26th Patrick White Playwrights Award

Celebrate bold new Australian playwriting as STC announces the winner of this year’s Patrick White Playwrights Award, followed by a special reading of the Award-winning play.

One of the nation’s most significant honours for new writing, the Award offers $7,500 for an unproduced script that is daring, ambitious and unmistakably theatrical. Over its 25-year history, previous winners have included Angus Cerini (The Bleeding Tree), Wesley Enoch (The Story of the Miracles at Cookie’s Table), Ra Chapman (ABC TV’s White Fever), and Patricia Cornelius (Do not go gentle…)

Free ticketed event. Bookings essential.

The shortlisted plays for the 26th Patrick White Playwrights Award are: 

Gareth Davies, Don Quixote, or, the Ingenious Gentleman of Don Quixote of North Ryde  

Richly theatrical and joyfully ambitious, Don Quixote unfolds with bold scale, wit and emotional clarity. Florid, whimsical language gradually gives way to a deeply moving meditation on ageing, love and death, powered by virtuosic clowning and large‑scale theatrical mechanisms. The characters are vivid and purposeful, the dialogue a gift to actors, and the work ultimately stands as a generous love letter to storytelling, invention and the transformative power of theatre. 

Jordyn Fulcher, Inspiration Piece 

Shaped around the real‑time duration of a six‑hour medical treatment, this play adopts a formally adventurous approach that blurs monologue, interior fantasy and clinical routine. Poetic and unflinching, Fulcher renders the hospital as both an oppressive physical environment and a psychological landscape. Through durational structure and fractured narrative, Inspiration Piece probes chronic illness, endurance and care with striking candour and theatrical ambition. 

Kim Pham, I Lychee You 

Blending playful theatrical invention with emotional acuity, I Lychee You uses magical transformation and sharply observed dialogue to explore intergenerational family life. Humour and lyricism sit alongside moments of genuine tenderness, with the mother–daughter relationship rendered in rich, lived‑in detail. Themes of cultural identity, translation and care emerge with specificity and warmth, resulting in a piece that feels both distinctive and deeply resonant. 

Olivia Satchell, The Joy Factory 

The Joy Factory unfolds within a hospital’s “last wish” team, where daily routines brush up against extraordinary emotional stakes. With assured writing, sharp dialogue and a gently inventive theatricality, the play brings humour and humanity to questions of care and loss. Its vivid ensemble and cyclical structure create a work that is both generous and quietly profound. 

Disapol Savetsila, Ama and Nana 

Ama and Nana is a bold and 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 without sentimentality or easy resolution. It is a confident, deeply engaging work that opens up urgent conversations and remains resonant beyond its final moments.