23.06.15
Affiliate Director, Samantha Young, talks to us about working with the Griffin Studio and the Griffin Award.
My name is Samantha Young and I’m the Affiliate Director who has been attached to Griffin Studio this year. I first met Lee when I was studying to be an actor and she was completing her Masters in Directing at NIDA in 2005. Nine years later, in the kind of circular wizardry of life, I then went on to complete my Masters in Directing at the same institution. In between these times I have been working as an Actor and Director. As a young graduate I couldn’t imagine anything better than a serious domestic drama or a subtly crafted Chekhov. Now I write and direct comedies and cabarets usually concerning the epic or supernatural and often containing food fights. You can see my upcoming work Space Cats at Bondi Feast in July. It’s about singing cats in space.
Our Wednesday Griffin Studio collective have been tasked with judging the 2015 Griffin Award before we hand over the hotly contested list of Finalists to further judging by fresh, expert eyes. The task is a privilege. Writers are incredible people, they are alchemists and manipulators of matter. They capture the immaterial; the inspirations, the environments and the contradictions that would otherwise be a temporary wil’o’the’wisp and they craft it into form. Judging these brand new elements has been done with rigour, enthusiasm and very much debate.
We are a mixed bag of artists with polar opposite passions. We have fought for a diverse range of works. I would love to specify a clear list of characteristics that have made these plays our finalists, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could say ‘great structure, theatrical form and personal voice, is the recipe’. But excellence in arts is vague and subjective aspiration. I would like this blog to state that all our entrants achieved excellence. Thank you for your bravery and your imaginations, you are creators of worlds.
Congratulations to our finalists, your plays haunted us. Followed us around like persistent ghosts, tapping our shoulders in the middle of the nights with an image, a phrase or an idea. I can’t wait to see them brought to life.
