Wednesday 12 March 2008

Vanessa Bates


Ursula Yovich in THE MAGIC HOUR by Vanessa Bates photograph by Jon Green

Relentless energy and humour – THE MAGIC HOUR, written by Australian playwright Vanessa Bates, is full of damsels in distress, but they are bleeding, coarse, filled with rage, hope and hot desire The Guardian

…a mouth-watering confection laced with genuinely biting satire. Funny, disturbing and utterly in tune with the zeitgeist PORN.CAKE is a bold step forward in contemporary theatre. 
The Age

Bates’ script (of EVERY SECOND) is compact, nimble, wryly funny and convincingly voiced.
The Sydney Morning Herald



Vanessa Bates is an award-winning Australian playwright.

In 2014 her play The Magic Hour toured Australia. Every Second premiered at the Eternity Theatre in Sydney. Her newest play Chipper was shortlisted for the 2014 Patrick White Award and the 2013 Griffin Award.
A short play The Source was produced by Rock Surfers Theatre. Vanessa was playwright on Diving Off The Edge Of The World  produced by Tantrum Youth Arts. She was also Director of the 2014 Playwrights Festival for NSW Writers Centre.

Vanessa's plays include: Chipper, Every Second, The Magic Hour, Porn.Cake, Checklist for an Armed Robber and Darling Oscar as well as monologues and short plays for several multi-playwright shows including: The Blessing, Petunia Takes Tea, Hunger, The Night We Lost Jenny, Confetti, World’s Tiniest Monkey, First Light, A Lightbulb Moment, This Train, HomeMade and WishBone.

Her work has been produced by most Australian companies including Malthouse Theatre, Theatre@Risk, Darlinghurst Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, atyp, Belvoir B Sharp, Griffin, Deckchair Theatre, Black Swan, Vitalstatistix, Tantrum, Freewheels, Reginald Theatre (Seymour), True West/Riverside and New Theatre.

Published works: Checklist For An Armed Robber (Currency Press), Porn.Cake (online - Red Door Imprints) Darling Oscar/STC 1 (5 Islands Press), Hunger/Short Circuits (Currency), First Light/The Voices Project (Currency), World's Tiniest Monkey, Nobody Famous, Farmer Frank is In Show Business/No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames (Federation Press) Legs Up & Laughing (Murdoch Books)

Vanessa won a 2012 NSW Premiers Literary Award for Porn. Cake. She won an AWGIE award for Checklist For An Armed Robber. She has won  Inscriptions awards for Every Second and Lakes of Death and Dreamers, and City Of Newcastle Drama awards for Match and here is the beehive.
Vanessa has been shortlisted for the STC/Patrick White Award (Chipper, A Little Bit Each Night) Griffin Award (Checklist For An Armed Robber, Newton’s Cradle, Porn.Cake, Chipper) AWGIE award (Porn.Cake, 900 Neighbours,)New Dramatists award(Checklist For An Armed Robber) Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (Checklist For An Armed Robber). In 2013 Vanessa was also shortlisted for a Newton John Award at the University of Newcastle for her body of work.

Vanessa worked for several years as an artist to create works with marginalized community members with national arts organization BIG hART on various projects.

Vanessa is a graduate of the NIDA Playwrights Studio.


This play (EVERY SECOND) is the first play I have ever seen and I loved it. And now I want to see more theatre.
Random Audience Member (unrelated)

Catherine Zimdahl

Clark in Sarajevo

Catherine Zimdahl is a playwright, screenwriter and visual artist. Her plays include Gifted, Step Up Stare Down, Deviant Art for the Degenerate (film adaptation nominated for IF Best Unproduced Screenplay), A Day Too Great, HereNowThenThere, Clark in Sarajevo, Family Running For Mr Whippy, Left Breathless A Question, The Fox, A World into A Child, A Child into the World and Moonfleet. Her film credits include Sparks and Life on Earth as I Know It. Catherine’s plays have been produced around Australia by the Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, the Griffin Theatre Company, Windmill National Children’s Theatre and ABC Radio, amongst others. Awards include Griffin Playwriting Award, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, New Dramatists Exchange and AACTA Awards for Best Short Film and Best Screenplay. Catherine studied screenwriting at the Australian, Film, Television and Radio School where she was the recipient of the Qantas Travel Award graduate prize. Catherine is a member of 7-ON playwrights, in 2012 No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames a book of monologues was published by Federation Press, which includes three monos by Catherine. Her feature film script The Ego Trip is currently in development. Catherine’s visual art has featured in several recent solo and group exhibitions in Sydney in 2011 and 2012. In 2013 her painting A Tear Magnified to the Power was a finalist in the Cliftons International Art Prize. 

To view Catherine’s website go to:

http://catherine-zimdahl.squarespace.com

Donna Abela


Tales From The Arabian Nights
A Walk in the Park 
Olympia and Phoung

Donna Abela has written for audiences of all ages, collaborating across a range of performance genres to write over thirty works.
Her credits include A Cleansing Force (Novemberism Festival of New Writing), A Walk in the Park (Brand Spanking New at the New Theatre) Olympia and Phoung and Oliver Twist Is (The 428 project), Spirit (Griffin Theatre Company), The Greatest Show On Earth (Queensland Music Festival, co-written with Patrick Nolan), The Rood Screen (Darlinghurst Theatre Company) Tales From the Arabian Nights (Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image), The Daphne Massacre (Parramatta Riverside Theatres), Aurora's Lament, Mrs Macquarie's Cello, and Fathom (ABC Radio), Highest Mountain Fastest River (Salamanca Theatre Company), Quest (Pact Youth Theatre), One In A Million (Death Defying Theatre), Circus Caravan and 4 Speed Blenders (Jigsaw Theatre Company), and No Funny Business, More Funny Business, and Lots More Funny Business (New Theatre, head writer).
Donna cut her playwrighting teeth at Powerhouse Youth Theatre, a company she co-founded in 1987 in Sydney's culturally diverse western suburbs. For PYT he wrote Ratbags, Reek Havoc, Was Liverpool Always Full of Headbangers? and Shazam, and devised a number of unscripted works. Donna worked continuously for PYT for seventeen years as it consolidated its practice of community collaboration, and established a base at the Fairfield School of Arts. She chaired the company from 1993 to 2003, and is looking forward to celebrating its 25th birthday in 2012.
Donna has long championed writers and new writing, and has worked extensively as a dramaturge and script assessor. She was on the board of the national script development organisation Playworks, Women Performance Writers Network from 1999 to 2006, acting in the position of Artistic Director in 2002, and chairing the company in its final year.
Donna studied at UTS, UNSW, the NIDA Playwrights' Studio, and the City Art Institute. She is a doctoral student at the University of Wollongong, and teaches scriptwriting at Wesley Institute.


Verity Laughton

The Snow Queen


Verity has written for most forms of theatre including mainstage adult drama, a promenade community event, a musical, plays for child and family audiences, as well as for dance, for puppets, for theatre of image and a ‘neutral script’.

Her plays include The Lightkeeper (Mainstreet Theatre Company and national tour; winner of the 2004 AWGIE for Community & Youth Theatre), The Snow Queen (Windmill Performing Arts), Burning (Griffin Theatre Company and winner of the 2001 Griffin Playwriting Award), Carrying Light (State Theatre of South Australia and Vitalstatistix; winner of the Adelaide Critics Circle Best New South Australian play, 1999) and The Mourning After (Playbox Theatre, 1995/6, Interplay Productions, New Zealand, 2000, and the Riverina Theatre, 2001).

In other writing, Verity’s radio play Fox for ABC Radio National won the 2004 AWGIE for Best Radio Play. She has also written for television and video. She worked as dramaturg on a Japanese-Australian co-production, World of Paper (Hello Maru-Chan), restaged in Australia, in the USA at the Kennedy Centre in Washington in 2006, and at London’s Unicorn Theatre in 2007.

Another work for puppets was Gondwana, for Erth Visual and Physical Theatre at the National Museum, Canberra, in September 2005. Gondwana was re-staged in New Zealand and Sydney in 2008. She followed this with a large scale puppetry adaptation of Patricia Wrightson's The Nargun and the Stars, produced by Erth Physical and Visual and Performing Lines for the Sydney and Perth International Arts Festivals (published by Phoenix Educational and nominated for the Sydney Theatre Awards). Her most recent productions were The Sweetest Thing, produced by Arts Radar and directed by Sarah Goodes at Belvoir Downstairs in November 2010 (nominated for the NSW Premier's Award for Drama in 2012) and A Crate of Souls, produced at the Adelaide College for the Arts and published by Phoenix Educational in December 2010. Her current play The Ice Season/or Spellboud won the 2009 Inscription Open Award. Her poem, The Fox Man was runner up in the 2011 Blake Poetry Prize.

Verity is represented by Anthony Blair at
Cameron Creswell Management.7th Floor, 61 Marlborough Street
Surry Hills
NSW 2010

Tel +61 2 93197199
Fax +61 2 93196866

Monday 10 March 2008

Ned Manning interviewed in The Guardian Weekly

Ned grew up in rural Australia. His first wife was Aboriginal, and their children grew up strongly identifying with the indigenous community. Ned wrote two plays about the stolen generation, touring them with indigenous theatre groups.
Read Ned's interview in the Guardian Weekly.

Hilary Bell





Hilary Bell writes for stage, radio, screen and music theatre. Plays include Wolf Lullaby (Atlantic, Steppenwolf, Griffin Theatre), Fortune, The Falls (Griffin), The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch (Vitalstatistix; The University of the South in Tennessee), Shot While Dancing (shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award), Memmie Le Blanc (Vitalstatistix, Deckchair), Open-Cut (WAAPA), The Mysteries: Genesis (Sydney Theatre Company) with Lally Katz, Angela’s Kitchen (Griffin) with Paul Capsis and Julian Meyrick, The White Divers of Broome (Black Swan / Perth International Arts Festival), The Splinter for STC,  Victim Sidekick Boyfriend Me for the National Theatre’s Connections Programme, and Mrs President, composed by Victoria Bond and produced by Anchorage Opera. As well as opera, she has written libretti for musicals (The Wedding Song, comp. Douglas Stephen Rae, dir. Jim Sharman), song cycles (Talk Show, comp. Elena Katz-Chernin, for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir), and for Phillip Johnston’s score to Murnau’s silent film Faust, premiered at the New York Film Festival and performed internationally. She recently collaborated with illustrator Antonia Pesenti on the best-selling children's / art book, Alphabetical Sydney, published by NewSouth Books.

Her work has been developed through the Australian National Playwrights' Conference, 1994 & 2006, the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights' Conference USA, 1997 & 1999, and the Russian Playwrights' Conference, 1997.

In 2014: Do Good And You Will Be Happy, a musical with composer Phillip Johnston, showcased by Merrigong; an adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull for STCSA in March, with another production by Black Swan in August; and a production of Wolf Lullaby in August at the New Theatre, Sydney.

Hilary is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She was the 2003-04 Tennessee Williams Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of the South in Tennessee. Hilary also works as a mentor and dramaturge, and as a playwriting teacher.

Hilary is represented by RGM Artists
PO Box 128, Surry Hills NSW 2010
Tel. 612 9281 3911

Hilary's plays can be purchased via Currency Press (Fortune, Wolf Lullaby, Angela's Kitchen, Short Circuits); The Australian Script Centre (The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch, Conversations With Jesus, Memmie Le Blanc, The Falls, The Seven Needs); Bloomsbury (National Theatre Connections 2012); NewSouth Books (Alphabetical Sydney); Federation Press (No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames) and by direct email for everything else: Email Hilary Bell.


AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
Patrick White Fellowship, 2013
Inscription Finalist, 2013
Inscription Award for 'Memmie Le Blanc' 2007
Tennessee Williams Fellowship, University of the South, Tennessee, USA 2003-2004
Music Theatre AWGIE (Australian Writers Guild) ‘The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Ruysch’ 2003
Bug’n’Bub Award for ‘The Falls’, UA 2001
ASK Theatre Projects Writers Retreat, USA 2000
Susan Smith Blackburn Award finalist, 1999
Hegebrook Writers’ Colony, USA1998
Juilliard Playwright Fellow, USA 1997 and 1998
LeCompte du Nouy Award, USA 997 and 1998
Eric Kocher Award, USA 1997
Jill Blewett Playwrights' Award, 1996
Aurealis Award for Young Adult Fiction, 1996
Philip Parsons Memorial Young Playwrights’ Award, 1994


Sunday 9 March 2008

Ned Manning

Last One Standing


Ned Manning is a playwright, actor and teacher. He has written eighteen plays all of which have had a production.
His first play, Us or Them, began its life as a co-op, first in Canberra and then at the Griffin Theatre Company. Us or Them’s critical and box office success led to it being the first professional production done by the company. It went on to be produced around Australia and published by Currency Press.

Kenny’s Coming Home, a satire about the Labor Party, was done at the Q Theatre in Penrith.

Milo also began its life as a co-op before being picked up by a number of companies and being published by Currency.
Ned has written two plays about the Stolen Generations, Close to the Bone and Luck of the Draw. Both are published by Currency and have had numerous productions around Australia and overseas.

His latest play for adults is Last One Standing which he acted in as well as producing.

Ned has written many plays for young people. His latest being Alice Dreaming. He is currently commissioned by the Bell Shakespeare Company to write their Actors at Work scripts. He has written nine short plays for the Company.

He is currently working on a number of projects with 7-ON as well as his own projects.

He teaches at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts.