Multi-award-winning and critically acclaimed playwright Michelle Law has been named Sydney Theatre Company’s next Patrick White Fellow, and Disapol Savetsila is the 26th recipient of the Patrick White Playwrights Award for his play Ama and Nana. 

The Patrick White Fellowship is a year-long appointment that will see Michelle develop a new work for Sydney Theatre Company while mentoring participants in the Company’s Watershed: Writers program: “It’s an enormous honour to be named a Patrick White Fellow alongside some of my industry heroes: playwrights whose words I’ve studied, been inspired by, and been moved by. Truly, it’s one of the biggest pinch-me moments of my career.” 

Disapol Savetsila’s play, Ama and Nana, was presented as a rehearsed reading at Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 2 Theatre last night, 19 May 2026. “I’m so proud to accept the Patrick Playwrights Award. Still pretty shocked to tell the truth. But proud beyond words”, said Disapol. “Ama and Nana is proudly a regional story, and I am proudly a regional writer. I can only hope that winning this Award shows what is possible when regional artists are given the support they need.” 

Ama and Nana is a compelling contemporary play that brings two vivid, complex women into sharp focus. With humour, emotional honesty and a strikingly filmic sensibility, Savetsila explores migration, motherhood and political inheritance. 

Savetsila explains: “The story of these two women – sidelined from society by age, by race, and by economic status – finding common ground together and then being tested by political forces too large to comprehend, felt like a vital story to tell right now.” 

The Patrick White Playwrights Award

The Patrick White Playwrights Award has been an annual initiative of Sydney Theatre Company since 2000. It is held in honour of Patrick White’s contribution to Australian theatre and to foster the development of Australian playwrights. The Award exists to showcase an unproduced script and offers a cash prize of $7,500 for a full-length play of any genre written by an Australian playwright over the age of 18 years.

In 2026 the shortlisted plays for the Patrick White Playwrights Award included:

Gareth Davies, Don Quixote, or, the Ingenious Gentleman of Don Quixote of North Ryde  
Jordyn Fulcher, Inspiration Piece 
Kim Pham, I Lychee You 
Olivia Satchell, The Joy Factory 
Disapol Savetsila, Ama and Nana