STC puts a focus on playwriting with a new Emerging Writers’ Group as well as the Patrick White Fellow and Playwright.

Leading Australian playwright Andrew Bovell, whose many stage credits include his acclaimed adaptation of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, has been named as the new Sydney Theatre Company Patrick White Playwrights’ Fellow.

^{Back row: Moreblessing Maturure, Lewis Treston, Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Kip Williams, Disapol Savetsila. Front row: Emme Hoy, Julian Larnach, Andrew Bovell, STC Literary Manager Polly Rowe. Photograph © Christine Messinesi}

The Fellowship was presented to Bovell at a special event at the Wharf as part of the 2017 Sydney Writers’ Festival. Lewis Treston was announced as the recipient of this year’s Patrick White Playwrights’ Award for his comedy Hot Tub. And in a new initiative, Sydney Theatre Company revealed that it is to oversee an Emerging Writers’ Group, the inaugural members of which are Emme Hoy, Julian Larnach, Moreblessing Maturure and Disapol Savetsila.

The $25,000 Patrick White Playwrights’ Fellowship is awarded annually to an established playwright in recognition of their body of work and achievements. Along with the cash prize, the winner receives a play commission from STC to be developed during their year-long tenure. Now in its seventh year, the Fellowship has previously been presented to Tommy Murphy, Kate Mulvany, Angela Betzien, Hilary Bell, Patricia Cornelius and Raimondo Cortese.

Bovell established himself as a playwright of note with his first play After Dinner, an excruciatingly funny comedy, which premiered in 1988, and which was revived by STC in 2015. His many other plays include When the Rain Stops Falling, which was premiered by Brink Theatre at the 2008 Adelaide Festival and presented by STC the following year, Speaking in Tongues, which Bovell later adapted as the film Lantana, and The Secret River, which premiered at STC in 2013 before touring nationally. Earlier this year, The Secret River launched the Adelaide Festival with an outdoor production in the beautiful natural surrounds of the Anstey Hill Quarry in Tea Tree Gully, described by Limelight as “a visually rich and intensely moving staging”.

In a statement regarding his Fellowship win, Bovell said: “Where the novelist and the poet can exist alone and in isolation, the playwright seeks to work in collaboration with other theatre artists; actors, directors, designers and composers. Great theatre comes out of the relationship between these disciplines and it’s our theatre companies that bring these disciplines together. As a playwright I want to be as much a part of the companies that produce my work as possible. I want to belong. I want to collaborate. The Patrick White Fellowship offers me the opportunity to be a part of STC and its creative team under Kip Williams’ artistic directorship. As part of the Fellowship I look forward to mentoring and working with the STC’s newly announced Emerging Writers’ Group. It’s an important initiative and one that acknowledges the company’s commitment to developing the writers of the next generation.”

The $7,500 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award is presented annually for an original, unproduced play. This year 106 scrips were submitted anonymously with Lewis Treston winning for his eccentric comedy Hot Tub. Set in the Gold Coast’s Surfers Paradise, it follows the fading fortunes of a dysfunctional family who own and live in a 20-storey high-rise, with the play venturing into the sex industry, organised crime and the opportunistic underbelly of Australia’s playground. Hot Tub received a rehearsed reading in front of a sell-out audience at Wharf 2 as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival directed by STC’s Richard Wherrett Fellow Jessica Arthur, with a cast including Tony Cogin, Jennifer Hagan, Mark Hill, Patrick Jhanur, Amber McMahon, Susan Prior and Contessa Treffone.

The Emerging Writers’ Group has been established by STC to encourage and develop the next generation of Australian playwrights. Hoy, Larnach, Matuture and Savetsila (whose first porfessional play Australian Graffiti is being produced by STC at Wharf 2 in July) will attend STC productions, company runs and take part in workshops with STC artists. Each member of the group will have the opportunity to develop a commission pitch for STC programming consideration.