7-ON PLAYWRIGHTS: Don't forget the playwrights ...

Saturday, 5 December 2009

Don't forget the playwrights ...

An article in The Australian about the paucity of female directors and the upcoming forum at Belvoir. It's great that this issue is generating so much coverage—perhaps we really are at a tipping point?—but let's not forget that female playwrights are equally under-represented. Pity that Belvoir didn't think to include a writer on tomorrow's panel ...

2 comments:

Alison Croggon said...: *Ahem* I am most certainly a writer. I've published seven books of poetry and five novels, and although I don't consider myself a playwright as such, I've had two opera libretti (Perth Festival and Melbourne Festival) and six play texts (including one Melbourne Festival production) produced on stage.; 6 December 2009 at 06:26
Anonymous said...: Oops! Of course you are, and we do actually know that. Apologies. We stand corrected, and much happier knowing that performance writing will be represented in the discussion.; 6 December 2009 at 09:23

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About 7-ON

7-ON Playwrights was established in 2005 by Donna Abela, Catherine Zimdahl, Ned Manning, Noëlle Janaczewska, Vanessa Bates, Verity Laughton and Hilary Bell. Seven minds that don’t think alike but are simpatico in this—our belief in the transformative properties of our artform and its place in Australian culture. With over 200 plays between us, our work has been produced on stages across Australia. Internationally, we have been produced in Botswana, the US, the UK, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany, Denmark, France, Canada, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. We have over 40 awards between us including: 14 Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, 4 Griffin Playwriting Awards, 3 Premiers’ Literary Awards, 4 Inscription Awards, an Adelaide Critics’ Circle Prize, a Phillip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award, a Wyndham Campbell Prize, a Centenary Medal, a Patrick White Playwrights’ Fellowship, and a Human Rights Award for Drama. As 7-ON we advocate for playwrights, initiate performance and publishing projects, and support and celebrate each other’s work. We create projects that are best served by a multitude of voices. These have included The Seven Needs (Griffin, 2007), Thus Spake Zarathustra (Wollongong University, 2008), Long Shadows (STC workshop, 2009), Platonic (Hothouse development, 2013), We Are The Ghosts Of The Future (Rocks Discovery Museum, 2015), and various works under the banner of Old Texts Revisited (ABC Radio, 2009), I Contain Multitudes (Novemberism Playwriting Festival, 2011) and No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames (MayDay! Playwrights’ Festival, 2013) which presented a selection of monologues from our anthology of the same name published by the Federation Press in 2012. We are also included in Currency Press’ anthology of short plays Short Circuit (2009).