Flinders University Young Theatremakers' Award

Flinders University Young Playwrights' Award Archive

• 2022 Award Winners

  Senior Award (ages 18-25) Winner:

  Artifice Factory by Taylor Fernandez

  Taylor Fernandez (she/her) is an English, Philosophy and Media student at the University of Adelaide. She is a former editor of On Dit and the co-founder of fashion publication Fresher Mag. Taylor currently sits on the Board of the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild and is Vice President of their Student Society.

  Senior ‘Merit’ Award: Tiny Church by Chloe Zodrow

  Chloe is an emerging actor, playwright, and director, who graduated in the 2021 class of Adelaide College of the Arts.

  Junior Award (ages 13-17) Winner: 

  The Girl in The Painting by Rida Zainab

  Rida Zainab is a Senior Student at Saint Aloysius College. Rida is from Quetta, Pakistan and moved to Sydney in 2011 and then South Australia in 2017. She has always loved narratives, books, and writing because it allowed her to deliver messages behind her stories. This was Rida’s first time writing a play.

• 2021 Award Winner

  Modified by Ren Williams

  Ren Williams’ Modified is based on her experiences as a young woman grappling with the system she has grown up in. Set over the course of one life-changing night, besties Rain and Helix are forced to confront themselves, their friendship and… the patriarchy.

  About the playwright:

  Recent 2020 Honours Graduate at the Flinders University Drama Centre; Ren
  Williams (she/her) is an Actor, Writer, Director and Film-maker creating work on
  Kaurna Yerta.Ren’s film-making has won multiple awards over the last four years at the Adelaide 48 Hour Film Project; her 2018 film ‘Andii’ winning Best Film, taking it to Filmapalooza in Orlando Florida. This has led to Ren co-founding her new film
  company ‘Error Squared Productions’ which has recently released their 2021 film
  ‘INGÉNUE’, winning her the title of this years Best Actress at the 48HFP.

  In August, Ren is looking forward to working with Under the Microscope with their
  interactive theatre development of ‘Guthrak’ and with Kinetik Collective’s
  development for ‘Kill Climate Deniers’ by David Finnigan, which will be shown later
  in 2022.

  Making her Stage Directing debut in November 2021, Ren is thrilled to be directing
  Deadset Theatre Company’s production of Lachlan Philpott’s ‘Truck Stop’.
  Ren is a proud member of MEAA and RUMPUS.

• 2020 Award Winners

  Junior Category:

  Winner: Chi Runs by William Harris
  Commendation Award: Beach Wood Café by Mackenzie Richardson
  Special Mention: Piled Questions by Amelia Cartwright.

  Senior Category:

  Winner: Coldhands by Dora Abraham
  Commendation Award: River Road by Nicholas Duddy
  Merit Awards: We Need to Talk about Julia by Aarod Vawser and Touch by Ren Williams

  A staged reading of the senior category winning play and a presentation of the awards was held on Monday 12 October, 2020, at the Flinders University Drama Centre.

• 2019 Award Winners

  Senior Category (ages 18-25)
  Award Winner: Zachary Sheridan (The Dead)
  High Commendation: Dora Abraham (Race of Giants)
  Merits: Nick Duddy (We Three, The Sea) & Jamila Main (How To Eat Rabbit)

  Junior Category (high school students)
  Award Winner: Laneikka Denne (Dead Skin)

  A staged reading of the senior category winning play and a presentation of the awards was held on Monday 22 July, 2019, at the Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.

  2019 winners received:

  Junior Award (high school students)

  • $500 cash prize
  • 8 Play Subscription to our 2020 season
  • A script development session under the guidance of a professional director and mentoring playwright

  Senior Award (ages 18 – 25)

  • $1000 cash prize
  • 8 Play Subscription to our 2020 season
  • Script development and dramaturgy workshops under the guidance of a professional director and mentoring playwright
  • A public reading of their work

• 2018 Award Winners

  The 2018 Senior award winner was Jamie Hornsby, whose psychological thriller Ascend was inspired by his extensive research of cults, and the notion of living in a ‘post-truth’ world.

  Currently an Honours student specialising in Playwriting at UniSA, Jamie is also an actor, director and musician.

  His play because there was fire, commissioned by Jopuka Productions, won Best New Work at the 2018 Newcastle Fringe awards and will tour nationally this year.

  Three of his short plays have appeared in Jopuka Productions’ Whatever Theatre Festival, and he has been commissioned to write an ambitious piece of youth theatre, Transcendence.

  Jamie is a graduate of the Adelaide College of the Arts and in his time there served as the head writer on the devised theatre piece, Canto. As an actor, he has toured South Australia with Waxing Lyrical Productions’ Romeo and Juliet and toured Disneyland, California with Adelaide Youth Theatre. His music also appeared in Adelaide University Theatre Guild’s Much Ado About Nothing.

  Zoe Muller won the award in the 2018 junior category for her work Rattling the Keys and has been working on the script under the guidance of director Corey McMahon.

  Fascinated by the small towns of rural South Australia, Zoe was inspired to write a story that would connect with young adults and focus on a prominent issue within that community. In this play, Zoe explores the issue of methamphetamine addiction through the lens of teenagers living in Coober Pedy.

  The high school student, who says the award has inspired her to keep writing, wrote a stage adaptation of Puberty Blues in 2017 and made her directing debut at the Adelaide Fringe. She is also the co-creator of Deadset Theatre Company, which aims to produce shows for young audiences.

  Find out more about the 2018 winners here.

• 2017 Award Winners

  Jack Cummins won the award in the 2017 Junior Category for his work Clanstow, which he has begun developing further with his acting school Actors Ink for a performance at the 2018 Adelaide Fringe. The Year 11 St Ignatius student was inspired to submit for the competition after completing the 2016 State Theatre Company work experience program.

  The 2017 Senior Award winner was CJ McLean, whose play The River explores the relationship between love, hatred and jealousy, and the poisonous effect of this mix on life decisions. CJ completed his Honours in Creative Arts (Creative Writing) at Flinders University in 2015. During his degree, he also attended Oxford University’s Creative Writing Summer School, and travelled to Guangzhou, China as part of the AsiaBound project to mentor creative writing students at Sun Yat-sen University.

  In 2015, CJ was nominated in the Express Media Awards for Best Piece Published in Buzzcuts, and he has received two Commendations from the State Theatre Company in the Young Playwrights Award. The emerging Adelaide writer developed a seven-minute monologue, Changing Room, which was later reworked and broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Pocketdocs program in late 2016, and published by Currency Press in an anthology of the same name. In 2017, CJ mounted his first one-man cabaret show for the Adelaide Fringe, Love & Anger, which explored themes of lost love and self-identity.

  As winners of the Flinders Young Playwrights Award Jack and CJ were awarded script development with Dramaturg and Director Sarah Dunn, with CJ’s development culminating in a public reading at the Dunstan Playhouse with actors Annabel Matheson and Matilda Bailey.

  2016 Flinders Young Playwrights Awards

  Senior Winner: Peter Beaglehole – Strata

  Junior Winner: James Watson – Empty Vanity