2008 Sydney Theatre Awards Nominations
Leading the list of nominees for this year's Sydney Theatre Awards is the STC production of Tony McNamara's The Great. It is nominated in seven categories, including Best New Australian Work and Best Mainstage Production. Further nominees include Damien Millar's The Modern International Dead (Best New Australian Work, Best Newcomer), Brendan Cowell's Ruben Guthrie (Best New Australian Work, Best Independent Production, Best Actor in a Lead Role), Rachel Corrie's My Name is Rachel Corrie (Best Independent Production, Best Direction, Best Actress in a Lead Role), Michael Gow's The Kid (Best Newcomer, Best Actress in a Supporting Role) and Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the Musical (Best Production of a Musical, Best Performance by an Actor in a Musical).
The award will be presented on Monday, 19 January.


Patrick White Award 2008
John Romeril is this year’s winner of the Patrick White Award, one of Australia’s most prestigious literary prizes. Over a forty-year career as a dramatist, John Romeril has written nearly eighty works for stage, film and television, including Chicago, Chicago, The Floating World, Miss Tanaka and Mrs Thally F, all published by Currency Press.


WA Premier's Book Awards
The Circuit - Episode 1: A Long Way Home by Kelly Lefever has been nominated for the WA Premier's Book Award in the category Script.


The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards 2008 Drama Script (Stage) Award
has been won by  Andrew Bovell  for When the Rain Stops Falling (which will be published by Currency Press in 2009).

Also shortlisted were:
  Toy Symphony by Michael Gow
  The Serpent's Teeth by Daniel Keene
  The Seed by Kate Mulvany
  Ruben Guthrie by Brendan Cowell 

2008 AWGIE Awards

Winner of the 2008 AWGIE Award for Theatre for Young Audiences: Debra Oswald - Stories in the Dark
Stage Award: Tom Holloway - Beyond the Neck.

Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2008

Andrew Bovell has won the Louis Esson Prize for Drama for When the Rain Stops Falling (to be published by Currency Press in 2009)

Also Shortlisted:
The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table by Wesley Enoch
Toy Symphony by Michael Gow



2008 Helpmann Awards

Toy Symphony received four awards, including Best New Australian Work (Michael Gow), Best Direction (Neil Armfield) and Best Male Actor (Richard Roxburgh).
Leah Purcell was awarded Best Female Actor for her role in Wesley Enoch's The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table. For the complete list of winners, visit helpmannawards.com.au.

2008 AWGIE Awards nominations
The Australian Writers’ Guild has announced the nominees for the 2008 AWGIE Awards, to be presented in Melbourne on 15 August.
The nominations in the category Stage are: The Call by Patricia Cornelius, Beyond the Neck by Tom Holloway, The Seed by Kate Mulvany and 2,000 Feet Away by Anthony Weigh. Debra Oswald’s play Stories in the Dark is nominated in the category Theatre for Young Audiences and Noëlle Janaczewska’s This Territory is nominated in the category Community and Youth Theatre. Noëlle is also in the running for the award for best Radio Adaptation for Madagascar Lily, along with Katherine Thomson, who is nominated for her adaptation of Fragments of Hong Kong. Brendan Cowell is up for best Television Series for the episode The Cemetery Gates from the series Love My Way and Greg Haddrick is in the running for best Telemovie Original for The Informant.

20 May 2008: Debra Oswald's Stories in the Dark won the Play Award at the 2008 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, presented at the Art Gallery of NSW last night. Stories in the Dark explores the power of storytelling, mingling the magic and earthy wisdom of folk tales with the hard-edged story of violence, conflict and the struggle to survive. For more info, click here.
Further nominees for the Play Award were Alana Valentine for Parramatta Girls, Wesley Enoch for The Story of the Miracles at Cookie's Table and Nicki Bloom for Tender (to be published by Currency later this year). For the complete list of winners, visit www.smh.com.au
Congratulations!

13 March 2008: Romulus, My Father won the 2008 Movie Extra Filmink Awards for Best Australian Film. The winners were announced yesterday - for the full list visit smh.com.au.
Romulus, My Father, based on Raimond Gaita's memoir, was adapted for the screen by British poet Nick Drake. For more information on the screenplay, click here.


6 March 2008: The 2007 Greenroom Awards nominations have been announced.
Among the nominees are: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – The Musical, nominated in eight categories, including best direction, best production and best costumes. Union House Theatre’s production of Jack Hibberd’s play White with Wire Wheels is nominated for best set and best direction (independent theatre).
In the category Theatre Companies, Ying Tong (STC presented by MTC) is in the running for five awards, including best production, best direction and best male actor (Jonathan Biggins). Bell Shakespeare’s production of The Government Inspector is listed for four awards, including best direction and best production, and Malthouse Theatre’s production of The Spook is in the running for three awards.
Playwright Ross Mueller is nominated for the Associations Awards for Best New Australian Writing for The Ghost Writer and Something to Die For (pilot version).
The winners will be announced on Sunday, 20 April at The Arts Centre, Victoria. For a complete list of nominations, visit www.greenroom.org.au.

The shortlist for the 2008-2009 Queensland Premier’s Drama Award has been announced. Queensland Theatre Company, which is administering the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award for the fourth time has announced the shortlist for the 2008–2009 Award. The three finalists, who will receive dramaturgical assistance over the coming months are: Richard Jordan for 25 Down, Katherine Lyall-Watson for Ned’s Story and Sven Swenson for Dangerfield Park. The winning play will be judged following public readings of all finalist plays in August 2008. For more information, visit www.qldtheatreco.com.au.
Currency congratulates all nominees!

22 January 2008: Sydney Theatre Awards
Toy Symphony swept yesterday's 2007 Sydney Theatre Awards: Michael Gow's new play won in seven categories, including Best New Australian Work, Best Mainstage Production, Best Direction and Best Actor. Currency will publish the play in May.
Best Independent Production was awarded to Kate Mulvany's The Seed which will move upstairs for a second season at Belvoir Theatre in February.
The award for Best Actress went to Toni Scanlan for her role in the Griffin production of Katherine Thomson's King Tide. And Currency founder Katharine Brisbane was awarded the 2007 Sydney Theatre Awards for Lifetime Achievement.
Currency congratulates all winners!

10 December 2007: The winners of the AFI Awards have been announced: Romulus, My Father won in the categories Best Film, Best Lead Actor, Best Young Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Sue Smith's Bastard Boys won in the categories Best Screenplay in Television and Outstanding Achievement in Television Screen Craft; and The Circuit won in the category Best Supporting Actor in Television Drama. To view the complete list of winners, go to afi.org.au.
Congratulations!

14 November 2007: Richard Allen and Karen Pearlman have been awarded the 2007 Enhance TV Atom Awards in the category ‘Best Experimental’ for their dance film Thursday’s Fiction. Richard and Karen are the editors of Performing the Unnameable.

12 September 2007: David Milroy has won the Kate Challis RAKA Award for his play Windmill Baby, published in Contemporary Indigenous Plays. The Kate Challis RAKA Award is one of Australia's richest and most prestigious national awards for Indigenous creative artists. Congratulations David Milroy!


10 September 2007: Tony Moore was awarded the 2007 NSW History Fellowship last night. Congratulations! Tony is the author of The Barry McKenzie Movies in our Australian  Screen Classics series.

31 August 2007: The winners of the 40th AWGIE Awards have been announced today. Currency Press congratulates all winning authors, especially Tommy Murphy who won in the category Stage with his play Holding the Man, Angela Betzien (Theatre for Young Audiences and Richard Wherrett Award) for Hoods, Campion Decent (Community and Youth Theatre) for Embers, Janis Balodis (Music Theatre) for Electric Lenin, Sue Smith (Television Mini Series Original) for Bastard Boys, Tony Ayres (Feature Film Original) for The Home Song Stories and Ian David who was awarded the Kit Denton Fellowship for courageous scriptwriting.

2 June 2007: Congratulations to Patricia Cornelius who was today named as winner of the 2006 Patrick White Award for her play, Do not go gentle...

29 May 2007: Two award-winning plays in one volume. For the second consecutive year, Tommy Murphy has won the Play Award of the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. This year's winner Holding the Man is published in the same volume as last year's winner, Strangers in Between .

18 November 2006: We are delighted that Jill Julius Matthews’ Dance Hall and Picture Palaces was awarded the inaugural Research and Writing Award for the best monograph by the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand.

 

13 September 2006: Congratulations to HANNIE RAYSON who has been nominated for the Melbourne Prize for Literature. The $60,000 prize will be awarded to a Victoria-based writer whose body of published or produced work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life. See Melbourne Trust Prize website for further details.

4 September 2006: STEPHEN SEWELL won The Louis Esson Prize for Drama (Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards) for Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon.

KATHERINE THOMSON won three AWGIES for: Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (Documentary, Public Broadcast) which is showing at a cinema near you now; and Answered by Fire, co-written with Barbara Samuels, (Television Mini-Series Original). Based on true events, Answered by Fire is set in 1999 as the East Timorese prepare to vote for independence after 24 years of forced occupation. Katharine (and Barbara) also won the Major AWGIE for Answered by Fire.

 

GREG HADDRICK won two AWGIES: Departure Lounge Part 4: MDA (Television Series) and The Society Murders, co-written with Kylie Needham (Telemovie Adaptation) recently seen on Channel 9. Greg was one of the creators of MDA and his book Top Shelf I: Reading and Writing the Best in Australian TV Drama gives readers a unique insight into the specialized format of writing television series and serials. He also edited Top Shelf 2 which is a collection of award-winning television screenplays.

And RICHARD TULLOCH ( Stella and the Moon Man) and NOËLLE JANACZEWSKA ( Let’s Go Brazil) also won AWGIES for Children’s Theatre and Radio Original respectively.

TOMMY MURPHY won the NSW Premier’s Literary Play Award for Strangers in Between. This warm, funny and insightful coming-of-age story will be published in November in a double volume with Tommy’s adaptation of Holding the Man , the classic memoir by Timothy Conigrave which premiers at the Griffin Theatre in November.