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I had the absolute pleasure of being on the assessment panel for the Erin Thomas Award this week, a fund awarded through Australian Plays Transform (APT), the national playwriting peak body. Erin Thomas was a regional playwright (from Tamworth!) who created a career for herself as a playwright and dramaturge. She passed away in 2015 and her family created a legacy of an annual award program where regional playwrights of merit receive dramaturgical support and a travel bursary to help them establish their career. Such a cool idea. Being a regional playwright and dramaturg myself, I know it is really very hard to find accessRead More →

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I often work with new writers and more specifically writers who have never written for theatrical performance. Over the years, my classes have been populated with slam poets, film-makers, novelists, rap artists, copywriters, country singer/songwriters, documenters, academic writers, historical researchers and journalists.  They all have this urge to learn how to put their ideas into a theatrical arena. And the weirdest thing is that many of them don’t really know why. Some of my former students have seen theatre, and writing for theatre, as the gateway to writing for film. As if theatre is a stepping stone to film. Or worse, they have thought theatreRead More →

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Recently I’ve been watching a sci-fi series Fall Out, a TV series adaptation of a video game. I’d never heard of this game but my 20-year old son says it’s an old school corker of a role-play game. General premise of the TV series: Set in a retro-futuristic world following a nuclear war, there exists a small pocket of humanity flourishing in a 1950’s moral bubble inside a bunker-like underground vault. Outside the world has gone to hell, a fact quickly realised by our hero, Lucy, a doe-eyed, goody-two-shoeing American sweetheart, when she must leave the vault to rescue her kidnapped father. She navigates theRead More →

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Main Character Syndrome (MCS) has recently entered the lexicon. Like this year basically is when I first began hearing it regularly, and that means not much because memes circulate in small eddies for a long time before joining the main stream conversation. MCS describes a person who thinks they are the protagonist of any situation they are in. Its a way of saying a person always thinks they are the most important person in the space. Accusing someone of being a Main Character is a version of saying “Everything’s about you, isn’t it?” It’s the opposite of NPC (non Player Character) I guess. Which is ofRead More →

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Ever been to a writer’s retreat? It’s a noble idea, but do they actually allow you to get ahead with your work? That depends entirely on….so many things. I’ve hosted and facilitated mini playwright retreats for JUTE’s Write Sparks playwrights and JUTE Writers-in-residence way back in the day, like just weekend ones. I want to investigate more by going to another source for inspiration. I’m way far from being a professional writer’s retreat guru, but I still have some ideas about what it means to retreat. We live in an age of retreats. We’re fond of retreating for all sorts of reasons: health, meditation, yoga,Read More →

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(‘the beautiful image’) LA BELLA FIGURA, literally ‘the beautiful image’, is a uniquely Italian concept. It means more than just keeping up appearances and dressing sharp for the camera. It’s an attitude, a way of life, a philosophy, a moral code even. “I just wanted them to understand what it’s like. Behind all the cliches, you know. The loving fat Nonna in the kitchen. The happy Nonno in the garden. The gaudy furniture. The cute and tidy stories of immigration. “ So what is behind all the cliches? This is your chance to find out! Thursday, OCTOBER 31! 6:00 PM. Botanic Gardens Visitor’s Centre! ComeRead More →

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In: Politics, Theatre, Writing

The biennial Tropical Writer’s Festival was held the other weekend in Cairns amid a great wrangle of words, bruised keyboards and wriggling pens. After Richard Flanagan’s recent blistering article regarding the recent bothersome nature of ‘safe’ Australian Writer’s Festivals, we were bracing for a few more verbal assaults on the topic of writers actually having an opinion at a writer’s festival. There was some keen debate, for sure. And so there should be. But as forums for public debate and discussion vanish throughout the country, … the importance of community events like writers’ festivals only grows in importance. They should not answer either to theRead More →

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Wesley Enoch asks, “Is it just me or are we seeing more homophobia, racism, sexism on our stages?” The National Play Fest began with Wesley Enoch, an indigenous director and playwright, delivering the Inaugural Nick Enright Keynote Address. Wes made just a few waves when he suggested mid-way through his speech that we all stop creating plays that make race and gender issues into pop-culture satirical entertainment. More recently there have been a few shows, popular shows at that, created by non-White or Queer writers wherein race and gender politics are made into laugh-out-loud comic affairs. He spoke about how racist name-calling, gender-shaming and homophobic attitudeRead More →