERFORMER

Mandy directs original improvisational theatre formats, musical theatre, physical performance, youth and children’s theatre, and collaborative work, with a particular interest in developing new theatrical forms.

Her directing practice combines structure with artistic freedom, creating environments in which performers can take significant creative risks while working towards a cohesive theatrical vision.

DIRECTOR

As founder and Artistic Director of Blah Blah Blah Improv, Mandy has directed and produced more than 60 short and long-form improvisational theatre productions for the company since it began in 2023, including original works, festival productions, and professional performance seasons featuring nationally and internationally recognised artists.

PRODUCER

Mandy has performed professionally across theatre, improv, musical theatre, screen, physical theatre, and live entertainment in Australia and internationally.

She made her professional stage debut in HAIR while studying theatre at university and has since performed in hundreds of productions, with improvisational theatre becoming the central language of her contemporary performance practice.

Performer

Work With Mandy

COACHING & WORKSHOPS

A woman wearing a cap is coaching performers on stage. There are red theatre seats behind her the rise up.

Mandy has been teaching performing arts and improv for seven years. She coaches beginner, emerging and experienced performers in improvisation, character, storytelling, voice work, acting, physical performance, stagecraft, ensemble work, and musical improv.

Her approach combines technical skill with individual artistic development, helping performers become more confident, responsive, physically expressive, and connected on stage.

IMPROV & PERFORMANCE COACHING

An improv workshop at an executive leadership conference. Three of the participants, who are male, are either on all fours or crouching over with diving hands. Other participants are standing around them laughing.

Improvisation is serious professional development disguised as a very good time.

Mandy designs practical, highly interactive workshops using improv to develop communication, collaboration, adaptability, creativity, active listening, confidence, and the ability to think on your feet.

Workshops can be tailored to team development, collaboration, leadership, communication, presentation skills, creative thinking, resilience, or simply helping people connect, play, and step outside their usual ways of working. She has worked with TechnologyOne (Australia’s largest SaaS company), Life Ed Qld, and the Queensland Government’s Department of Justice.

CORPORATE WORKSHOPS

ENQUIRE ABOUT A WORKSHOP

For performance, directing, producing, creative collaborations, coaching, corporate workshops, and other enquiries, please get in touch.

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