The RE Ross Trust Playwright's Script Development Awards: Winners 2005

This year the Awards were judged by David Pledger (Convenor), Alice Garner and Tee O’Neill.

Judges' report

Of the 35 entries, a number of scripts presented as strong candidates. In general, there was a high standard of writing, although many entries tended to be dramatic literature rather than drama. Of the latter, some scripts were excellent but in need of a full production rather than further development. A smaller number were genuinely theatrical in intent, and were judged likely to derive most benefit from a workshop.

The final entries were chosen for their inherent theatricality, quality of ideas, commitment to tell stories, spirit of invention, contemporaneity in style, form or content, and a cast of characters of the kind often found in the pages of newspapers but rarely in the theatre.

The successful entries were singled out for the value a workshop would bring to the material. Some of the works will benefit from a full workshop, whilst others will benefit from intensive dramaturgical work culminating in a public reading.

The winners

Killing Jeremy by Bridgette Jane Burton ($3300)
Killing Jeremy is an actors’ play, a crisp two-hander with an engaging array of characters performed by two actors who must shift dynamically and mercurially in mood and sensibility. The play follows the story of a young woman attempting to deal with the consequences of a car accident that left her boyfriend in a coma. The action takes place in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Around the themes of grief, loss and responsibility, it proposes questions about the quality and degrees of love: the difference between loving someone and loving them enough to let them go. A workshop process will allow the writer to see her well-developed script come to life in the hands of experienced actors.

Sand in the Glass by Darinka E Kralj ($2200)
This is a strong family drama littered with Chekhovian possibility against a suburban Australian backdrop. Featuring characters, stories and sensibilities not usually seen in mainstream theatre, Sand in the Glass charts the Croatian-Australian experience at the time of the beginning of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. It is a classic story of displacement, identity and belonging, which has been told before from the viewpoint of other European cultures but rarely through the eyes of this ethnic community. The well-drawn idiosyncrasies of this community contribute another dimension to the universal experience of migration, and to the migrant histories of Australia. The writer will benefit from an extended period of work with an experienced dramaturg, with a view to a rehearsed reading of their collaboration.

Bear Witness (to My Savage Heart)  by Mari Lourey ($10,000)
Very much a work for our times, this script deals with the ‘mediatisation’ of war from the point of view of photojournalists and foreign correspondents. The story follows Dixie, a young Australian photojournalist, into several war zones and tracks her ethical and moral trajectory in the face of the atrocities she records. She encounters other journalists who share her passion for exposing the truth, and with them she discovers the courage to do so. It is through their powerful stories that we experience the dilemmas of these chroniclers of war at the coalface of human experience.

The work proposes a ‘way of seeing’ the reportage of war that is contrary to that of the mainstream media. It has at its disposal strong, graphic documentary images which, combined with the characters’ stories, provide a terrifying experience of authenticity at odds with the ‘normalisation’ of world events in the mass media. This is the work’s fundamental appeal.

The material presented for consideration is a combination of solid research, the writer’s dramaturgical notes and a first-draft script. This material will benefit from the process of a full workshop by a strong team of collaborators.

A Mile in Her Shadow by Robert Reid ($2200)
The reader is immediately drawn into the world of the protagonist of A Mile in Her Shadow, a depressed, panic-prone young man who, despite his mental disorder, manages to have a sense of humour about his hopelessness. There is great material here for an actor to work with, and the author’s voice is compelling. At once a short story and a play, the work will benefit from a dramaturgical process in which the writer, a dramaturge and actor work intensively on the material to solicit its essential dramatic and performance possibilities.

Ghosts and Lepers by Shane Taylor ($10,000)
A young girl, Roma, lives with her mother, Syl, in an ordinary house beside a railway track in a working class suburb. The house is inhabited by the spirits of Roma’s father, Millo, and her grandmother, both of Jewish-Polish heritage and both survivors of the Warsaw ghetto. The story follows Roma’s efforts to come to terms with the present and the past, and to create a meaning for her future.

Ghosts and Lepers is a wondrous and charming excursion into Eastern European magical realism, anchored by an idiosyncratic Australian sensibility. Within this form, it moves effortlessly between the conflicts of refugee and migrant, charting the way in which certain memories weigh on different generations, weaving the legacy of the Holocaust into contemporary Australia. The writer possesses an absurdist and whimsical sensibility, establishing a theatre with a strong sense of space and architecture. It is a beautiful script that will greatly benefit from an intensive dramaturgical process culminating in a rehearsed reading.

Kites of Broken Strings by Jianguo Wu ($2300)
This work has the potential to be an important story of the Chinese-Australian experience. Kites of Broken Strings is written with an urgency and immediacy that draws directly from daily-life experiences of young Chinese living in Australia today. The writer deals with big questions – cultural identity, systems of faith, political ideologies – and crosses stylistic boundaries including traditional Chinese opera, documentary and conventional drama. The script is written in both English and Mandarin, and this bi-linguality and the way it is woven into the script provides a rich theatrical thread.

This work requires further drafting, and a workshop process will allow the writer to develop a relationship with an experienced dramaturge to isolate and develop issues of plot, rhythm and style.

About the winners

Bridgette Jane Burton is a professional actor and emerging playwright who has been writing and performing her own work since 1993. Her first play, Not Forgotten, recently finished a season at the Storeroom and is now being adapted into a feature film screenplay. She is currently touring schools in Victoria performing with Phunktional Dance Theatre.

Darinka Kralj is an emerging playwright and the Artistic Director of the Croatian National Theatre Melbourne. Darinka’s goals in playwriting are twofold. One is to develop a body of work that is diverse and non-specific to her cultural background. The other is to uncover the unique voice of the hybrid Croatian-Australian and create plays that represent and explore their presence within our community.

Mari Lourey is a developing playwright with a background in theatre performance and music. Her last play, Dirty Angels, toured south-west Victoria in 2004 after playing at La Mama Theatre in 2003. Bear Witness is her second major independent work for actors. She was also the primary writer of the Green Room and Vic Health award-winning community play The Bridge in 2003 for The Torch Project, made with the Murray River communities of north-west Victoria.

Robert Reid is Artistic Director of Theatre in Decay in Australia. Robert’s works produced by Theatre in Decay include Noni Hazlehurst is Dead, All Dressed Up and Sweet Staccato Rising. Robert won the St Martin’s Playwright of the Year award in 2000 for Pat Sabatine’s Eighth Birthday Party, and his company was given a special commendation by Melbourne Fringe in 2004 for Empire. His works produced by other companies include Blind Girls Play, The Fat Black Pussy Cat, The Man Who Had Gout and The Battle of Bourke Street.

Shane Taylor is an emerging playwright who is interested in exploring the notions of cultural, ancestral and spiritual influence. He has graduated in professional writing at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Jianguo Wu has been awarded Australia Council, Arts Victoria and Australia-China Council support to work as a writer. His novel Meandering Stream and the play Beyond the Gate of Heavenly Peace have made him the first mainland Chinese migrant author in Australia to have a novel and a play published in English.