![Peoples_Choice_content[1]](http://augustasupple.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Peoples_Choice_content1.jpg "Peoples_Choice_content[1]")
A flurry of text messages had been flying around. “Did you hear some playwrights have decided to hold their own night on Monday? Are you going?” “Are you going to the playwright’s thing?” “How do I RSVP?” In the past few weeks, I had been casually thumbing through newspapers at cafes when waiting for my coffee, to see if and when and how the topic of the absence of a play shortlist for the 2010 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards had been noted. Not really… one article from Bryce Hallet:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/playwrights-snubbed-by-award-judges-20100516-v6aa.html and this one from Marc McEvoy http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/playlist-for-judges-in-search-of-a-premier-shortlist-20100412-s413.html
No response from Kristina…
more…
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When the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards were announced last month, there was one thing that no one expected… there was no shortlist for the Play Awards category.
Was no play worth even nomination? Surely this was a clerical error- had the envelope bearer had lost the nomination envelope in a taxi on the way to the announcement? Had there been a cut and paste error on the website?
Nope. No clerical error. A major philosophical one though- a major political one.
Instead $30K has been offered up, not as an award celebrating excellence- but has been transposed into a grant “to support professional development opportunities for new playwrights in 2011.”
No clerical error. But a major political error.
Development? Development? Sorry… What? No shortlist, but a grant for Development? more…
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Sustainability is something I have been thinking about alot lately: in relation to the environment, to culture, to practitioner development, to the philosophies behind the explosion of festival culture, my own practice in the theatre. Triggered by a conversation I had with Ash Dyer- a performance maker who I have known for years who has been developing and producing performance works for sometime, he mentioned that he sometimes wonders how much longer he can sustain creating work in Australia. I think about that for myself too- and I think about that question for all the practitioners out there who are squeezing projects in around their day (or night) jobs- who forego the luxuries of a bourgeois life that are so readilly advertised- who are delaying marriage or having babies or having a holiday until they are more financially stable- artists who are all deserving chasing the same limited available residencies or grants… more…