C R E A T I V E
Writer / Director
[screen + stage]
Gideon D. Wilonja is a Congolese-born, Melbourne-based writer and director working across theatre, film, and television. His work centres Black lives and queer interiority, exploring masculinity, faith, power, and intimacy through emotionally driven, character-led storytelling.
Gideon is the writer and director of I Met an Angel Named Jacques, a queer Black melodrama presented at Footscray Community Arts. The work interrogates desire, spiritual guilt, fame, and racialised power, and builds on his earlier play Do Black Boys Go to Heaven and Heaven is Just a Place, which he also wrote and directed.
Alongside his writing and directing practice, Gideon works extensively across fashion and live performance as a casting director and creative leader. Gideon has led and contributed to major cultural campaigns as a visual artistic director for Chadstone Fashion Capital and the Emporium. He serves as Casting Director for Melbourne Fashion Festival and held creative roles across multiple runway. He was also the stylist and creative director behind the Opulent Tastes runway presentation at Melbourne Fashion Week, where fashion and performance intersected as narrative form.
Gideon’s broader practice includes writing for Melbourne Theatre Company, presenting work across Midsumma Festival and Melbourne Fashion Festival, and receiving recognition through arts awards and finalist placements for his contribution to contemporary Australian performance and cultural production.
For screen, Gideon has served a consultant in a number of writers rooms and is currently developing a six-part drama series for a major network, alongside a feature film, expanding his thematic interests into long-form television.
Working fluidly across stage and screen, Gideon’s practice is grounded in collaboration, visual intention, and a commitment to telling stories where the personal and political are inseparable.