NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights

Last updated

The NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights, formerly the Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award, is an Australian annual award for early-career playwrights in New South Wales, offered by Belvoir St Theatre and Arts NSW from 1995. It was last awarded in 2018.

Contents

History

The award was established in 1995, named in honour of Philip Parsons AM (1926–1993), who was a co-founder of the performing arts publishing company Currency Press, and "an influential teacher and mentor to many of the students, scholars, actors, directors and playwrights who created the new wave of Australian theatre in the 1970s". [1] [2]

Hilary Bell won the inaugural award with her play Wolf Lullaby in 1995. [3]

In 2010 Caleb Lewis turned down the award in protest against the lack of gender diversity in the company's 2010 season. [4]

From 2013 the award was renamed the Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights. [5] [6]

In 2019 (for 2020), the Fellowship evolved into the NSW Philip Parsons Early-Career Playwrights' Lab, whereby Belvoir would take on four new writers (or teams) along with one story developer or dramaturgical/ directorial participant. Successful applicants would work with Belvoir for a year (2020) on developing a new work. [7] [8] However, this did not appear to extend beyond 2020. [lower-alpha 1] [9]

Description

Recipients of the original award had to be under the age of 35 years and a resident of New South Wales; [10] but the fellowship, by 2016, was open to a playwright of any age, within the first eight years of their professional practice. [11] This requirement continued when the fellowship became the playwrights' lab in the 2020 edition, which dropped the requirement to be a NSW resident. [8]

The fellowship is presented as part of the Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture, given annually at the Belvoir St Theatre. [12] The winner is selected on the basis of a completed and produced script and an outline for another work. The winner received a full commission from Belvoir to develop their outline into a full play. [11]

Winners of the award

NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights
Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award

See also

Footnotes

  1. Possibly because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia?

Related Research Articles

Constance Lalage "Lally" Katz is an American and Australian dramatist writing for theater, film, and television. She now resides in Los Angeles.

Griffin Theatre Company is an Australian theatre specialising in new works, based in Sydney. Founded in 1979, it is the resident theatre company at the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross. As of February 2020 the artistic director is Declan Greene.

The AWGIE Awards are annual awards given by the Australian Writers' Guild (AWG), for excellence in screen, television, stage, and radio writing. The 56th Annual AWGIE Awards ceremony is being held in Sydney on 15 February 2024.

Belvoir is an Australian theatre company based at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney, Australia, originally known as Company B. Its artistic director is Eamon Flack. The theatre comprises two performing spaces: the Upstairs Theatre and the smaller Downstairs Theatre.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brendan Cowell</span> Australian actor and writer

Brendan Cowell is an Australian actor and writer. He is known for his lead role in 2024 television series Plum.

Ian Meadows is an Australian actor, playwright and writer.

Alana Valentine is an Australian playwright, dramatist, librettist, and director working in theatre, film, opera, and television.

Caleb Lewis is an Australian playwright and game designer. He is known for his play Dogfall, first produced in 2007 in Adelaide, South Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Maza</span> Australian actor, playwright, director and activist

Robert Lewis Maza, known as Bob Maza, was an Aboriginal Australian actor, playwright and activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Currency Press</span> Specialist performing arts publisher in Australia

Currency Press is a leading performing arts publisher and its oldest independent publisher still active. Their list includes plays and screenplays, professional handbooks, biographies, cultural histories, critical studies and reference works.

Ursula Yovich is an Aboriginal Australian actress and singer. She is known for numerous stage appearances, for co-writing and appearing in the rock musical Barbara and the Camp Dogs (2017), and several film and TV appearances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toby Schmitz</span> Australian actor and playwright

Toby Schmitz is an Australian actor and playwright.

Hilary Bell is an Australian writer of stage, fiction, radio, screen, and theatre.

Patricia Cornelius is an Australian playwright and co-founder of Melbourne Workers Theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suneeta Peres da Costa</span> Australian author

Suneeta Peres da Costa is an acclaimed Australian author best known for her tragicomic novel, Homework (1999) and a novella, Saudade (2018). She began her career as a playwright and also publishes poetry, non-fiction and literary criticism.

Nakkiah Lui is an Australian actor, writer and comedian. She is a young leader in the Aboriginal Australian community.

Counting and Cracking is a play by Australian playwright S. Shakthidharan, first staged in 2019 in Sydney.

Jada Alberts is an Aboriginal Australian actor, playwright, screenwriter, director, artist and poet.

References

  1. "Tommy Murphy receives Philip Parsons Young Playwrights Award 2007". Australian Stage. Retrieved 11 March 2008.
  2. "Philip Parsons Young Playwrights' Award". AustLit . Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  3. 1 2 "Hilary Bell". RGM. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  4. Fulton, Adam (15 March 2010). "Playwright opts for credibility over cash". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  5. "NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights". AustLit . Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  6. 1 2 "2016 Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights". Theatre Network NSW. 20 October 2016. Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  7. Belvoir St Theatre. "The Philip Parsons Fellowship has evolved into a Playwrights' Lab for a group of early career playwrights and story tellers". Facebook. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  8. 1 2 "2019 NSW Philip Parsons Early-Career Playwrights' Lab" (PDF). Belvoir Theatre and Arts NSW. 2019.
  9. "Awards". Belvoir St Theatre. 24 September 2019. Archived from the original on 9 June 2021. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  10. "The Philip Parsons Young Playwright's Award guidelines for 2012" (PDF). Belvoir Theatre and Arts NSW. 2012.
  11. 1 2 "2016 NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights Guidelines" (PDF). Belvoir Theatre and Arts NSW.
  12. 1 2 Wild, Stephi (4 December 2018). "Belvoir Announce Winner Of 2018 Philip Parsons Fellowship For Emerging Playwrights - Kendall Feaver". Broadway World.
  13. "A NIDA Graduate has picked up the Fellowship Award for Emerging Playwrights". The AU Review. 22 November 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  14. Shihab, Zainab Hussain (11 December 2013). "Belvoir announces $20,000 fellowship winner". ArtsHub Australia. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  15. Old Man
  16. "Holding the Man". Australian Plays Transform. Retrieved 26 April 2022.
  17. "Brendan Cowell wins Young Playwright's Award". Arts News. Archived from the original on 20 July 2008. Retrieved 11 March 2008.
  18. "Plays by Adam Grossetti". The Playwrights database. Retrieved 11 March 2008.
  19. "Three plays by Suneeta Peres Da Costa". ABC Classic FM. Retrieved 11 March 2008.