24.09.26
Kia ora e te whānau,
I write to you having recently returned from Shark Island Kangaroo Valley with our 2026 Griffin Studio cohort, after spending a transformational week on Wodi Wodi country with our Artistic team—nourished by the landscape, cold plunges, fireside writing, and some exquisite home-made cooking. Sitting comfortably in the vā, amidst the trees and birds, the wombats and kangaroos, it became clear that there is a particular part of every story that I really love. The middle.
The beginning has already happened. You’ve worked out roughly where you are and what’s going on. The characters have settled in, the rules of the world are becoming clear, a suitably interesting question has been proposed, and then suddenly…*dramatic pause*…something changes. The writer has set everything up. Now they must work out what happens next. The middle is where things get interesting.
I realised recently (yesterday) that I too am in the middle of something: it has been 12 months since I started at Griffin as Literary Associate. A year ago, I was learning where everything was, trying to remember everyone’s names and roles, figuring out the rhythms of a new work theatre company and discovering just how many different ways there are to talk about a script. Hint: the number is closer to infinity than one.
Now I know a little more. I know more about these blessed Griffs I work with every day, more about the history and ancestry of this place and more about how a piece of writing can move from a barely coherent sentence scribbled into a ratty notebook into something magnificent and moving that happens in a room with many other people. I have read a lot of scripts and script pitches (upon reflection, nearly one a day on average). I’ve had a lot of coffee-fuelled conversations about writing and asked a lot of prickly questions to those writers. But I definitely don’t have the ending figured out, which feels just about right.
The middle of a play is not about having all the answers. It’s about making things that little bit more complicated, cross-examining those biases and following characters somewhere unexpected. Perhaps you realise that the plan you had for the story no longer works and you must let go, listen to what the story wants instead. There is a lot happening in Griffin’s middle at the moment.
Firstly, we’re in between shows as the hilarious Mum Club by Jorjia Gillis has just taken its final bow. I’m not a mum, but after watching Mum Club I do feel I’ve gained a rather comprehensive education in the emotional, logistical and caffeinated demands of motherhood. (Plus to avoid Inner West Mum Clubs at all costs.)
Creeping up with some speed is our final Main Season show of the year: Wake in Fright, bringing a familiar Australian nightmare back into the light. Our Artistic Director Declan Greene reunites with the extraordinary Zahra Newman to take on this ferocious story. And in early December, alongside Wake in Fright, we will hold our annual Playwrights’ Briefing, where we pull the curtain back and talk transparently about the opportunities available for writers at Griffin.
Not only that, late next week play submissions will be open for one week only from 2–9 October, midday. So, if you are a playwright with a script sitting in a drawer, on your desktop, or somewhere in the mysterious folder called ‘new play’, now is the time to get it ready. Before you send us your script though, make sure you check the eligibility requirements.
Following that, applications for our early-career writers’ program Griffin Studio will open on 11 December and remain open over the holidays until 11 January 2027. Which means you can do what I do: spend some time avoiding questions at family gatherings about your career choice and finally fill out that application, preferably over a frosty beverage. Guidelines for applying will be available soon.
One year in, I think I’m starting to understand that theatre is mostly middle, in the same way that while our new theatre continues to take shape everyone stands outside discussing what it might mean to work and make work there. A writer editing a draft, a mid-rehearsal week discovery, a production week dinner or an energetic foyer during interval on opening night.
Beginnings are exciting because everything is possible. Endings are satisfying because you finally know what the story was. But the middle? That’s where we get to figure it out.
Aroha nui, a kite anō!
Daley
Daley Rangi
Literary Associate
