Kelly Nash has spent her life saying yes to things that terrify her. She left a secure teaching career in her late twenties to become an actor, despite resistance from those around her. She’s raised kids while carving out her career as a performer and educator on the Mornington Peninsula. And now, as she returns to the role of Patch in Sea Wolves Howl, she’s doing it again: playing a character who has found profound healing in the very thing Kelly herself isn’t a big fan of – the open ocean.
When local theatre company, 60% Water, launches their regional touring production of Sea Wolves Howl, audiences will follow five characters from home to the shore, into the freezing water and back out again. The journey offers physical challenges and evokes powerful stories. There are memories, fears, triumphs, connections, and laughter. The production features original catchy songs and uses the words of the real Sea Wolves swimmers from Mount Martha, whose lives have been transformed by finding their “wet and wild together.”
“It was commissioned by the Flinders Fringe Festival and had its world premiere in January 2024. Due to high demand, it had a return season later that same year in November,” Kelly explains of the show’s origins. Kelly plays Patch, a gardener and mother who is one of the five characters guiding audiences through the ocean ritual. “It’s based on a group of amazing women and non-binary people who went swimming down off Mount Martha South Beach, starting in September of 2020 when we were still in lockdowns.”
What began as a handful of friends meeting each morning for a swim became a movement. By Christmas 2020, 60 people were turning up. Someone heard about the sea wolves – the animals that inhabit Vancouver Island – and the group decided to wade in together, join hands so nobody chickened out, and howl. It’s a space where people of all shapes, ages, and backgrounds could feel accepted and supported.
“There’s no judgement and there are no expectations,” Kelly says of the group’s ethos. “You do you! Some people are dippers. Some people swim out to the pole and other people don’t. It doesn’t matter what you look like. You’re there for the experience.”
Local theatre practitioners Carole Patullo and Jane Bayley wrote Sea Wolves Howl after conducting extensive interviews with the real swimmers. The original music and score was then composed by John Thorn, with Yoni Prior attached as the director. What unfolds is theatre about cold water, but also about the whole-life therapy that comes from it.
During rehearsals for the original Flinders season, Kelly attended a swim with the actual Sea Wolves. “Even though the water wasn’t that cold, I felt a little bit scared,” she admits. “They did the swim to the pole, but I just kind of bobbed around and then got out,” she laughs. Yet she understood immediately what had captivated this tight-knit community. “Just being there was enough for me; to feel the energy of the group.”
The irony about Kelly’s role is that her character loves water and finds renewal in it, while Kelly still isn’t convinced.
“I don’t like water,” she laughs. “I’m really playing against type. But that’s okay, isn’t it?
“I don’t like water,” she laughs. “I’m really playing against type. But that’s okay, isn’t it? It’s good to get into somebody else’s head and go, ‘What does this do for you? What are you getting out of this?’“
The 14-date tour runs from June to October across regional and metropolitan Melbourne. For Kelly, whose early career was built on touring theatre and education shows to small towns, it’s a homecoming of sorts. She knows what it’s like to arrive in a new town and gauge an unfamiliar audience’s reaction night after night.
“I think all of the beachy places we’re going to that have groups like the Sea Wolves will probably love it,” she says. “But who knows what they’re going to make of it when we go to places that don’t have that? That’s the challenge.”
That uncertainty is part of the thrill. Sea Wolves Howl is theatre about transformation, community, and finding your people. It’s also about saying ‘Yes’ to the universe with a mighty howl, which is precisely what Kelly has been doing her whole life.
Sea Wolves Howl is performing at the Frankston Arts Centre on Thursday 9 July (matinee and evening shows).
W artscentre.frankston.vic.gov.au/Whats-On/Season-Shows/Sea-Wolves-Howl-2026
As published in Peninsula Essence Magazine June 2026
