Forthcoming Publication

Bottom Row: L>R Donna Abela; Vanessa Bates; Noëlle Janaczewska; Hilary Bell. Back Row: Ned Manning; Me; Catherine Zimdahl

This post is not just for me, but also for my playwrights’ group, 7-ON. We seven writers, all such different artists as we keep reaffirming, but all equally committed to the artform, and to each other both as friends and career companions, have been meeting and doing projects together for TWENTY YEARS!

The photo (by Keith Saunders) above is our fresh-faced selves not long after we formed the group, twenty years ago.

So recently we got together with the good folk at Currency Press for a celebratory volume, to be entitled 7 ON – A Collection. Currency have published a couple of our other group ventures, namely Sharp Darts, a book of chamber plays, and Short Circuit where we joined with some other then Sydney-based writers to create a book of ten-minute plays. We’ve also published the consistently selling book of short plays No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames with Federation Press.

The Collection is, however, a collection of seven full-length plays. We each chose a play of ours that we felt was worthy of greater profile, something we’d like to have out there as part of the canon and available for study as well as performance. My own offering is The Sweetest Thing, one of my favourites of my plays for adults that was produced in 2010 by Arts Radar at Belvoir Downstairs, directed by the wonderful Sarah Goodes and starring Diana Glenn, Caroline Craig, Lucy Wigmore, Vanessa Downing, Chris Morris and Tom Conroy in a slam-dunk of talent. It's still one of my best production experiences. The Sweetest Thing was nominated for the Rodney Seaborn Prize, the Griffin Prize and the NSW Premier’s Award. It’s one of the very few of my plays where I don’t think I’d change a word!

We launch on 23^rd August at the Currency Playwriting Festival. Hope some Sydney-based persons can come along!