Silver Gull Awards

The New Theatre in Newtown (Sydney)  has been hosting the Silver Gull Playwrights Award for a number of years and Les Solomon attended the  (October 14th) annual awards ceremony.

Three plays were shortlisted and six were finalists. This is an important award as it makes the writers in nomination much easier to try and get their works performed by the variety of theatre companies around the country.

The evening was hosted by Louise Fischer, artistic director of "The New", but the main presenter was Helen Tonkin (Literary Manager) and Joseph Tanti who directed the scenes from each of the six finalists.

The six plays nominated were -6069 and Counting by James Balian and Roger Vickery; Fortress by Erica J Brennan; Noah's Ark by Campion Decent; Rehearsing Julie by Noel Honda; Roslyn Gardens by David McLaughlin; Macaroni and Dead Things by Miranda Michalowksi.

Scenes from each of the plays were performed by six competent actors. The scenes varied in length and as  is the way in an evening like this, it was hard to become that engaged in any of the scenes, despite well informed introductions on each.

Certainly the most entertaining and most witty of the excerpts were Campion Decent's Noah's Ark and Noel Honda's Rehearsing Julie. Both scenes made sense independently of the entire play  and engaged the audience. Again, this not being the main point of the night. All scenes showed writers of great flair and imagination.

The winner was Macaroni and Dead Things - something of a stream of consciousness monologue that suggested something of the writings of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It was a hard one to perform (managed with style by Kate Bookalil) and certainly a play that would be interesting to see in its entirety.

The New are to be congratulated for hosting these awards, our playwrights need all the support and encouragement the industry can give. It was a warm and friendly night attended by an interesting cross section of actors and writers, all keen to see Australian writing pushed to the forefront as much as possible.