Media Release

Boost for Playwrights

Victorian-based playwrights are invited to apply for the RE Ross Trust Playwrights’ Script Development Awards 2004. Entries for the Awards are open from 1 May. Now in their second year, the Awards support and foster Victoria’s theatre industry by assisting writers to develop their play scripts. 

The RE Ross Trust is a perpetual charitable Trust established in Victoria by the will of the late Roy Everard Ross, a Melbourne-born land surveyor and engineer who went on to become a very successful property owner, businessman and investor. The Trust aims to assist communities by supporting projects involving aged care, arts and culture and the environment.

The annual Awards are an initiative of the RE Ross Trust and are administered by the State Library of Victoria.  The total annual prize money is $30,000.  Applicants are eligible to apply for a minimum of $3,000 per annum up to $10,000.

The 2003 winners include David Blackman for The Revisionist, a play that focuses on the Demidenko affair and Catherine Lazaroo for True Adventures of a Soul Lost at Sea, a play which explores the human need for visionary experiences.

Joanna Murray-Smith who convened the 2003 judging panel commended the philosophy of the Award. ‘Talented writers need greater support for the development and critical examination of their work before it reaches production. There is a real need and appetite among playwrights for testing their work with enthusiastic (but fearless) professionals before seeing it go before audiences and critics’.

The 2004 prizewinners will be announced at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards presentation in October 2004.

The closing date for entries is 28 May 2004. Entry forms and guidelines are available in the Premier’s Literary Awards section of this website.