Patrick White Playwrights' Award (2000-)
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
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History

The Patrick White Playwrights' Award was established by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2000. It is given in honour of Patrick White's contribution to Australian theatre and to foster the development of Australian playwrights. The award is designed to benefit both emerging writers and mid-career writers.

The Patrick White Playwrights' Award is given for a full-length, unproduced play of any genre written by an Australian playwright over 18 years of age. The readers and judges assessing the scripts look for original and ambitious works that have great potential for staging.

This award is a companion to the Patrick White Playwrights' Fellowship.

Source: http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/about/information-for-artists/patrick-white-playwrights%E2%80%99-award-and-fellowship.aspx Sighted: 3/12/2013.

Notes

  • This award is a major playwriting initiative of the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and the Sydney Morning Herald. A cash prize of $20,000 is awarded to a full length unproduced play by an Australian playwright over 19 years of age. The winning playwright(s) will also have the opportunity to work with STC directors and actors during a workshop culminating in a rehearsed reading of their play during the Sydney Writers' Festival.'

    (The award is made for the calendar year preceding the one in which it is given, i.e. the award for 2001 was given in 2002.)

    Source: http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/content.asp?cID=36
    Sighted: 05/11/2003

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 2023

winner Wendy Mocke for 'REALish' (awarded in 2024).

Year: 2022

winner Aran Thangaratnam for 'love MAD GLITCH'.

Year: 2021

winner Whose Gonna Love 'Em? I Am That I Am Kamarra Bell-Wykes , 2023 single work drama

'Written and directed by Kamarra Bell-Wykes, Whose Gonna Love 'Em? I am that i AM is a post-traumatic performance thesis, winning the 2021 Patrick White Playwriting Award.

'Starring Maggie Church-Kopp, Corey Saylor-Brunskill, and Maurial Spearim, accompanied by a live improvisational score by smallsound, Whose Gonna Love 'Em? I am that i AM is an absurd group therapy session held somewhere in the deepest cells of the collective mind and the colonised heart.'

Source: Matlhouse Theatre.

Year: 2020

winner K-Box Ra Chapman , 2020 single work drama

'A 30-something Korean adoptee finds the raucous and riotous side of family in this surreal comedy.

'Lucy fled her manic Melbourne routine to find calm in the country. But the home of her adoptive white baby-boomer parents ain’t the place for peace and quiet.

'Enter Kim Han, a charismatic K-pop star making a surprise visit to rural Victoria, who tips Lucy’s crisis into a complete tailspin.

'But there’s more to this than karaoke. As the evening rockets towards a climax, Lucy will raise the roof with the ones who raised her.'

Source: Malthouse Theatre.

Year: 2019

winner Keziah Warner for 'LuNa'.

Works About this Award

2017 Patrick White Playwrights' Awards Won by Kim Ho and Sue Smith Patrick Carey , 2018 single work column
— Appears in: ABC News [Online] , May 2018;

'Twenty two-year-old Sydney-born Melbourne-based writer and performer Kim Ho has won this year's Patrick White Playwrights' Award, announced at a ceremony at Sydney's Roslyn Packer Theatre on Monday night — where his winning play, Mirror's Edge, also received a rehearsed reading.'

STC’s Patrick White Award Finalists Revealed Benjamin Neutze , 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Daily Review , 15 April 2015;
'The five shortlisted plays for Sydney Theatre Company’s $7500 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award were today revealed, having been selected from 105 submissions for the 2014 prize.'
Treading the Boards John Bailey , 2015 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 26 May 2015;
Finalists for White Prize Announced Steve Dow , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 17 April 2013; (p. 17)
Suburban Crime Pays Bridget Cormack , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 21 May 2012; (p. 14)
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