Eraring on the western shores of Lake Macquarie is best known for its power station, but keep an eye on Matthew Predny. He is coming a close second.
As hordes of excited children flock to Newcastle Entertainment Centre this weekend for PAW Patrol Live!, their parents might be interested to know that Predny plays Ryder, PAW Patrol's team leader and main character.
Predny left Newcastle to study acting at NIDA and graduated with his Bachelor's degree in 2014. Since then he's performed in Avenue Q, Fiddler On The Roof, Kinky Boots, High Fidelity, Gypsy, A Gentleman's Guide To Love and Murder, Yarramadoon, This Bitter Earth and Who's Your Baghdaddy?.
He also co-wrote the Academy Award-qualifying short film On Hold (winner of Flickerfest's Best Australian Short 2018, and a Sydney Film Festival finalist).
"I grew up in Eraring which is a small town between Toronto and Morisset," he says.
"For high school I travelled in to Broadmeadow to go to Hunter School of the Performing Arts. It was a long way to travel for school, but definitely worth it."
Indeed. Predny appeared in his first musical, Seussical the Musical, at Young People's Theatre in Hamilton in 2005.
"I would've been 12 or 13 at the time and was in the cast with one of my oldest friends, Declan Egan, who has had a long and successful acting career both in Australia and overseas," he continues.
"This show was one of the things that ignited the love I now have for acting. It encouraged me to change from being a music student to a drama student at HSPA.
"I've performed with YPT, Pantseat Productions, Opera Hunter and in HSPA productions. I also spent most of my high school years performing in StarStruck. It'll be weird to come back to the Newcastle Entertainment Centre after so many years."
Predny's mother is a vet and his father a lawyer, so acting doesn't run in the family. He does recall, though, his grandmother telling him stories about dancing and being a magician's assistant in her younger years.
"I started a combined Bachelor of Law/Bachelor of Arts at Newcastle university and spent two years studying that straight out of school. When I got into NIDA it seemed a given that I'd pack up and move to Sydney," he says.
"The three years there were very full-on but overall a really positive experience.
"We studied a huge variety of acting styles as well as movement/dance, music, performance theory, screen acting and music theatre."
Predny co-wrote On Hold with fellow HSPA alumni and friend Jake Nielsen.
"On Hold is a 30-minute short-film musical that we made on the smell of an oily rag, and with the help of a lot of our friends who happen to be industry professionals," he says.
"Neither of us were expecting to win Flickerfest or be a finalist in Sydney Film Festival. You spend a lot of time second guessing your work in this industry, so when something like that comes along, the validation can fuel you for a long time."
Neilsen and Predny have been writing together since high school. The pair, with Madeline Clouston and Amelia Burke, have also written a musical called Miss Westralia about the first Miss Australia pageant in 1926. It will make its professional touring debut this year.
Predny divides his time between writing and acting, saying "you can't be too picky in a small industry like Australia".
"If work's not coming in, you need to make it yourself. That's what writing started as, for me. Another creative outlet that would keep me going during down months. It's now become something I'm equally as excited about next to acting, which is an exciting thing to realise."
He received an audition request for PAW Patrol while hiking around Western Australia a few months ago, and filmed his original audition tape at a small hotel in Dunsborough. It's very different from his usual work but Predny is enjoying the experience.
"The show is a high-energy, super fun 80 minutes. Seeing the pups come to life on stage is pretty amazing and the songs are certified bops," he says.
"After PAW Patrol, I'm heading to Melbourne for the Victorian Opera season of Tommy, and flying over to WA to watch the opening of Miss Westralia. Apart from that, who knows? That's part of the fun and terror of working in this industry. You can't be sure of what you'll be doing too far into the future."
