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Which contemporary Australian playwrights have shaped the twenty-first-century repertoire, and what unites and divides their work?
Contemporary Australian playwrights of the 2000s and 2010s, including Andrew Bovell, Hannie Rayson, Michael Gow, Patricia Cornelius, Joanna Murray-Smith and the major institutional companies that produce them
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on contemporary Australian playwrights. Andrew Bovell, Hannie Rayson, Michael Gow, Patricia Cornelius and Joanna Murray-Smith; the institutional companies that produce them (STC, MTC, Belvoir, QT); and the formal range of twenty-first-century Australian theatre.
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What this dot point is asking
NESA expects you to be able to name and discuss the playwrights of the 2000s and 2010s who have shaped contemporary Australian theatre alongside the older New Wave generation. Strong answers can name plays and dates, identify the major state-funded companies that produce contemporary work, and describe what unites and divides the contemporary cohort.
The answer
The institutional landscape
By the 2000s the Australian theatre repertoire was anchored in the major state-funded companies: Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC), Belvoir Street Theatre, Queensland Theatre Company, and the State Theatre Company of South Australia (STCSA). These companies commission new Australian work each season, employ resident dramaturgs, and run new-play development programs.
Smaller companies remain crucial. La Mama (Melbourne), the Stables Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company (Sydney, the New South Wales premier home for new Australian writing), Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne, evolved from Playbox), the Black Swan State Theatre Company (Perth), and Melbourne Workers Theatre (1987 to 2012) developed work that the bigger companies later picked up.
The funding model is mixed: state and federal grants through Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council), private philanthropy, and box office. The relationship between commercial viability and artistic risk has been a recurring tension across the period.
Andrew Bovell
Born 1962, South Australia. Bovell trained as a screenwriter at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and has worked across stage and screen. His major plays.
Speaking in Tongues (Sydney Theatre Company, 1996). Four interlocking stories of infidelity and disappearance. Four actors play eight characters. The play's structure was the basis for the 2001 film Lantana, adapted by Bovell.
When the Rain Stops Falling (Brink Productions, Adelaide, 2008; STC and MTC, 2009). Four generations of a family across London, Adelaide, and the Australian outback, from 1959 to 2039. The play's central image, a fish falling from the sky on a man in 2039 Alice Springs, ties the family story to a wider climate-changed Australia. Won the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award.
Things I Know to Be True (State Theatre Company of South Australia and Frantic Assembly, 2016). A family of four adult children and their parents in suburban Adelaide. Adapted by Bovell working with Frantic Assembly (the British physical-theatre company). Toured internationally.
Holy Day (STC, 2001) and Who's Afraid of the Working Class? (Melbourne Workers Theatre, 1998, co-written). Bovell ranges across themes from colonial Australia to contemporary working-class politics.
Bovell's hallmark is non-linear narrative time, multiple overlapping plots, and a willingness to break with naturalistic chronology while keeping emotionally specific scenes. He is the most formally inventive of his cohort.
Hannie Rayson
Born 1957, Melbourne. Rayson trained at the Victorian College of the Arts and has been one of the most regularly produced Australian playwrights since the late 1980s.
- Hotel Sorrento (Playbox, Melbourne, 1990)
- Three sisters return to their family beach house on the Mornington Peninsula. One has written a controversial novel about the family. The play won the AWGIE Award and was filmed by Richard Franklin (1995).
- Inheritance (Playbox, 2003)
- A Mallee farming family across decades. The play examines the politics of farming, land, and family loyalty.
- Two Brothers (MTC, 2005)
- Two brothers in Australian Labor politics, loosely modelled on the contemporary Labor split. The play became controversial for its perceived political portraiture.
- Life After George (MTC, 2000) and Scenes from a Marriage (MTC, 2007)
- Continued domestic and political range.
Rayson's plays sit between the Williamson tradition and a sharper feminist edge. She writes ensemble work with substantial female roles.
Michael Gow
Born 1955, Sydney. Gow trained at the Australian National University and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. His major work.
Away (Sydney Theatre Company, 1986). Three families on a beach holiday at Christmas 1967. The Vietnam War is in the background. The play uses three stages of Shakespeare reference (The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, King Lear) to structure the family dynamics. Away has become one of the most-produced Australian plays of the late twentieth century.
Sweet Phoebe (1994) and Toy Symphony (2007). Gow's later work has been more sporadic but is regarded as substantial.
Gow ran the Queensland Theatre Company as Artistic Director from 1998 to 2009.
Joanna Murray-Smith
Born 1962, Melbourne. Murray-Smith has been one of the most consistently produced Australian playwrights since the 1990s.
- Honour (MTC, 1995)
- A marital betrayal play that has been produced internationally.
- Bombshells (MTC, 2004)
- Six monologues for one actress on women's lives.
- The Female of the Species (MTC, 2006)
- A feminist hostage thriller modelled loosely on Germaine Greer.
- Switzerland (Sydney Theatre Company, 2014)
- A two-hander between Patricia Highsmith and a young editor.
Murray-Smith's work is psychologically tight, often for small casts, and has had substantial international touring success.
Patricia Cornelius
Born 1951, Melbourne. Cornelius has been one of the most politically committed Australian playwrights of the period, writing about working-class women, sexual violence, and the casualties of contemporary capitalism. She has won the Patrick White Playwrights' Award (2009) and the Major Playwrights' Award.
- Do Not Go Gentle (La Mama and Melbourne Theatre Company, 2010)
- Ageing characters in a nursing home build a metaphorical climbing expedition.
- SHIT (Melbourne Workers Theatre, 2015)
- Three working-class women in an unflinching study of the language and lives of marginalised Australian women.
- The Berry Picker (1990) and Big Heart (2014)
- Cornelius's career has been more visible at La Mama and Melbourne Workers Theatre than at the major state companies, although the bigger institutions have begun to produce her work more regularly in the 2010s and 2020s.
Other figures of the period
- Tommy Murphy. Holding the Man (B Sharp at Belvoir, 2006, adapting Timothy Conigrave's memoir). Saturn's Return (2007). One of the central queer voices in contemporary Australian theatre.
- Stephen Carleton. The Narcissist (2007, North Queensland gothic).
- Lally Katz. A Golem Story (Malthouse, 2013). Whimsical, magical-realist work.
- Tom Holloway. Beyond the Neck (2009, on the Port Arthur massacre).
- Suzie Miller. Prima Facie (Griffin Theatre, 2019, on legal sexual assault). Toured internationally with Jodie Comer.
What unites and divides the cohort
The contemporary cohort is more formally varied than the New Wave was. Bovell's non-linear time, Cornelius's working-class urgency, Gow's Shakespearean scaffolding, Murray-Smith's psychological tightness, and Rayson's domestic-political range are very different artistic projects.
What unites them is their place in the institutional theatre, their engagement with contemporary Australian life, and their willingness to write the country into its theatre. What divides them is form, politics, and scope. Strong essays do not treat them as a single school.
Why this matters for HSC
If your Australian Drama and Theatre pairing includes contemporary Australian voices, you may study Bovell, Rayson, Gow, Cornelius or another contemporary playwright. Strong answers identify the formal innovations, the place of the play in its company's repertoire, and how the work extends or departs from the Lawler and New Wave traditions.
Past exam questions, worked
Real questions from past NESA papers on this dot point, with our answer explainer.
Practice (NESA)6 marksIdentify three contemporary Australian playwrights and describe how their work extends the Australian theatrical tradition.Show worked answer →
A 6-mark "identify and describe" needs three playwrights with at least one named play each and a sentence on contribution.
- Andrew Bovell (born 1962)
- Speaking in Tongues (1996), When the Rain Stops Falling (Brink Productions, 2008) and Things I Know to Be True (State Theatre Company of South Australia and Frantic Assembly, 2016). Bovell uses non-linear time, multiple overlapping scenes and family stories across generations. When the Rain Stops Falling moves between London 1959, Adelaide 2013, and the future, building a single story across decades and continents. Bovell is the most formally inventive of his cohort.
- Hannie Rayson (born 1957)
- Hotel Sorrento (Playbox, 1990), Inheritance (Playbox, 2003), Two Brothers (MTC, 2005). Rayson writes domestic-political plays grounded in middle Australia. Inheritance examines a Mallee farming family across decades. Two Brothers stages a political family modelled loosely on the contemporary Labor split. Rayson's work sits between the Williamson tradition and a sharper feminist edge.
- Patricia Cornelius (born 1951)
- Do Not Go Gentle (La Mama and Melbourne Theatre Company, 2010), SHIT (Melbourne Workers Theatre, 2015), The Berry Picker (1990). Cornelius writes politically charged plays about working-class women and working-class life. Her work has been more visible at La Mama and Melbourne Workers Theatre than at the major state companies, but she has won the Patrick White Playwrights' Award and the Major Playwrights' Award.
Markers reward named plays, dated productions, and a sentence on contribution to the tradition.
Related dot points
- The New Wave of Australian theatre, including the Australian Performing Group, the Nimrod Street Theatre, the political and vernacular character of the work, and the playwrights who emerged from this period
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on the New Wave. The Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory and the Nimrod Street Theatre, David Williamson, Jack Hibberd, Alex Buzo, Dorothy Hewett, and the vernacular, political theatre that followed the Doll.
- David Williamson and the tradition of Australian political comedy, including The Removalists (1971), Don's Party (1971), The Club (1977) and later works
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on David Williamson. His vernacular comic tradition, the political content of The Removalists and Don's Party, the institutional setting of The Club, and Williamson's enduring position as the most-produced Australian playwright.
- Louis Nowra and the development of Australian theatre beyond the New Wave, including Inner Voices (1977), Visions (1978), Cosi (1992), Radiance (1993) and the wider 1980s and 1990s playwriting
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on Louis Nowra. His early European-influenced plays (Inner Voices, Visions), the breakthrough mid-career works (Cosi, Radiance), the institutional shift from Nimrod to state-funded companies, and Nowra's contribution to a darker, more politically complex strand of Australian theatre.
- Indigenous Australian theatre as a major movement in contemporary Australian drama, including Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, Jane Harrison, Andrea James, Nakkiah Lui, Leah Purcell, and the dedicated Indigenous theatre companies
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on Indigenous Australian theatre. Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman's The 7 Stages of Grieving (1995), Jane Harrison's Stolen (1998), Nakkiah Lui, Leah Purcell, and the companies (Ilbijerri, Yirra Yaakin, Moogahlin) that have built sustained Indigenous theatre infrastructures.