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Shelley Krape on starting a theatre company

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The Nugget
April 17, 2026

★ Shelley Krape on starting a theatre company ★

Shelley Krape likes more salt. Always.

I have the pleasure this week of introducing you to my friend and Nugget collaborator, Shelley Krape.

We spent nearly a year together on MainFM before she stepped away to focus on a new project. Along with a group of local actors, she’s just launched The Ravens Theatre Company, with their first production, The Seagull, coming to the Phee Broadway Theatre in June.

“I realised I’d feel incomplete if I didn’t return to acting,” Shelley says. 

She’s been making theatre for as long as she can remember, staging shows in the family lounge room, writing, directing, designing costumes, performing and selling tickets.

Things really clicked when she was cast as the Artful Dodger in Year 8.

“The audience just responded to me and I went, Ah, right. I just had this sense of like, this is something I am good at.”

By Year 9, she had an agent and was acting in TV shows, including Blue Heelers.

“School wasn’t a great cultural fit for me. Acting gave me a reason to exist.”

She went straight from high school into the VCA, where things didn’t quite unfold the way she’d hoped.

“They do this thing where they famously break you down in order to build you back up again. I got a bit lost in that process,” she says.

While she completed the course (one of only 12 who graduate), the intensity of the training shook her confidence and shifted her relationship with acting.

Still, she continued working after graduating — landing roles in television and theatre, including The Secret Life of Us and touring wineries nationally performing Shakespeare — but the work wasn’t always fulfilling.

At times, she found herself caught in the cycle of commercial auditions, while also struggling to find enough creatively stimulating roles to sustain her.

“I just started to feel like I wanted something more meaningful from my work and my life.”

At a casting call for a Big M pool party commercial, she reached a turning point.

They were like, “OK, take your clothes off..” and I just thought, what am I doing? This isn’t acting. I felt really disconnected from it.”

Around this time, she met her now partner, Ben, who brought a sense of clarity and grounding. She had been considering a return to New York after attending an acting summer school, but ultimately decided to stay.

“Acting just wasn’t making me happy. It was making me the opposite.” Shelley says.

She got rid of her agent and focused on building a T-shirt printing business with Ben. 

"I was like, maybe I can just do other things and I'll be happy."

She went on to build a career working in marketing and communications across the arts.

But her theatre bug woke up a few years ago and started gnawing.

"It got to the point where I was feeling jealous about people performing, and I thought, that's a sign. If someone's doing something that's making you feel jealous of them, that's really about you."

She auditioned for the Melbourne Shakespeare Company and got a lead role in The Merchant of Venice.

“It was tough because it was in Melbourne, but it was so incredible. That's why I was like, I just have to keep this happening for myself,” Shelley says.

“The dream would be that it happens here in Castlemaine.”

It turns out she wasn’t the only one thinking that way.

We had Tim Heath on our show on MainFM last year to talk about his return to acting. After a 20-ish year break he had taken a role in the Castlemaine Theatre Company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Tim and Shelley have been on similar journeys with acting, having studied it seriously when they were young and then pivoting.

He brought her into a regular meetup with director Rob Jorritsma and actor Hannah Jeffcoat. They were all looking for the same thing — people to collaborate with on classic theatre.

They launched The Ravens Theatre Company in February. 

“The community response has been breathtaking. People are coming out of absolutely nowhere, offering help, skills and support,” Shelley says.

Their first production is The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, which will be staged at The Phee in June.

It’s a tragicomedy about the romantic and artistic conflicts between a group of people at a Russian country estate.

The company has chosen a modern adaptation, keeping the characters and story, but updating the language and references.

“You’re not watching it thinking, 'This is historical and distant.' You’re watching people who sound like people you know,” Shelley says.

She plays Irina Arkadina, the vain, stingy and narcissistic mother of Konstantin who is played by Charlie Lloyd Byrnes (Jake from Castlemaine the Musical).

Tickets are $35, with a fundraising campaign running alongside to help build the scale of the production while keeping it affordable.

I can't wait for opening night where, as Shelley says, we will all "get to experience entering a darkened space and watching people wrestle with the same questions you're grappling with in your own life."

Theatre has the power to help people process life. 

"That experience can genuinely change you."

❀ Things to know about Gospel Sunday ❀

1. It's helmed by golden trumpeter, Harry James Angus, The Cat Empire's musical boundary crosser.

2. This is a participatory event, a la pub sing. You will be encouraged to sing and the spirit will probs move you to dance.

3. This Gospel Sunday is not quite religious. Some of the more devout song references have been changed. 

4. HJA is bringing an all-star band with him, including Castlemaine's own Dom Hede of Jazz Party.

5. Bring: Your biggest voice, dancing shoes and a handkerchief.

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