Fresh off a win in the 2025 Ruby Awards, theatre maker Katherine Sortini is carving a bold new path in SA arts with stories shaped by identity, grit and a fiercely DIY spirit.
She may be still in her 20s, but Ruby Award winner Katherine Sortini has already built an impressive resume.
Off the back of a sold-out run at Goodwood Theatre for her most recent show, Scenes with Girls, Katherine was awarded the 2025 Frank Ford Memorial Young Achiever Award at the Ruby Awards last month. The award recognises outstanding artistic or cultural achievement or contribution by an individual young South Australian.
Katherine’s artistic focus is shaped by her identity as a queer woman of Italian heritage. Much of her writing centres on feminist, queer-led narratives and the complexities of growing up with immigrant parents.
“A lot of the work I write is from that perspective,” she says.
Setting the stage
Katherine didn’t always see herself as a theatre maker. In fact, her career is one big, brilliant plot twist.
Before she was producing shows, winning awards and writing fiercely personal theatre, she was deep in the world of elite soccer – travelling interstate, repping South Australia and playing at a level most kids only dream about. “I loved it,” she says. “I was good at it and so I went, ‘Great, this is what I’m going to do’.”
But alongside the shin guards and state jerseys was the kid who loved performing. Drama classes and school productions lit something up in her, even though she never really saw it as a “real” future. Right up until she did.
On the final night of submitting her uni preferences, she made a last-minute switch from forensic psychology to drama school. “I went, ‘Well, I’m going to go to the audition, and if I get in, that’s the universe telling me maybe this is something you need to pursue’.”
She got in. And then her soccer life imploded in the way these life-shifting moments tend to: she tore her ACL. A mentor pulled her aside, gently suggesting she probably couldn’t play elite sport and do drama school at the same time.
“I was going to have 12 months off anyway for rehab, so I went, ‘OK, I’ll just do drama’. Then I never went back to soccer.”
Making an impact
After graduating with Honours from Flinders Drama Centre in 2018, Katherine threw herself into acting. She worked almost constantly for three years – small roles, ensembles, indie productions – living the classic freelance hustle. “I was very fortunate. I was working with a lot of my friends and lovely collaborators.”
But eventually, the itch grew stronger. She didn’t just want to be in stories – she wanted to make them.
“I had so many stories inside me,” she says. “How does one go and just write stories and put them on?”
The answer, she discovered, was DIY. Without a writing portfolio, big commissions weren’t going to fall out of the sky. “You kind of have to do it yourself.”
Her first attempt wasn’t a disaster, but it also wasn’t the hit she’d imagined. “It wasn’t the success I dreamed it to be. And it wasn’t an original play. Maybe what didn’t work was that I took an existing play.”
She pivoted, thinking she might find more success doing her own work. And she was right.
Katherine secured funding for All the Things I Could Say, an original piece that ended up having a surprisingly long life. Then came Dirty Energy, another well-received work she hopes to restage.
A balancing act
Her upcoming project, The Damage is Done – funded through Fringe – is Katherine’s first one-woman show, digging into the awkward, emotional chaos of coming out to your migrant parents.
All this momentum has also meant learning to wear multiple hats: actor, writer, producer, sometimes all at once.
One particularly chaotic season stands out. “I had my first child – he was about eight months old – and I was bringing him into rehearsals every day,” she says.
At the same time, she was staging All the Things I Could Say and she decided, for reasons even she can’t quite explain, to enter the SA Poetry Slam. She won her heat. Then she won the state final. Then she flew to Sydney to perform at the Opera House in the national final. All while producing and performing a grant-funded show. “It was a lot to juggle,” she says. “But it made me realise: maybe I can do multiple things.”
And as her company gains traction and bigger grants, she’s gearing up to platform more writers and directors, rather than carrying the weight of every role herself.
Ruby award recognition
Winning the 2025 Frank Ford Memorial Young Achiever Award at last month’s Ruby Awards was a proud moment for Katherine.
“It was a really great moment. A kind of peer-acknowledged way of saying: ‘Yes, Katherine, you can do multiple things, and you have been.”
Run by CreateSA and named after late arts patron Dame Ruby Litchfield, the annual Ruby Awards are awarded across 11 categories at South Australia’s biggest arts and culture award ceremony each year. The awards recognise artistic excellence, creative achievement, innovation, community involvement and inspirational leadership in SA’s incredibly diverse arts and culture sector.
Katherine was shortlisted alongside two other incredible creatives for the Young Achiever Award: 30-year-old Abigail Heuer, a proud trans woman who has worked behind-the-scenes with some of SA’s leading arts companies, touring works built in SA to the UK, USA and China; and Emma Hough Hobbs, an internationally-acclaimed multidisciplinary artist, who co-wrote award-winning debut feature film Lesbian Space Princess alongside real-life partner Leela Varghese.
“It’s the biggest award you can get in South Australia in terms of the arts,” Katherine says. “I’m very appreciative for it, and to have the arts industry go, ‘Katherine’s making moves and we acknowledge that’, that’s really cool.”
And she’s hoping it might be a launchpad for something even bigger.
“Maybe there’s something starting to shift here where I’m getting acknowledged in a bigger sense.
“Maybe the company gets bigger opportunities, maybe I get bigger opportunities, maybe someone wants to make one of my works – maybe this is my next step in really working on bigger stages, working with bigger companies. That would be great.”
The 2025 Ruby Awards winners
Outstanding Community Event or Project: The Knowledge Project – Kuma Kaaru and Nucleus
Outstanding Regional Event or Project: Kulinma – Wellbeing Project – Anangu Schools Partnership
Outstanding Work, Event or Project for Young People: Neo – Art Gallery of South Australia
Outstanding Work or Event Outside a Festival: Adhocracy – 15th Anniversary – Vitalstatistix
Outstanding Work or Event Within a Festival: Songs Inside World Premiere – Adelaide Film Festival 2024
Outstanding Collaboration: nyilamum song cycles – Dr Lou Bennett AM, Paul Stanhope and the Australian String Quartet, in association with Binung Boorigan
Outstanding Contribution by an Organisation or Group: Gray Street Workshop
Frank Ford Memorial Young Achiever Award: Katherine Sortini
Geoff Crowhurst Memorial Award: Matthew Ives
Stevie Gadlabarti Goldsmith Memorial Award: Umeewarra Aboriginal Media Association
Premier’s Award for Lifetime Achievement: Lesley Newton
Read more about the 2025 Ruby Awards – as well as the winners of previous awards – here.
