Community & Business
12 October, 2022
Grace’s play wins state award
A YOUNG aspiring playwright has taken one step closer to her dream of writing award winning plays after she was named the Queensland Theatre Young Playwrights’ Award and won an all-expenses paid trip to attend the highly reputed theatre residency week in Brisbane.
Lake Barrine local and grade 12 distance education student Grace Wilson submitted her originally written contemporary play “Goodbye Eli Anderson”, a play which follows the life of someone who is suffering from terminal cancer.
Her inspiration behind writing the play was very personal as she drew from her own past experiences to help write the script.
“Over the past 12 months since I have started writing I have lost about seven or eight people in my life to cancer really rapidly,” she said.
“In the past I was one of those people who thought cancer would never have any impact on me, I didn’t really give it too much thought.
“But now it has made its impact and I’m seeing how serious it is and how much it can change people’s lives – so that was my inspiration.”
Grace returned with a vengeance this year after submitting her first play last year and taking runner-up.
Now taking home the award this year, Grace got the chance to bond and work with other like-minded and passionate people in theatre at Queensland Theatre’s theatre residency week in September – one of the largest theatre holiday camps in the state.
She was also given dramaturgy lessons to help develop her work as a playwright in preparation for her public read of her work at the end of the year at Queensland Theatre. Grace’s passion lies with theatre and she hopes to eventually make a career out of playwrighting.
Grace was incredibly pleased to be involved in the residency week and be fully surrounded by people just as passionate about theatre as she is.
“Theatre is not a very strong interest group so coming from the Tablelands where it is more of a side thing and coming into a week-long theatre week was amazing,” she said.
“Everything was theatre, it was just wow, the ideas were flowing the inspiration is there and I am surrounded by people who want to make a career out of this.”
