The Queer Kingdom: A Staged Reading

Winner of the 2024 Queer Playwriting Award

Experience the first full reading of The Queer Kingdom by Tom Ballard, winner of the 2024 QPAS Award. Be part of the development process towards presenting a premiere production in 2026, meet the artists and share your feedback.

In 2004, a group of radical queer activists boarded a seaplane they’d christened The Gayflower, flew 200 nautical miles off the coast of Queensland and landed on a tiny patch of sand and grass in the middle of the ocean. It was here that Emperor Dale Parker Anderson I would plant his rainbow flag and officially declare the claiming of “The Gay & Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands'' – a gay nation independent of homophobic Australia, where there was marriage equality for all, the currency was the pink dollar and the national anthem was Gloria Gaynor’s I Am What I Am.

Playwright, Tom Ballard says: "I want to write a funny, joyous play that tells the story of this fascinating queer protest – its history, its characters and its politics – and interrogates what it means for Australian queers today. Would we all just be better off escaping to our own separate queer paradise?"