Queer Playwriting Award Info & Registration

Image credit: The Queer Kingdom - QPAS 2024 Award Winner - Photo by Rielly Bennie

Queer Playwriting Award

The 2024 Queer Playwriting Award Showcase winner was Tom Ballard for his work: The Queer Kingdom, also known as A Comprehensive and Profoundly Queer Accounting of The Brief (Yet GLORIOUS) History of The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands - A Gay Fantasia On (Micro)National Themes. More details...

Presented by Gasworks Arts Park in association with Midsumma Festival.

The annual Queer Playwriting Award, a collaboration between Gasworks Arts Park and Midsumma Festival, is part of the Midsumma Presents Program.

Creators of new or developing works of theatre are invited to submit their proposals for consideration by a panel of supportive industry professionals. If you have an idea for a show, a completed script, or anything in between, we want to hear from you. Up to eight works will be selected by the industry panel and invited to present a 15 minute staged reading at Gasworks Arts Park as part of Midsumma Festival. One work will be selected to receive ongoing support and development with a view to becoming a full-scale work to be presented in Midsumma Festival 2025 or beyond. The ultimate aim of the Queer Playwriting Award is to tour the work nationally to expose it to a wide range of metropolitan, regional and rural audiences.

This development program aims to identify, support and develop new playwriting talent and get queer issues out there for mainstream audiences to consider and enjoy. The LGBTQIA+ community is diverse, exciting and full of stories and ideas that deserve to be heard on the stages of performing arts venues throughout the country. This is the chance you have been waiting for to tell a bold, funny, new, important, or exciting story to Australian theatre audiences.

If you have any queries, contact Gasworks Arts Park on 03 8606 4200 or email [email protected].

For updates and more information, keep an eye on the Gasworks and Midsumma websites, and follow us on social media.

Presented by Midsumma Festival and Gasworks Arts Park.

Midsumma and Gasworks present new play readings each year, selected from a large pool of entrants. There will be one winner who will receive ongoing support and development with a view to becoming a full-scale work to be presented in Midsumma Festival 2025 or beyond.

The showcase event is held during Midsumma Festival to give you a chance to experience the finalist's entries in 15-minute excerpts, meet the creators and have your say to help select the Queer Playwriting Award Showcase favourite. Your vote and feedback as an audience member will be heard.

Creators of new or developing works of theatre are invited to submit their proposals for consideration by a panel of supportive industry professionals. If you have an idea for a show, a completed script, or anything in between, we want to hear from you.

One work will be selected to receive ongoing support and development with a view to becoming a full-scale work to be presented in Midsumma Festival 2025 or beyond.

Download the 2023-24 Guidelines

If you have any queries, contact Gasworks Arts Park on 03 8606 4200 or email [email protected].

Queer Playwriting Award call-out commences:Thursday 1 June 2023
Call out closes:Sunday 2 July 2023
Selection Panel Meets (to select finalists): Mid-July 2023
Applicants notified and participation/details confirmed: Late July 2023
Queer Playwriting Award & Showcase: Monday 22 January 2024
Selection Panel Meets (to select Award recipient): February 2024
Award recipient announced: February 2024

Winner -

Waterfowl by Callum Mackay

Finalists -

Ramona Glasgow by Ellis Austin Finnie
HELL FIRE, mortal boys by Henry Kelly
Numa & Karl: Extraordinary Man That He Was by Em Chandler

QPAS 2022:

(Winner) Rory Godbold – CROSS:
CROSS is set within an inner city religious school of Christian origins. New teacher to the college Jasper quickly bonds with co-workers Sarah and David. When David does not intervene after a homophobic comment is made about Jasper by a student, the relationships between the teachers are tested and the fallout leads to the sacking of Jasper. In the wake of Jasper's sacking, the characters are forced to confront their values, actions and relationships to their sexuality and faith.

(Fastrack Award) Emmanuelle Mattana – The Reasonable Grounds: It is the biggest night of Melbourne’s academic calendar, the Grand Finale of the Year 12 Interschool Debating Tournament, and the all-boys team from the elite St Imperium College are ready to totally annihilate their sister school - until... The Reasonable Grounds is a queer black comedy about power, privilege and high school debating.

Andrew Undi Lee – No Asians: Set on the fringes of Sydney’s housing commission, we follow a delicate relationship between two Korean Australian boys and their devastating fear of letting go.

Alice Tovey & Ned Dixon – Besties:
A musical about love & self-loathing set in the world of an on-screen romantic comedy. When two straight-presenting leading women fall in love, their gay best friends have a full-on identity crisis.

Lucy Holz takes home the 2021 Queer Playwriting Award with “Coming Out”.

In its seventh year the Queer Playwriting Award Showcase presented to Midsumma Festival audiences at Gasworks Arts Park with the selection panellists, announcing on 11 May, that Coming Out by Lucy Holz will take home the award for Queer Playwriting 2021. Holz is set to work alongside Gasworks and Midsumma over the next year to deliver a full work for Midsumma Festival audiences.

The two other works that made up the finalists were; Mummy’s Boy by Patrick Livesey. A play about time, loss, love and mental illness. Patrick finds himself in a park looking out over Adelaide on the day his Mum is to be taken off life support. Patrick’s Mummy, Naomi Jean Fornarino, took her own life in 2015; this is her story, as told by her Boy. And, Recollection by George Ketels. Britney Spears’ Fantasy, a spent joint, a hairbrush. This is the story of Olivia, a mother, who pieces her deceased daughter's life into a perfume.

The 2020 list of finalists:

WINNER: Home Fires Burning by Maeve Marsden
Ruth and Judith are breaking up, but they’ll be damned if they let their Sunday family lunch tradition go. A lesbian divorce farce, Home Fires Burning satirises society’s obsession with the nuclear family, via food fights, fierce debates and overpriced cheese.

Butterfly Kicks by Jamila Main
Butterfly Kicks follows three teenage girls as they experience queer self-discovery and first love, fuelled by teenage adrenaline, salt water, and underage vodka.

Gravity by Bradford Elmore
Bradford Elmore’s semi-autobiographical debut play is a poignantly unapologetic story about one man’s need to understand his bisexuality, and the ways love moves us when gender is only part of the question.

New Wave by Margot Morales Tanjutco

New Wave is a punk-fuelled coming-of-age comedy about rebellion, rebranding revolutions, and the first love you might meet along the way.

Queer Playwriting Award Showcase 2019 featured excerpts from new plays by playwrights Angus Cameron, Rachel Edmonds and Glenn Saunders.

WINNER: Cavemen by Angus Cameron – Tim's a cub from the country, whereas Mike's an outer-suburbs otter. Oscar's more of a wolf (from the wealthy inner-east). And Chris? He's a bear from the bush. Categories. Conflict. Couples. Comrades. Change?

When You Had Braces by Rachel Edmonds – Following the death of her daughter, Lily leaves to stay with her estranged sister Paige. As childhood rivalries arise, they challenge the boundaries of sisterhood.

The Book of Ducks by Glenn Saunders – A brand new fairy tale for everyone who never got to be the main character in the old ones. When Callie and George discover a duck in their backyard, they realise they've adopted more than they expected, and learn to declare what they believe in.