Griffin Studio is our esteemed mentorship program—a creative lab for early career playwrights. Each year our Studio artists develop one or more projects with support from Griffin’s Artistic team, while undertaking workshops on aspects of playwriting and theatremaking. Griffin Studio provides artists with the time and resources to create work that can shape the nation.
In the program’s fifteen-year-long history, Griffin Studio has engaged 40+ artists and has led to 19 professional productions including City of Gold, Orange Thrower and Whitefella Yella Tree, with alumni including Kate Mulvany, Sheridan Harbridge and Tessa Leong.
Griffin’s Studio artists for 2025 are:
Hannah Belanszky
Hannah Belanszky is a writer, actor and Yuwaalaraay woman based in Sydney. Her debut play don’t ask what the bird look like premiered at Queensland Theatre and was a finalist for the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting as well as the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award. She was commissioned by Australian Theatre for Young People to write Saplings which premiered as part of Sydney Festival. She wrote, directed and performed in her cabaret The Wives of Wolfgang which won Best Cabaret at the Adelaide Fringe weekly awards, with seasons also at Fringe World Perth and Brisbane Powerhouse. Hannah has also been commissioned by Playlab Theatre and QUT Acting. She was selected by Netflix for the Grow Creative writer’s program and is currently developing several television projects. Hannah is also the 2025 Balnaves Fellow at Belvoir.
Christopher Bryant
Christopher Bryant is an award-winning playwright, performer, and access consultant. He has worked with a range of companies including Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Merrigong Theatre Company, Accessible Arts NSW, fortyfivedownstairs, Malthouse Theatre, the State Library of Victoria, Wheeler Centre, and ATYP.
Recent work includes the “brilliantly engrossing” New Balance (Suzy Goes See, 2023), and his “coup of pop culture [and] social satire” Home Invasion at Old 505 (The Buzz from Sydney, 2018). He’s been a two-time finalist for the Griffin Award (Parallel Play, 2024, and Home Invasion, 2015), been mentored by Nicola Gunn and Amelia Roper, and developed through the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha (Disinhibition, 2018). In 2024 was a participant in Australian Plays Transform’s writers’ group Write Together, Rise Together for playwrights with disability.
He has taught with tertiary institutions around the country and completed his Ph.D. in playwriting & disability at Monash University under the supervision of Jane Montgomery Griffiths (2020).
Joanna Erskine
Joanna Erskine (she/her) is an award-winning playwright, producer, teacher and arts education specialist. A graduate of NIDA, she is a two-time winner of the Silver Gull Play Award, winner of Sydney Theatre Company Young Playwrights Award and Lysicrates Prize finalist. She is the founder and director of Storytellers Festival, a showcase and celebration of unproduced Australian writing, held at Kings Cross Theatre (KXT).
Plays include People Will Think You Don’t Love Me (winner of the Silver Gull Award, KXT on Broadway), AIR (Old 505), K.I.J.E. (Old Fitz Theatre), Rosaline (KXT) and Field of Vision (winner of the Silver Gull Award). Joanna’s plays have been staged at the Old Fitz Theatre, Griffin Theatre Company, KXT, ATYP, NIDA, Old 505 Theatre, Slide Bar, Bondi Pavilion, and in hundreds of schools around Australia each year.
In 2023 Joanna was awarded the Lloyd Martin Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Arts Leaders. She is an experienced arts education specialist and is the Head of Education at Bell Shakespeare. She is passionate about writing for, and working with, young audiences and has written for Bell Shakespeare, Camp Quality and Poetry In Action. Her popular monologue BOOT is performed by HSC Drama students each year. It was originally produced by ATYP, published by Currency Press, and commissioned for film, screening at film festivals internationally.
Adrian Russell Wills
Adrian Russell Wills is a Wonnarua man originally from Bourke NSW who is committed to explore the outsider, the fringe dweller, the rebel.
Adrian comes from a strong line of ancient storytellers who maintained their culture, law and language through song, dance, and remarkable visual art which stands among the oldest in the world. Adrian sees his role as a writer / director purely as an extension of those ancestors before him. His point of distinction is that he explores stories that take an audience beyond what they would naturally seek out, confronting and challenging them to go beyond their own experience.
Adrian has worked extensively in screen and television, having written and/or directed for RFDS Season 2 and Season 3, The Newsreader Season Two and Three, Top End Bub, Redfern Now, Kindred, Our Bush Wedding, When the Natives Get Restless, Boxing for Palm Island, 88, Black Divaz, Jackie Jackie, Bourke Boy and Daniel’s 21st.
Adrian is currently developing his original debut feature film Ginderella and is also attached to direct the feature film Whose Afraid with Aquarius Films as well as the feature film version of the highly acclaimed play Barbara & The Camp Dogs for Bunya Productions.
Since its inception in 2011, the Griffin Studio has seen over 40 exceptional artists move through the program. Meet them all here.
Thank you also to the generosity of our Griffin Studio donors.
Adrian Russell Wills is supported by the City of Sydney Cultural and Creative Grants and Sponsorship program.
If you’re interested in supporting emerging writers, consider making a donation to Griffin Studio! You’ll directly support our annual cohort of early career playwrights over the course of their year-long residency.
We’re very proud that our former Studio artists have worked at every major theatre in Australia, demonstrating the important contribution our Studio donors make to not only Griffin, but the wider arts community.
To find out more, or to arrange a meeting to discuss Griffin Studio, please contact our Head of Development Jake Shavikin on (02) 8960 7799 or [email protected].
If you’re passionate about the process of creating new Australian work, consider supporting Griffin Studio Workshop.
