The Griffin Award recognises an outstanding idea for a play or performance text that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice. In 2025, thanks to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, the winner will receive a full commission ($17,700) and dramaturgical support from Griffin to develop their play in-house.
From first-timers to long-timers, the Griffin Award is for every playwright in Australia. We’re looking for your next big idea and want to help you bring it to the stage.
Applications for the 2025 Griffin Award are now closed.
If you have any questions, please email Griffin’s Literary team at [email protected].
Michele Lee was announced as the 2025 winner of the Griffin Award for her play Snapy at the 2025 Griffin Award & Keynote event on Wednesday 21 May.
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It is with utmost excitement that we announce the three finalists and their plays for the 2025 Griffin Award. Congratulations to these talented creatives—their plays were identified as innovative and exciting examples of new Australian playwriting.
This year’s Griffin Award winner will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday 21 May.
The Suppostabys by Chenturan Aran
Chenturan Aran is a Melbourne-based playwright, journalist, and screenwriter of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage. His critically acclaimed play Cut Chilli premiered at the Old Fitz in 2024. His sharp, irreverent work sits at the crossroads of diaspora, digital noise and spiritual yearning—mapping the comic and tragic ways we try to remake ourselves.
About The Suppostabys
A disillusioned clone and her original strike a deal to roleplay as mother and daughter, uncovering buried traumas, cultural dislocation, and the fragile nature of forgiveness.
Raven by Van Badham
Van Badham is a writer based in the Central Highlands of Victoria. Her plays include The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars for Griffin Theatre Company, The Bloody Chamber for Malthouse Theatre, Banging Denmark and A Fool in Love for Sydney Theatre Company, Animal Farm for Black Swan State Theatre Company, Werewolf for Arts Centre Melbourne, and the musical The Questions (with Richard Wise) for State Theatre Company South Australia. She is a columnist for The Guardian and also writes for The New York Times. Originally from Sydney, she attended Port Hacking High School, Miranda, and holds a BA/BCA from the University of Wollongong and an MA from the Victorian College of the Arts.
About Raven
Raven is a horror play. It mashes ghost stories into a domestic thriller to explore dark and volatile dysfunction in an “aspirational” suburban nuclear family in Sydney.
WINNER — Snappy by Michele Lee
Michele Lee is a multiple award-winning Hmong-Australian writer for stage, screen, audio and live art. Across her work, she aims to centre the stories of those historically on the margins—women, people of colour, poor people and working-class people, and people from my community, the Hmong. Selected theatre credits include Security (Darebin Speakeasy, 2022); Rice (East West Theatre, Greece, 2025; Actors’ Touring Company, UK, 2022, 2021; Queensland Theatre, Griffin Theatre Company and HotHouse Theatre, 2017) and Going Down (Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre, 2018). Michele is under commission from Melbourne Theatre Company and her latest work, These Other Things, premieres in May 2025, commissioned and presented by RMIT Culture. She was a 2022-2023 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow.
About Snappy
Bea’s in Melbourne. In a bar. There’s a stranger. Hot stranger. Younger than her. Bea gulps, f*ck it, approaches. Buy. Me. A. Drink. And he does. Snappy is a play about desire and big mistakes.
2025 Michele Lee Snappy
2024 Jules Orcullo My Dad Never Saw The Beatles
2023 Wendy Mocke I am Kegu
2022 Grace Chow The Promise Land
2021 Megan Wilding Game. Set. Match.
2020 Dylan Van Den Berg way back when
2019 Mark Rogers Superheroes
2018 Suzie Miller On the Face of It (Prima Facie)
2017 David Finnigan Kill Climate Deniers
2016 Melissa Reeves The Zen of Table Tennis
2015 Stephen Carleton The Turquoise Elephant
2014 Angus Cerini The Bleeding Tree
2013 Donna Abela Jump for Jordan
2012 Vivienne Walshe This is Where We Live
2011 Glace Chase A Hoax
2010 Aidan Fennessy Brutopia
2009 Lachlan Philpott Silent Disco
2008 Glace Chase Whore
2007 Damien Millar Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures
2006 Mary Rachel Brown Australian Gothic
2005 Ian Wilding The Carnivores
2004 Debra Oswald Mr Bailey’s Minder
2003 Brendan Cowell Rabbit
2002 Noëlle Janaczewska Songket and Patrick Van der Werf Presence
2001 Verity Laughton Burning
2000 Ian Wilding Below
1999 Neil Cole Alive at Williamstown Pier
1998 Catherine Zimdahl Clark in Sarajevo