Have your say in the future of Australian playwriting.

About

Welcome to the 5th annual Lysicrates Prize—a playwriting competition showcasing some of Australia’s most exciting playwriting talent.

Playwrights submit the first act of a new play for the prize, to be assessed by a team of professional readers.

The three finalists receive a week’s rehearsal with a professional director and cast, before a staged reading is held in front of a live audience at Sydney Opera House.

The audience will decide on the winning playwright who will receive a full commission of $15,000 to finish their play.

This year’s finalists are:

Jane Bodie Tell Me You Love Me
Julian Larnach Leviathan
Katy Warner Appropriate

Join us at Sydney Opera House and have your say in the future of Australian playwriting! This event is free, but registration is essential via Sydney Opera House.

 

The Lysicrates Prize is a philanthropic initiative presented by The Lysicrates Foundation and produced by Griffin Theatre Company. Presented in association with The Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney. Read more about The Lysicrates Prize.

Performance Times

Sunday 24 March, 3.30pm

Venue: Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre
This event is free, but registration is essential via Sydney Opera House

The Playwrights

Jane Bodie
Jane is an internationally renowned playwright and screenwriter. Her plays, including Lamb, Savage, Music, Hinterland, This Year’s Ashes, A Single Act, Still, Ride and Fourplay have been performed worldwide, from London to Australia, New York and Brazil. She won the Victorian Premier Literary Award in 2006 for A Single Act and a Green Room Award in 2003 for Still. Jane has written extensively for TV including for The Secret Life of Us, Crash Burn, Tashi and Moving Wallpaper. Her radio work includes Seeing Somebody, In Glass for ABC RN and Well for BBC Radio 4. She is currently adapting This Year’s Ashes for Screen Australia. Her short film Alice, directed by Garth Davis, was the Winner of Best Film in the anthology series POV and was selected for screening at Cannes Film Festival. Jane has worked as dramaturg on many standout productions including Emily Sheehan’s Hell’s Canyon, Katie Beckett’s Which Way Home and Michelle Lee’s Rice. She has worked at The Royal Court Theatre as a writing tutor, at Central School of Speech and Drama on their Writing for Stage and Screen course, and was Head of Playwriting at NIDA from 2009 – 2012. Jane was Associate Artist at Griffin in 2013 and Artistic Associate at Playwriting Australia in 2014. In 2014 she was awarded an Arts Victoria Fellowship to create three new works. Jane is an internationally renowned playwright and screenwriter. Her plays, including Lamb, Savage, Music, Hinterland, This Year’s Ashes, A Single Act, Still, Ride and Fourplay have been performed worldwide, from London to Australia, New York and Brazil. She won the Victorian Premier Literary Award in 2006 for A Single Act and a Green Room Award in 2003 for Still. Jane has written extensively for TV including for The Secret Life of Us, Crash Burn, Tashi and Moving Wallpaper. Her radio work includes Seeing Somebody, In Glass for ABC RN and Well for BBC Radio 4. She is currently adapting This Year’s Ashes for Screen Australia. Her short film Alice, directed by Garth Davis, was the Winner of Best Film in the anthology series POV and was selected for screening at Cannes Film Festival. Jane has worked as dramaturg on many standout productions including Emily Sheehan’s Hell’s Canyon, Katie Beckett’s Which Way Home and Michelle Lee’s Rice. She has worked at The Royal Court Theatre as a writing tutor, at Central School of Speech and Drama on their Writing for Stage and Screen course, and was Head of Playwriting at NIDA from 2009 – 2012. Jane was Associate Artist at Griffin in 2013 and Artistic Associate at Playwriting Australia in 2014. In 2014 she was awarded an Arts Victoria Fellowship to create three new works. Jane has recently written a new play, Water, for Black Swan State Theatre Company, premiering in May 2019.

Julian Larnach
Julian is a Sydney-based playwright. He is currently a member of Sydney Theatre Company’s inaugural Emerging Writers Group and his most recent play Flight Paths was staged at National Theatre of Parramatta in 2018. In 2017, Julian had two world-premiere productions: Folk Song, a new musical which premiered Outback Theatre for Young People; and In Real Life, a new drama which premiered at Darlinghurst Theatre Company. He was awarded the inaugural Emerge: Riverina Playwrights Commission. The commissioned play, Beneath an Oxbow Lake, premiered in Griffith in 2015, going on to a sell-out regional tour which was followed by a season at ATYP. His monologue, Something I Prepared Earlier, was produced for ATYP’s Voices Project and published by Currency Press. Julian has completed creative developments for new works with Sydney Dance Company, Playwriting Australia and Griffin Theatre Company, as well as dramaturgical secondments with Belvoir and Melbourne Theatre Company. He has been generously supported by the Australia Council of the Arts, having undertaken a JUMP Mentorship and received an ArtStart grant. Julian’s plays have been shortlisted for the Griffin Award, the Edward Albee Scholarship and the Phillip Parsons Fellowship for Early Career Playwrights. He was an Affiliate Writer for Griffin Theatre Company in 2013 and Resident Playwright at ATYP in 2015.

Katy Warner
Katy is a playwright and writer. Her plays have been presented across Australia, New Zealand and the UK. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, she received a Master of Writing for Performance in 2012. She is an AWGIE winner (Best Children’s Theatre for Reasons to Stay Inside), recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Award for Best Emerging Writer for These are the Isolate and two-time nominee for a Green Room Award for new writing (Spencer and A Prudent Man). Her play, nest, was long-listed for Theatre503’s Playwriting Award, and premiered in London at the 2018 Vault Festival. Her most recent work K was part of the 2018 Cybec Electric Readings for Melbourne Theatre Company. Katy was one of 12 artists in Melbourne Theatre Company’s Women in Theatre program in 2018, and was a playwright with the Malthouse Theatre’s Besen Family Artist Program in 2016. She is a writer for Red Stitch Theatre’s INK program and is currently writing a new full-length work for the company. Her fiction has received the Rachel Furnai Prize for Literature (Lip Magazine) and Overland Magazine’s Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize. Her writing has also been shortlisted the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Prize and Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize. Her debut young adult novel, Everywhere Everything Everyone, will be published by Hardie Grant Egmont in 2019.

 

Creative Team & Ensemble

Director Nell Ranney
Designer Isabel Hudson
Sound Designer Dana Spence
Stage Manager Liam Murray
Assistant Stage Manager Jennifer Jackson

Cast Danny Adcock, Tina Bursill, Shakira Clanton, Victoria Haralabidou, Shiv Palekar

Supported By