The Louis Esson Prize for Drama: Shortlist 2005

Judges
Melanie Beddie (Convenor), Raimondo Cortese and Peta Murray

The plays submitted for the prize this year represent a very broad cross section of the diverse field of playwriting in Australia. The works range in exploring the highly personal, the historical and in particular the increasingly fragile nature of contemporary Australian culture.

Interestingly more and more writers are working to expand the conventional boundaries of dramatic writing.

In addition to the Shortlist we would like to give a special commendation to Through the Wire by Ros Horin. It is a moving and forceful verbatim-based text, using the voices of refugees and of Australians involved in actively opposing their detention. It is an important testimony to our times and a powerful record of a shameful chapter in our history.

Shortlist

This year’s shortlist brings together three very different new works –all of which have, at their core, courage and a desire to wrestle with complex contemporary issues.

The Frail Man
Anthony Crowley
Playbox/Currency
The dialogue is dazzling –layered, political, poetic – and highly dramatic. It is full of vigorous humour, especially from the two convict characters whose legacy infects the action of the play. Its characters explore great emotional range; the content poses moral questions that are unashamedly confronting. The play pushes the form of theatre, drawing together multiple places and time frames into a sophisticated puzzle.

The Spook
Melissa Reeves
Company B. Belvoir St.
This is a brilliant script, subversive, comic, suspenseful, sad and a wonderful allegory for the paranoia of our times. It’s also a great history lesson and it resonates strongly with contemporary life in Australia. The play is a delight to read with incredible craft and artistry at work in the shaping of each scene. It manages to combine humour and darkness in just the right measure. 

Blowback
David Pledger
Not Yet, It’s Difficult Inc
This is a clever, disturbing work that transcends our conventional expectations of "a play". It is multi-layered, multi-textural, and multi-media driven. Violent, at times almost repellent, it is at the same time a wonderfully perverse and savage allegory about cultural imperialism and an Australia that is under cultural occupation. This is current and compelling theatre, on matters of national significance.