KASAYSAYAN V.1
Unfolding of Stories - Matcho Cassidy
Every month, you can find Matcho running Soul Lounge, a monthly poetry event exposing talent of People Of Colour and giving them a platform to perform. He took over Soul Lounge Adelaide in 2017, and has been running it ever since. Introduced themes, workshops, online challenges and videography, Matcho has played a key role in expanding the scope of Soul Lounge, and 2021 he decided to let go of leading Soul Lounge Adelaide and move to Melbourne and establish a space for people of colour to perform and express poetry, but also for Soul Lounge itself to grow and expand throughout Australia, He plans to establish and direct Soul Lounge Australia which will be in connection with all the cities that have Spaces for People of Colour to express their poetry, thoughts, words, drafts and ideas and he plans to run collaborations and productions between cities. Soul Lounge aims on escalating developing artists of diverse backgrounds, whether they are bi-lingual, minorities, uprooted migrant children that exchange their confusion and calamity into cadence and rhythm.
Matcho is ever so slowly working on his own book - Ellipsis: Inbetween the dots. which is set to revolve around the city's poetry scene community as well as including his analysis and transcript of how some of his poems came into manifestation, how the writer feels about certain issues, and how he has transitioned between: Inception, Development to Ideology.
Externally, Matcho has been involved in hosting and creating workshops for the community of poetry, whether it is Poetry Therapy, WTM: Writes To Mic, or just endeavours of Soul Lounge to help writers understand themselves more, redefine labels, write in their way of speaking and feel not just comfortable but confident in it.
FEBRUARY 2022
Introducing our innagural Creative/ Collaborator
An adventure persuasive writer and powerful performance poet, Matcho Cassidy explores themes that are heart wrenching, sensory & thought provoking that revolve around Identity, cross culture, love, spirituality and social stances, at times diving into the divide of diaspora, and bringing to light POC related issues that aren’t mainstreamed, as well as expressing ideas in themes we can all relate to, such as balancing between the stigma and spectrum of being an artist, introverted, creatively passionate and spiritual explorations..
A leader in the Adelaide Krump Community, Matcho has not only participated competitively interstate, but has taught Krump in Schools, Community Centers, Movement Warehouses and juvenile prisons across South Australia.
Matcho is heavily involved in a range of art forms; acting in the 2017 Australian film Cargo (starring Martin Freeman). Writing for ActNow X State Theatre Company’s 2020 Ruby Award Winning Online Film Production Series ‘Decameron 2.0.’ In 2021
Matcho Produced a twice sell out show ‘Journey’ in Adelaide Fringe. Matcho has been a headline feature as a spoken word artist at Soul Lounge Adelaide, Tenx9Adelaide, Ozasia's Lucky Dumpling Market, The Hearth, Poetry & Prose, Captain Rehab, Mixed-Bag Poetry, Spoke ‘n Slurred, Al Salam Festival & Dithyrambia as well as Whitewalls Poetry in (Manila, Philippines), Word (Leicester, UK) Matcho was the only SA artist that was shortlisted for the Diverse Arts Australia’s “I Am Not The Virus” project that focuses on art responding to xenophobia and racism.
Matcho was a part of ActNow Theatre’s - Theatre of The Global Majority since its inception, and has been one of its most consistent writers, actors and ambassadors. Together they put together a very deeply personal, cultural collective production which premiered at Sanaa Storytelling in February of 2020 and was featured in Whyalla’s Unearth Festival.
Matcho created Disease prone a film in collaboration with Nina Philips and can be seen on Diverse Arts Australia website iamnotavirusaustralia.org.au. He was the Runner up in the Draw Your Swords Slam 2017. Voted People's Champ for the Goowla Poetry Cup 2018. You can hear more online from Matcho on his wordpress site: https://iammatcho.wordpress.com/about/ or on his Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-497825367/sets/who-i-am-right-now