Alana Valentine is a multi-award-winning playwright, director, and librettist. In April 2022 her play Wayside Bride opened at Belvoir Theatre and played until May 2022. Having worked with Bangarra Dance Theatre for ten years as dramaturg, in 2022 Alana was the co-writer, with Stephen Page, of WUDJANG: Not the Past, music by Steve Francis. At the 2022 Adelaide Festival Alana was the co-librettist, with Christos Tsiolkas, of WATERSHED: The Death of Dr Duncan, music by Joe Twist, directed by Neil Armfield. In October 2021 The Sugar House was given an acclaimed UK premiere at Finborough Theatre in London and in August 2021 Steamworks productions in Perth remounted a 20 year anniversary production of Savage Grace (with the same cast) at the State Theatre of WA. Alana won the 2021 Australian Writers Guild Award for Music Theatre for her libretto Notre Dame, was nominated in 2020 for her libretto Flight Memory and was also nominated in 2019 for her co-written libretto, with Ursula Yovich, for Barbara and the Camp Dogs. Barbara and the Camp Dogs also won Helpmann Awards in 2019, including Best Original Score and Best Musical, and 2020 Green Room Awards, including Best Original Score and Best New Australian Work. Alana and Ursula Yovich are working on a screen version of Barbara and the Camp Dogs to be produced by Bunya Productions.
Her plays are published by Currency Press, including a book about her verbatim/close work practice – Bowerbird: The art of making theatre drawn from life. In 2019 the Seymour Centre in Australia presented Made To Measure, a commission from the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, where Alana was Writer in Residence. In September 2022 she collaborated with erth visual and physical theatre on arc, which premiered at the Sydney Opera House in late 2022.