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.