I am a Melbourne playwright, screenwriter, and dramaturg. My first play In Cahoots premiered in 1989. I have written over twenty plays and won numerous awards.

I have been closely associated with two theatre companies - the Red Shed Company of Adelaide, and Melbourne Workers Theatre. My work has been performed by all the major Australian Theatre companies, and internationally. I have also worked extensively as a script consultant with Back to Back theatre.

 

I seek out and respond to real stories and interpret them through a theatrical lens. I am drawn to the surreal and the comic. I believe in theatre as a chaotic, important, living cultural site where the prevailing orthodoxies can be pondered on, cross examined, and re-imagined, and where history can shine a light on the present.

My plays include In Cahoots, Sweetown - winner of the Jill Blewitt Playwrights Award, The Spook – winner of the Louis Esson Prize for Drama in the Victorian Premiers Awards, and two AWGIES for best new play, Furious Mattress - shortlisted for three Premiers Awards, Happy Ending – short listed for the NSW Premiers Award, and Archimedes War – shortlisted for the Victorian Premiers Award. I have adapted Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and The Emperor’s New Clothes. I have co-written a number of plays, most notably Who’s afraid of the Working Class?, Fever, and Anthem with Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius and Christos Tsiolkas and composer- Irine Vela. Who’s afraid of the Working Class? won best play in the Queensland Literary Awards, two Awgies for best new play, and the Jill Blewitt Playwrights Award in 1999. I also co-wrote Magpie, with Richard Frankland, and two works for young performers – Uprising – with Patricia Cornelius, and The Gap, with Patricia Cornelius and Angela Betzein. More recently, I co-wrote Rodeo Clown, and Caravan with Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, and Wayne Macauley. I also co-wrote the award-winning screenplay for Blessed, based on Who’s afraid of the Working Class?

At present I am working on a film adaptation of Furious Mattress with Margaret Thanos.