Playwright Andrew Bovell is Sydney Theatre Company’s new Patrick White Fellow, following on from writers including Tommy Murphy, Kate Mulvany, Angela Betzien, Hilary Bell, Patricia Cornelius and Raimondo Cortese.
The $25,000 fellowship goes to an established playwright each year in recognition of their body of work, and includes a commission from the company to be developed over the course of the year. The Fellow also collaborates extensively with other artists working at STC.
In a statement, Bovell said: “Where the novelist and the poet can exist alone and in isolation, the playwright seeks to work in collaboration with other theatre artists; actors, directors, designers and composers. Great theatre comes out of the relationship between these disciplines and it’s our theatre companies that bring these disciplines together. As a playwright I want to be as much a part of the companies that produce my work as possible. I want to belong. I want to collaborate. The Patrick White Fellowship offers me the opportunity to be a part of STC and its creative team under Kip Williams’ artistic directorship. As part of the Fellowship I look forward to mentoring and working with the STC’s newly announced Emerging Writers’ Group. It’s an important initiative and one that acknowledges the company’s commitment to developing the writers of the next generation.”