Friday 31 December 2010
Wrap Up '10 ... continued
NED's year began in Venice and ended in Melbourne. Quite a ride as neither were exactly planned. In between there's been two short plays for Stories from the 428 and Brand Spanking New. A tentative dip into the world of sports journalism. A trip to China with 20 kids from my "old" school (NHSPA) performing everywhere from World Expo to Xangzhou to Deng Feng on stages huge and tiny. There's been a production of Blackrock with a cast of teenagers. My new kids play "Alice Dreaming" has been published by Cambridge University Press. I've written a draft for a new play which found its way to the bin (recycling, of course). I've written two more plays for Bell Shakespeare's Actors at Work program. I've finished my ubiquitous film script which I'm going to re-write and set in Melbourne. I've wondered what happened to that commercial play I sent off and my ABC Radio play? Nearly finished the chapters I'm writing for a Drama Textbook. Why oh why? I've been inspired by my colleagues and frustrated by having to juggle so many balls. I'm finally settled having commuted for 12 weeks and wondering how the hell people do it. I'm looking forward to writing without interruption and whatever the future may bring.
Monday 27 December 2010
2010 Wrap-up from 7-ON continued ...
NOËLLE: Thanks to an OzCo Literature Board grant, I’ve written a 50-minute monologue-cum-performance essay called Good With Maps, and commenced work on a non-fiction prose project, The Book of Thistles. Linked to this latter project, I researched, wrote and narrated Weeds Etc for ABC Radio National’s 360documentaries. Theatre-wise, 4 short pieces saw the light of production, including Smashed, a documentary-style script about binge drinking developed with Year 11 students at Springwood High School. And The Story of this Moment was short-listed for the inaugural Richard Burton Award for New Plays.
In the second half of the year I had poems and a one-act play published. The River that Ran Out was Highly Commended in the Trinity College London International Playwriting Competition 2010, and you can read it in Prize-winning Plays from the International Playwriting Competition 2010 (Pub. Orient Blackswan & TCL). It’s a 3-hander with an environmental theme for audiences of 11-years-old and under.
What else? September I spent in England and Denmark, combination of family visit and research for some poems. Got back just in time to catch the broadcast of The Stepping Stars of Bóronkowice on ABC Radio National’s Airplay. And last but not least, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what it is that I really want to write in the next while ...
DONNA: In 2010, I was part of two of Gus Supple’s projects - The 428 Project at Sidetrack Theatre and Brand Spanking New at At The New Theatre - writing three pieces all up: ‘Oliver Twist Is’, ‘Olympia and Phuong’, and ‘A Walk In The Park’. It was great to meet and work with new artists, and to now be talking to one or two of them about other things we might do together. I wrote ‘Aurora’s Lament’ for ABC Radio Drama, and collected my first AWGIE Award for my radio adaptation of ‘Mrs Macquarie’s Cello’. Thanks to the Australian Script Centre, ‘Tales From The Arabian Nights’ had five productions this year, including one in Atlanta Georgia. I also taught scriptwriting to some hungry students at Wesley Institute, and became a student myself, beginning a doctorate at the University of Wollongong. The doctorate is buying me some time to examine my practice, develop strategies for bouts of writing terror, and to experiment. In one experiment I wrote a play a day for a month; well, they are more like play prototypes, but it’s amazing what can emerge when perfectionism is over-ridden by speed, commitment and courage.
In the second half of the year I had poems and a one-act play published. The River that Ran Out was Highly Commended in the Trinity College London International Playwriting Competition 2010, and you can read it in Prize-winning Plays from the International Playwriting Competition 2010 (Pub. Orient Blackswan & TCL). It’s a 3-hander with an environmental theme for audiences of 11-years-old and under.
What else? September I spent in England and Denmark, combination of family visit and research for some poems. Got back just in time to catch the broadcast of The Stepping Stars of Bóronkowice on ABC Radio National’s Airplay. And last but not least, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what it is that I really want to write in the next while ...
DONNA: In 2010, I was part of two of Gus Supple’s projects - The 428 Project at Sidetrack Theatre and Brand Spanking New at At The New Theatre - writing three pieces all up: ‘Oliver Twist Is’, ‘Olympia and Phuong’, and ‘A Walk In The Park’. It was great to meet and work with new artists, and to now be talking to one or two of them about other things we might do together. I wrote ‘Aurora’s Lament’ for ABC Radio Drama, and collected my first AWGIE Award for my radio adaptation of ‘Mrs Macquarie’s Cello’. Thanks to the Australian Script Centre, ‘Tales From The Arabian Nights’ had five productions this year, including one in Atlanta Georgia. I also taught scriptwriting to some hungry students at Wesley Institute, and became a student myself, beginning a doctorate at the University of Wollongong. The doctorate is buying me some time to examine my practice, develop strategies for bouts of writing terror, and to experiment. In one experiment I wrote a play a day for a month; well, they are more like play prototypes, but it’s amazing what can emerge when perfectionism is over-ridden by speed, commitment and courage.
Monday 20 December 2010
2010 wrap up from 7-ON
Here we are at the end of 2010 all of a sudden. We thought this was a moment to check back over the year. It's odd really - you find that you've done quite a lot more than you think you have!
VANESSA..."2010 started and ended with mayhem and murder - writing for two TV shows. In the middle bit of 2010 I wrote a piece for Augusta Supple's theatrical omnibus - 'Stories From The 428'. 'Confetti' was directed by Glenn Hazeldine. I also had a play accepted by Playwriting Australia's National Script Studio, which was then picked up by Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre.
PORN.CAKE, directed by Pamela Rabe, will open on April 15th, 2011.
I was a mentor for the Australian Theatre for Young People's 'Fresh Ink' program and a tutor at their end-of-year National Studio in Bundanon. My feature screenplay, 'Love Struck Juliet' was runner-up in the AWG Rom-Com contest; my little boy turned four and I helped deliver my sister's second baby!
CATH..."2010. I fully expected to get nothing done but wait, watch and wonder. I lived in the non-verbal world of the visual arts, painted my mind out and was selected to exhibit in a group show at 'Artsite', a beautiful new space in Newtown. I was then selected for a solo show in June next year at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery. Suddenly there was an unexpected surge of writing - HERENOWTHERETHEN was commissioned for Augusta Supple's Brand Spanking New season; a fiull length play came to me in the space of a month and another is in the works. I've also been commissioned by ABC Radio to write a fifty-minute piece under the theme 'Crime Genre'.
Hope you all have a beautiful break."
VERITY... "2010 started, for me, as it will end, back at the farm at Kangarilla in South Australia. In between those two peaceful bookends it has been a rip-snorter of a year, a game-changer of a year in so many ways, quite a ride. The ABC broadcast a 35 minute play, "Joshua's Books"; I took part in an Inscription workshop headed up by Will Eno, a generous and very bright collaborator; Currency Press published 7-ON's 'Seven Needs' plays as part of their volume of short plays entitled 'Short Circuit'; I taught a playwriting course at the NSW Writer's Centre, as well as my regular classes for the Sydney City Council; I resigned after my fifth year on the National Executive Council of the AWG; spent a month in England and Europe (research, you understand, research...); took part in a workshop run by UK Meissner expert, Scott Williams, which culminated in a reading of a work-in-progress play of mine, 'The Ice Season'; and in the last quarter of the year had one play, 'The Sweetest Thing' produced in Sydney at Belvoir Downstairs and another 'A Crate of Souls' in Adelaide at the Adelaide College for the Arts. 'A Crate of Souls' was published by Phoenix Educational, while 'The Sweetest Thing' is available from the Australian Script Centre.
HILARY... "My year was also bookended - by two trips to Broome, researching my play for Black Swan, 'The White Divers of Broome' (inspired by John Bailey's history of the same name). The transformative part of the year happened in June, with my bunion operation - I now have a lovely left foot. Around that, I worked on the development of 'Take Up Thy Bed And Walk'
with Gaelle Mellis, for which we'll be in residence at Vitalstatistix in 2011; saw 'Beautiful Hands' recorded for ABC Radio; worked with Paul Capsis and Julian Meyrick on 'Angela's Kitchen' at Griffin; pushed 'Do And You Will Be Happy', a musical with composer Phillip Johnston, along to next-draft stage; and had a wonderful week with STC's Residents and puppeteer Alice Osborne workshopping 'The Splinter'. I was a Fresh Ink mentor, and taught many talented writers through Griffin, NIDA, the NSW Writers' Centre, Kambala and Randwick Council. Coming up is a play for the National's Connection's Programme, and a play for Barking Gecko in WA.
VANESSA..."2010 started and ended with mayhem and murder - writing for two TV shows. In the middle bit of 2010 I wrote a piece for Augusta Supple's theatrical omnibus - 'Stories From The 428'. 'Confetti' was directed by Glenn Hazeldine. I also had a play accepted by Playwriting Australia's National Script Studio, which was then picked up by Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre.
PORN.CAKE, directed by Pamela Rabe, will open on April 15th, 2011.
I was a mentor for the Australian Theatre for Young People's 'Fresh Ink' program and a tutor at their end-of-year National Studio in Bundanon. My feature screenplay, 'Love Struck Juliet' was runner-up in the AWG Rom-Com contest; my little boy turned four and I helped deliver my sister's second baby!
CATH..."2010. I fully expected to get nothing done but wait, watch and wonder. I lived in the non-verbal world of the visual arts, painted my mind out and was selected to exhibit in a group show at 'Artsite', a beautiful new space in Newtown. I was then selected for a solo show in June next year at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery. Suddenly there was an unexpected surge of writing - HERENOWTHERETHEN was commissioned for Augusta Supple's Brand Spanking New season; a fiull length play came to me in the space of a month and another is in the works. I've also been commissioned by ABC Radio to write a fifty-minute piece under the theme 'Crime Genre'.
Hope you all have a beautiful break."
VERITY... "2010 started, for me, as it will end, back at the farm at Kangarilla in South Australia. In between those two peaceful bookends it has been a rip-snorter of a year, a game-changer of a year in so many ways, quite a ride. The ABC broadcast a 35 minute play, "Joshua's Books"; I took part in an Inscription workshop headed up by Will Eno, a generous and very bright collaborator; Currency Press published 7-ON's 'Seven Needs' plays as part of their volume of short plays entitled 'Short Circuit'; I taught a playwriting course at the NSW Writer's Centre, as well as my regular classes for the Sydney City Council; I resigned after my fifth year on the National Executive Council of the AWG; spent a month in England and Europe (research, you understand, research...); took part in a workshop run by UK Meissner expert, Scott Williams, which culminated in a reading of a work-in-progress play of mine, 'The Ice Season'; and in the last quarter of the year had one play, 'The Sweetest Thing' produced in Sydney at Belvoir Downstairs and another 'A Crate of Souls' in Adelaide at the Adelaide College for the Arts. 'A Crate of Souls' was published by Phoenix Educational, while 'The Sweetest Thing' is available from the Australian Script Centre.
HILARY... "My year was also bookended - by two trips to Broome, researching my play for Black Swan, 'The White Divers of Broome' (inspired by John Bailey's history of the same name). The transformative part of the year happened in June, with my bunion operation - I now have a lovely left foot. Around that, I worked on the development of 'Take Up Thy Bed And Walk'
with Gaelle Mellis, for which we'll be in residence at Vitalstatistix in 2011; saw 'Beautiful Hands' recorded for ABC Radio; worked with Paul Capsis and Julian Meyrick on 'Angela's Kitchen' at Griffin; pushed 'Do And You Will Be Happy', a musical with composer Phillip Johnston, along to next-draft stage; and had a wonderful week with STC's Residents and puppeteer Alice Osborne workshopping 'The Splinter'. I was a Fresh Ink mentor, and taught many talented writers through Griffin, NIDA, the NSW Writers' Centre, Kambala and Randwick Council. Coming up is a play for the National's Connection's Programme, and a play for Barking Gecko in WA.
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