2024 Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award Winners

Image: Olivia Satchell and Ian Roberts 

The winners of the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award for 2024 were announced at the annual Seaborn, Broughton and Walford Foundation Christmas Party on November 21. The joint winners this year are Ballkids by Melbourne playwright Olivia Satchell and Into The Light by Ian Roberts and Alex Broun. The two winning plays will each receive $20,000.

Chair of Trustees, theatre critic and commentator Diana Simmonds, said, “Every year we’re thrilled at the variety and standard of submissions, and past winners prove the talent we’ve discovered and supported. This year we had a situation that’s happened only once before – two plays just couldn’t be separated. So I’m happy to say we’ve been able to make equal awards – $20,000 to each.”

Trustees who judged this year’s Award were Diana Simmonds (Chair), NIDA Artistic Director in Residence David Berthold, dramaturg and theatre legend Terry Clark AM, leading theatre director Lee Lewis OAM, Co-Artistic Director of bAKEHOUSE Theatre and Creative Director at KXT on Broadway Suzanne Millar, and theatre director Darren Yap.

Lee Lewis said of Ballkids, “Ballkids is a play that signals Olivia Satchell as a significant voice in the future of Australian theatre. Sophisticated, nuanced, accessible and optimistic Ballkids is a joyous portrait of friendship that reveals Satchell's gift for understanding humans and transporting them into theatrical shape. This award recognises the achievement hived in Ballkids but also revels in the anticipation of all her plays to come.”

Terry Clarke said, “Into The Light is based on the true story of the (platonic) relationship between Ian Roberts, the renowned rugby league forward and NIDA graduate, and Arron, a youth he had compassionately befriended. Arron was murdered the day before he was to be Crown witness against a paedophile ring. The presentation is semi-documentary, so avoiding the temptation to sensationalise. While understandably presenting things from Roberts’ point of view, it does not whitewash him; on the contrary: the play, born of righteous anger, is both authentic and scarifyingly honest. The story itself is both horrible and moving, even heartwarming; the telling of it is well crafted, both dramatic and cleverly theatrical.”

The Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award, worth $20,000 to the winner, has been an annual award since 2000. Past winners include Alana Valentine, Katherine Thomson, Dylan Van Den Berg, Steve Rodgers, Campion Decent, Reg Cribb, Finegan Kruckemeyer, Mary Rachel Brown, Debra Oswald, Katie Pollock and Maxine Mellor.

Image: Olivia Satchell, Ian Roberts, Alex Broun's sister Sophie and Diana Simmonds