Ben Ellis is a playwright from Gippsland in Australia, now based in both London and Melbourne. His significant works include Post Felicity (2001), Falling Petals (2002), a stage adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (2005), and more recently Poet No. 7 (2006) and The Final Shot (Theatre503, 2007), both premiering in London. The Final Shot, about the television broadcast of a man's death, featured Susannah York. His latest play, The Captive, explores the folklore surrounding the supposed capture of a white woman by aboriginal people in East Gippsland.
Ellis' short play about the death of activist Rachel Corrie, Blindingly obvious facts, was directed by Matt Scholten and was featured in the 2007 Melbourne Top 30 season of the Short and Sweet short play competition. [1]
NIDA commissioned Story of the Red Mountains for a 2012 production at Carriageworks, Sydney, and is a 12 character piece centred on a secretive gathering of Communist Party of Australia members on the night of the 1951 referendum to outlaw communism in Australia.[ citation needed ]
Rupert Goold and Robert Icke directed his work in the multi-authored Headlong project, Decade, at St Katherine's Docks, London, 2011, alongside work by writers including Simon Schama, Mike Bartlett, Amy Steel and Ella Hickson, dealing with the culture of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in New York.[ citation needed ]
His first professional play, Outpatients, produced at the Carlton Courthouse, La Mama, Melbourne, was a satire on the treatment of type one diabetes - which he was diagnosed with in 1979 - by the Victorian hospital system.[ citation needed ]
Ellis was awarded the inaugural Malcolm Robertson Prize and the Patrick White Playwrights' Award for Post Felicity (the latter in 2000, before the play was produced, [2] under the title Who Are You, Mr James?). He was also the recipient of the Wal Cherry Play of the Year Award in 2002 for Falling Petals.
An unproduced play, Eighty-Eight, was shortlisted for the 2008 Bruntwood Prize, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester[ citation needed ]
Patrick Victor Martindale White was an Australian novelist and playwright who explored themes of religious experience, personal identity and the conflict between visionary individuals and a materialistic, conformist society. Influenced by the modernism of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, he developed a complex literary style and a body of work which challenged the dominant realist prose tradition of his home country, was satirical of Australian society, and sharply divided local critics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, the only Australian to have been awarded the literary prize.
Raymond Evenor Lawler was an Australian playwright and dramatist, actor, theatre producer and director.
Nicholas Paul Enright AM was an Australian dramatist, playwright and theatre director.
James David Sharman is an Australian director and writer for film and stage with more than 70 productions to his credit. He is renowned in Australia for his work as a theatre director since the 1960s, and is best known internationally as the director of the 1973 theatrical hit The Rocky Horror Show, its film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and the film's follow-up, Shock Treatment (1981).
Tommy Murphy is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, adaptor and director. He created and was head writer for the 2022 TV series Significant Others. He is best known for his stage and screen adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's memoir Holding the Man. His most recent plays are a stage adaptation of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach, Mark Colvin's Kidney and Packer & Sons.
Brendan Cowell is an Australian actor and writer.
Nadia Tass is an Australian theatre director and film director and producer. She is known for the films Malcolm (1986) and The Big Steal (1990), as well as an extensive body of work in the theatre, both in Australia and internationally.
The Patrick White Playwrights' Award is an annual Australian literary award established jointly by the Sydney Theatre Company and The Sydney Morning Herald in honour of Patrick White's contribution to Australian theatre. The award was launched in 2000 and in 2011, was amended to include the Patrick White Fellowship.
Felicity Ward is an Australian comedian, best known for her TV appearances on Spicks and Specks, Thank God You're Here, Good News Week and as a writer/performer in the Channel 10 Network television programme The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. She is a part of The 3rd Degree, who made and starred in The Ronnie Johns Half Hour.
Brian Gregory Syron was an actor, teacher, Aboriginal rights activist, stage director and Australia's first Indigenous feature film director, who has also been recognised as the first First Nations feature film director. After studying in New York City under Stella Adler, he returned to Australia and was a co-founder of the Australian National Playwrights Conference, the Eora Centre, the National Black Playwrights Conference, and the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust. He worked on several television productions and was appointed head of the ABC's new Aboriginal unit in 1988.
Short+Sweet is a multi-form arts platform presenting festivals in theatre, dance, music-theatre, comedy and cabaret co-ordinated in multiple counties globally. The unifying feature of all works presented at the festival is they must be no longer than ten-minutes. Their flagship festival is Short+Sweet Theatre Sydney, the largest ten-minute play festival in the world.
Caleb Lewis is an Australian playwright and game designer. He is known for his play Dogfall, first produced in 2007 in Adelaide, South Australia.
Brink Productions is an Australian theatre company based in Adelaide, South Australia, specialising in the ensemble-development of new writing.
Tyler Coppin is an American-Australian actor, playwright and American dialect coach for actors in film, television and theatre.
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Toby Schmitz is an Australian actor and playwright.
Tom Holloway is an Australian playwright, based in Melbourne as of May 2015.
Alma De Groen is an Australian feminist playwright, born in New Zealand on 5 September 1941.
Shari Sebbens is an Aboriginal Australian actress and stage director, known for her debut film role in The Sapphires (2012), as well as many stage and television performances. After a two-year stint as resident director of the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), in 2023 she will be directing productions by STC and Griffin in Sydney, as well as Melbourne Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne. She is on the board of Back to Back Theatre.
Brett Joseph Sheehy an Australian artistic director, producer and curator. He has been director of international arts festivals in Australia's state capital cities, Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival, and Melbourne Festival.