A change is in the air! After more than 25 years, the Griffin Award is growing to increase the support we provide to playwrights.
The prestigious Griffin Award recognises an outstanding idea for a play or performance text that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice. In 2024, thanks to the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund, the winner will receive a full commission ($17,400) and dramaturgical support from Griffin to develop their play in-house.
This year instead of a finished play we’re looking for your next big idea and want to help you bring it to the Stables stage.
From first-timers to long-timers, the Griffin Award is for every playwright in Australia. Don’t worry if you’re not sure where to begin, we’ll be running in-person and online workshops in the lead up to submission and helping you build the pitch over a few months.
Workshop 1: Theatricality with Griffin Literary Associate Julian Larnach at 6pm AEDT on Thursday 30 November on Zoom. Watch now
Workshop 2: Pitching yourself and your idea with Olivier- and Griffin-Award winner Suzie Miller at 6pm AEDT on Tuesday 12 December on Zoom. Watch now
Workshop 3: Stakes and Storytelling with Griffin Literary Manager Dylan Van Den Berg at 6pm AEDT on Wednesday 10 January 2024 on Zoom. Watch now
Entries for the Griffin Award 2024 are now closed. For all other opportunities at Griffin, please sign up for Griffin News.
If you have any questions, please email Griffin’s Literary team at [email protected].
Tickets for the Griffin Award Keynote Address are on sale right now!
Hear a rousing Keynote speech from Griffin Award alumni Angus Cerini before hearing excerpts from the three finalist plays of this year’s Award.
Learn more about the artists of the 2024 Griffin Award Keynote below and book your tickets now.
It is with utmost excitement that we announce the three finalists and their plays (and two Highly Commended plays!) for the 2024 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 Sunday 28 July.
Parallel Play by Christopher Bryant
Christopher Bryant is an award-winning playwright, performer, and disability advocate. He has worked with a range of companies including the State Library of Victoria, fortyfivedownstairs, Griffin Theatre, ATYP, and La Mama.
Recent work includes the “brilliantly engrossing” New Balance (Suzy Goes See, 2023), his “coup of pop culture [and] social satire” Home Invasion (The Buzz from Sydney, 2018), and a role as the disability consultant for The Lewis Trilogy (Griffin Theatre Company, 2024). In 2023 took part in Accessible Arts NSW’s NEXT LEVEL development program, completing a mentorship attached to Merrigong Theatre.
He completed his Ph.D. in disability & radical adaptation through Monash University under the supervision of Jane Montgomery Griffiths (2020), and has taught playwriting at institutions around the country.
About Parallel Play
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.
Shoulder by Michele Lee
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. Selected theatre works include How Do I Let You Die? (2023), Security (2022), Single Ladies (2022), GOING DOWN (2019) and Rice (2017.) Selected live art and audio works include An Assistant’s Guide for a Pandemic (2018), The Naked Self (2018, 2016), Talon Salon (2014, 2013, 2012) and See How the Leaf People Run (2012). Screen credits include White Fever (2024), Soar (2022), Hungry Ghosts (2020) and Retrograde (2020). Michele is under commission from Melbourne Theatre Company and RMIT Capitol.
Michele’s works have been recognised through development and production grants, and she has been awarded a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Australian Writers’ Guild Award (Stage and Radio), Malcolm Robertson Prize, Betty Burstall Commission and was a 2022-23 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow. She has been nominated for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Nick Enright Prize and Patrick White Award.
About Shoulder
A woman goes on a #vanlife journey to a banana farm called The Shoulder where her dad’s last funeral rites will happen but before she arrives, the journey starts again, and again, and again – a play about grief, anger, a lifetime of regrets and saying sorry in time (but it’s a funny play, I promise!).
My Dad Never Saw The Beatles by Jules Orcullo
Jules Orcullo (she/they) is a playwright, songwriter, and dramaturg. She currently works as Dramaturg at Sydney Theatre Company where she co-facilitates the Watershed Writers program. She also works as Dramaturg for ILBIJERRI Theatre Company’s BlackWrights program. Her debut musical Forgetting Tim Minchin premiered at Belvoir’s 25a dir. Amy Sole in 2023. She has held education roles at NIDA, Belvoir, and ATYP and producing roles at ILBIJERRI Theatre Company, Belvoir, Co-Curious, and Contemporary Asian Australian Performance. Jules has worked as a performer and director on independent new works across Australia and the UK. She is an alumna of writing programs at APRA AMCOS, Hayes Theatre, Contemporary Asian Australian Performance, National Theatre of Parramatta, AFTRS, Playwriting Australia, ATYP, The Royal Court, Soho Theatre, and the Lyric Hammersmith. Jules is a proud founding member of Kallective, developing theatrical works for the Filipinx diaspora.
About My Dad Never Saw The Beatles
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.
Highly Commended
Jurassic Bark by Erica Brennan
The Mountain Remembers by Daley Rangi
