We are very proud to have founded the Silver Gull Play Award in 2015 and to have run it for the last five years. However, the time has come for us to withdraw our involvement.
We would like to thank our brilliant sponsor, The Buzz from Sydney, without whom none of it could have happened. We would like to thank the judges who helped us out: Helen Tonkin, Nick Atkins, Brad Sykes and Joy Minter. We would like to thank the actors who presented readings at the award nights and we would like to thank all those who attended those nights. We would like to thank the Old 505 and Kerri Glasscock for providing a venue for the award night over the last few years.
And we would like to thank all the writers who submitted work. It has been an incomparable privilege to read over 200 new Australian plays. Playwrights are the beating heart of our theatre, and we are very proud to have supported them.
We’ve decided that subtlenuance, with its non-mainstream aesthetic, political and philosophical values, is not the most appropriate company to host a literary award.
However, we have every hope that the award will continue, and we wish those who take up the baton the best.
Thanks so much!
Previous winners of the Silver Gull Play Award
2015 TickTickBoom by Melissa Lee Speyer
2016 People Will Think You Don’t Love Me by Joanna Erskine
2017 For Unknown Reasons by Zoe Cooper
2018 Lions and Tigers and Bears by Phillip James Rouse
2019 Field of Vision by Joanna Erskine
Previously Shortlisted Plays
2015
Between the Streetlight and the Moon by Melita Rowston
Furthest West by Michael Collins
The Block Universe (Or So It Goes) by Sam O’Sullivan
The Last Executioner by Mark Swivel
TickTickBoom by Melissa Lee Speyer
2016
People Will Think You Don’t Love Me by Joanna Erskine
A Matter of Life and Death by John AD Fraser
The Ink Trail by Louis Klee
This, This Is Mine by Duncan Ragg
I sat and waited but you were gone too long by Olivia Satchell
2017
The Bees Are All Dead by Kit Brookman
Dead Wen by Elias Jamieson Brown
For Unknown Reasons by Zoe Cooper
A Spy in the House of Love by Zoe Hogan
Human Activity by Katie Pollock
The Blackbird and the Whale by Alison Rooke
2018
Disinhibition by Christopher Bryant
Alabaster Burning by John AD Fraser
People Inside Me by Katie Pollock
Superheroes by Mark Rogers
Lions and Tigers and Bears by Phillip James Rouse
2019
I Damo by Pauline Bleach
The Deal by Kel Vance
Breathless by Deborah Mulhall
Son of Byblos by James Elazzi
Field of Vision by Joanna Erskine
Photo of seagull by Glen Fergus (Own work, Moreton Bay, Australia) via Wikimedia Commons
The Silver Gull Play Award
