Young Playwrights Inspired By Life Not Couches

MEDIA RELEASE – 16 April 2009

Young Playwrights Inspired By Life Not Couches

Playmarket, New Zealand’s largest script development agency is proud to publically announce the winners of the tenth New Zealand Young Playwrights Competition.

The young playwrights are: third time winner Kate Morris (who’s script Sketch already has interest from Circa and ATC); Martha Hardy-Ward (recent graduate of Ken Duncum’s scriptwriting course at Victoria University) and newcomer Harry Meech.

All winning scripts explore some meaty and interesting aspects of our lives. Playmarket’s script development coordinator, Janie Walker, says “we used to get a few scripts about wasted students in flats. There wasn’t one grubby couch this time round.”

Two of the three winners are graduates of the MA in script writing from Bill Manhire’s International Institute of Modern Letters.

This bi-annual national event has established itself as an important stepping- stone in the development of new writers for our theatre. The three winners, all from Wellington, will work with a leading Dramaturg to present their work at a conference and presentation in Auckland, 3-7 September, at The Edge.

The NZYPC winners will learn from the best. Ex Downstage director Murray Lynch has been employed as one of the Dramaturgs, along with film producer and Dramaturg Catherine Fitzgerald, and leading playwright David Geary.

Walker, says the scripts chosen show incredible maturity and imagination. “With competitions like this it’s really clear that some people are just natural writers for the stage. We get a lot of scripts by young people that are basically TV series shoved on the stage. But all the winning scripts will make amazing theatre,” says Ms Walker. “I think it’s interesting too that two of the three playwrights are Ken Duncum graduates.”

Playwrights are now busy working towards their second draft, often the hardest part in the process of playwriting, for the workshop in September.

Winners Of The Tenth New Zealand Young Playwrights Competition

Kate Morris is a third time winner of NZYPC. This will be her last possible year she can win as she’ll be out of the age range next year. She works for Stuff.co.nz by day and her dream is to buy a houseboat and live in some obscure part of the world. She has an MA in Creative Writing: Scriptwriting from Victoria University, won the 2007 PlayWrite one-act play competition, is the winner of the Gibson Award “Favourite New Writer” in the 2006 Comic Book Awards, and was a recipient of the NZ Film Commission First Writers’ Initiative 2004. Her winning script Sketch was inspired by an e-mail petition she was sent which protesting about Guillaume Vargas' exhibition of a starving dog.

Harry Meech had his first taste of theatre during a year-long exchange trip to Manhattan, Kansas, in the United States, during his 7th form year (2006). He became involved in acting, writing, and directing a short one-act play which went on to win a medal at the Kansas State Thespian Conference. Meech wrote The Pragmatic for the 2009 Fringe Festival. He’s just had his first poem published in the New Zealand Listener, something he is very proud of. His NZYPC script Plains is ‘Pinter-esque’ and has its readers intrigued.

Martha Hardy-Ward also has an MA in Scriptwriting from Victoria University. She was awarded the ‘Michael Hirschfeld Project Scholarship’ to help fund the writing of a feature film. Hardy-Ward is also a winner of Radio New Zealand’s ‘Student in Shorts’ competition, and is a caregiver to two primary school age children. Her script Silent Night came from wanting to write about a dysfunctional mother/son relationship. “I write to try and make sense of the world around me,”says Hardy-Ward.

ENDS

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