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Our Playwriting Project

Drama~Sutra started out as a maiden initiative aimed at contributing contemporary and socially relevant plays to the Australian stage and literature.

This project is primarily a writer-led collaboration of emerging playwrights from diverse cultural backgrounds working closely with us. With the help of a mentor, talent is nurtured and concepts are developed into an art form that can be presented on the wide stage of theatre.

The project runs for a year, yielding a number of Australian plays about the South Asian diaspora. Following the four phases of ground work, play development, reading and producing, we continue to work with the playwrights to develop their work, with a goal to produce, if possible.

The writers and their mentor meet monthly to develop their work.

Initiated by Creative Director Neel Banerjee, the project aims to:

  • Offer a creative platform playwrights from culturally diverse backgrounds to showcase their talent
  • Creation and curation of alternate stories and narratives which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible
  • Act as a bridge between writers, published authors and producer enabling creative communication towards participation and teaching
  • Explore freedom to showcase works in front of a wider audience

In our inaugural year (2017-2018), Kevin Bathman, Roanna Gonsalves and Sonal Moore participated in the program, writing three draft versions of full-length plays. John Suter Linton mentored the team of writers. Following this exercise, NTC worked with Sonal Moore to produce her play Ten Years to Home in two shows at Riverside Theatre.

In 2019-2020, NTC is excited to work with Patrick Gunasekera from Perth and Asha Ramzan from Sydney under the guidance of Vel Subra. Following the unprecedented advent of COVID-19, we will be updating patrons about the progress of this project

We are grateful to SBW Foundation for providing bursaries for our Drama~Sutra project.

Selection for this program is through Expression of Interest followed by a screening.

Watch this space for information on when applications for 2020-21 will be announced.

Behind the Scenes