With much anticipation, Griffin Theatre Company has unveiled the three finalists for the 2024 Griffin Award. The three finalist playwrights join the already announced inaugural Griffin Award Keynote speaker, Angus Cerini, finalising a line-up of unmissable talent at this year’s event.
For over 25 years, the prestigious Griffin Award has served as one of Australia’s premier playwriting competitions – heralding the arrival of future classics like The Bleeding Tree by Angus Cerini, Prima Facie by Suzie Miller and Mr Bailey’s Minder by Debra Oswald.
This year Griffin congratulates finalists Christopher Bryant for his play Parallel Play, Michele Lee for Shoulder, and Jules Orcullo for My Dad Never Saw The Beatles. Two Highly Commended participants have also been revealed: Daley Rangi for The Mountain Remembers and Erica Brennan for Jurassic Park.
The winner will be announced at the Griffin Award Keynote event taking place on Sunday 28 July at National Art School’s Cell Block Theatre, and this year will receive a full play commission prize of $17,400 thanks to the generosity of the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
In honour of the revamped 2024 Award, award-winning Australian playwright and Griffin Award alumnus Angus Cerini is to speak on the current national theatrical and artistic landscape as the Keynote.
Writer of the acclaimed The Bleeding Tree (first staged at Griffin in 2015), Angus is renowned for his lyrical and epic stage poetry that tackles our greatest societal problems. His latest play Into the Shimmering World awed sold-old audiences at Sydney Theatre Company earlier in the year, and played across the country.
“The Griffin Award has paved the way for playwrights for more than 20 years,” said Declan Greene, Artistic Director of Griffin Theatre Company. “We’re excited to shake up the format with addition of a playwriting Keynote, and we couldn’t think of anyone more perfect than Angus Cerini, who has had a phenomenal trajectory since winning the Award.
“It will be thrilling to develop and workshop the winning play, whichever one it is – and are incredibly grateful for the support of our friends at Copyright Agency to do this.”
Christopher Bryant is an award-winning playwright, performer, and disability advocate. Parallel Play is an absurd comedy about a young man in hospital, rebuilding his life after a violent car crash. By exploring the way that two people can affect each other from bed, it asks audiences to question our society’s messaging around disability.
Since 2008, Michele Lee has been writing for stage, audio, live art and screen. Her practice is characterised by a deep commitment to complex portraits of Asian Australian people, people of colour and women. In Shoulder, a woman goes on a #vanlife journey to a banana farm where her dad’s last funeral rites will happen. It’s a play about grief, anger, a lifetime of regrets and saying sorry in time (but it’s a funny play, she promises!)
Jules Orcullo is a playwright, songwriter, dramaturg, and founding member of Kallective, developing theatrical works for the Filipinx diaspora. My Dad Never Saw the Beatles is a musical, mythic retelling of an untrue event set in the Philippines in 1966, by a daughter desperate to fulfil her Dad’s dreams. Because in this very real timeline, he sacrificed everything to help fulfil hers.
“This was a remarkable year for the Griffin Award: 176 entries were received, all of them questioning and curious plays about the state of our nation,” said Literary Manager, Dylan Van Den Berg.
“Some were deeply personal tales reflecting on the larger forces that shape our lives, and some were ambitious, kaleidoscopic stories asking readers to think beyond our shores and consider the humanity of those across the globe.”
“What connects them, though, is a strong grasp of craft and an unashamed theatricality; many of these plays strove to answer the age-old question of why theatre?”
“The panel and readers were deeply impressed by the diversity and clarity of the ideas presented, and thrilled by the skillful rendering of defiantly Australian stories – in all their varied forms,” said Van Den Berg.
The 2024 Griffin Award Keynote will take place at the Cell Block Theatre – National Art School, Darlinghurst on Sunday 28 July. For more information, visit: www.griffintheatre.com.au for details.
Image: Christopher Bryant, Michele Lee and Jules Orcullo (supplied)