Five Emerging Playwrights to Keep Your Eyes On…

As a playwright myself, I’ve also loved reading plays and going to the theatre to enrich myself in new playwrighting voices, as I like to call them. There’s been many a time when I’ve seen a play in which the direction and acting were superb, but ultimately what let the show down were the evident gaps in the script and the playwright losing their voice halfway through. If a play doesn’t have a strong foundation by the playwright, then the work will flop. For some, that statement might sound brutal, but in my experience, that’s been the case.

That’s why it has been so reassuring to see a plethora of new playwrights emerging in the Brisbane independent arts scene, who have such a gorgeous control over their texts. If you haven’t heard of these indie playwrights before, jot their names down and follow their socials, as I can guarantee that you will be blown away their artistry.

Esther Dougherty

Esther Dougherty is a Meanjin writer and theatre maker whose work is a personal queering and reckoning with their own reality. Their practice began at QUT in 2014 and they describe their work as magical, comedic, absurd and symbolic. In May this year, Dougherty presented their work Slippery; an absurd comedic murder mystery that was performed using physical theatre and clowning in which a four-way relationship suddenly becomes a three-way relationship when one lover returns to their mansion as a spirit of the dead, claiming that they had been murdered.

Dougherty’s writing is so clever. To create absurdist works is hard; but to create absurdist works that make you laugh, feel AND think is even harder. But Dougherty does just that.

Make sure you follow their production company CurtainWorld to keep up to the date with their latest works. Dougherty’s play Pawpaw Dog recently got published by Playlab Theatre.

Emily Wells

Emily Wells is a proud Kamilaroi producer and playwright working across theatre, contemporary dance and festivals who is passionate about using performance to spark conversation and societal change, while supporting artists to thrive in the creative process. Earlier this year, she debuted her new play ‘Face to Face’ with Playlab Theatre, which was an intimate, thought-provoking drama about two First Nations' women navigating the complex issues and effects impacting First Nations community members in a colonial world. It was an incredibly articulate, powerful and nuanced play and I cannot wait to see her future works.

Ada Lukin

Ada Lukin recently created and directed Drawer Productions’ Hello, Stranger which took home a stack of Anywhere Festival 2022 awards. If that’s not a testimony to Lukin’s writing and direction, then I don’t know what is. In partnership with Alzheimer’s Queensland, Hello, Stranger explore three interconnected stories of the impacts of dementia on the young and the old through the use of immersive theatre. Writing for immersive theatre is no easy feat. There are so many things to juggle while wearing your playwrighters’ hat, but Lukin found a balance that works wonders.

Follow Drawer Productions and stay up to date on their productions.

Madeleine Border

Madeleine Border is a Meanjin, Brisbane theatre maker, performer and writer whose works tend to satire the political world and features quirky, and at times absurd, characters and plots. Border has undertaken a series of esteemed playwrighting programs at Playlab Theatre and has had a number of her works published, including Sometimes It’s Hot Like The Sun, which was published by Playlab Indie in 2020. Border premiered her new work which she co-wrote with Madeline Romcke, Maddie is the New Karen at the Wynnum Fringe Festival in November last year. It explored the stories of Karens / Maddies and was a delicious afternoon of laughter and deep thought. If you’re into plays that are quirky, make you keep an eye out for Border’s future works.

Fliss Morton

Fliss Morton is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based playwright, director, and producer. She is the co-founder of TITS AKIMBO; a new theatre collective for badly behaved creatives to tell female centric stories who sold out their seasons of The Politics of Vodka Lime Soda at Anywhere Festival 2022. Co-written with Kian Dillon and Steph Markwell, this show was a revolt to how female and queer stories have been politicised in the traditional theatre space and world, challenging the audience about the realm of modern feminism and how gender performativity sits within the dating world. I thought the writing was just exquisite and a very new, engaging and fresh way to put politics in the spotlight. Fliss’s previous work includes The Only Kind of Soulmate, that premiered as a part of Freshblood 2021 and she’s currently writing a play with Playlab's Incubator's program titled Sex & Slumberlands.

Follow Tits Akimbo and stay up to date with their produtions.