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Canberra Today 17°/20° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Dylan’s playwriting wins him a big prize

Dylan Van Den Berg… won the $30,000 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting.

CANBERRA’S Dylan Van Den Berg took out the $30,000 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting for “Milk” at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards yesterday (April 26).

Van Den Berg accepted the award at the State Library of NSW, where a total of $305,000 was awarded across 13 prizes.

Van Den Berg’s win was announced alongside people such as Ellen van Neerven, who won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, Multicultural NSW Award and Book of the Year, and Kate Grenville, who won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.

The third was Van Den Berg’s win.

Very much a product of The Street Theatre, where he has performed as a professional actor and also had his plays like “Blue: a misery play” and “The Camel” developed under the theatre’s dramaturgical programs, The Hive and First Seen.

Van Den Berg is a Palawa writer/performer with family connections to the Bass Strait Islands and the northeast of Tasmania.

In 2020 his play “Way Back When” won the $10,000 Griffin Award from 130 entries, was highly commended for the Max Afford Award, and was shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights Award and the QLD Premier’s Drama Award.

But it was his major opus, workshopped under “First Seen” in 2019, which drew the attention of the judges for the NickEnright Prize, and it is “Milk” which will be given a full production by The Street this June.

Spanning two centuries and the onslaught of colonisation, “Milk” tracks a conversation between three Aboriginal ancestors stranded together on an island — an old woman, dying, a middle-aged woman curling her hair in preparation for a date and a young man much like Van Den Berg, grappling with the past before taking a step into the future.

In accepting the award today, Van Den Berg thanked The Street’s Caroline Stacey for championing his work, as well as dramaturg Peter Matheson, directors David Atfield and Gin Savage, cultural adviser Aunty Gaye Doolan and his baby daughter, Charlotte, to whom he said:  “I wrote this play for you and you’ll know where we come from.”

The judges described “Milk” as “a strikingly original work occupying dual time zones spanning two centuries, with three unnamed Aboriginal characters negotiating the impacts of colonisation,” adding, “Van Den Berg’s play is symphonic in construction, with deeply human characters, and one that expertly guides the audience through tragedy and loss to a poignant end. A fresh and genuinely exhilarating theatrical voice.”

“Milk”, at The Street Theatre, June 3 (preview) to June 12. Bookings here or 6247 1223.

The 2021 winners in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards are:

  • Ellen van Neerven won the Book of the Year prize of $10,000 for Throat (University of Queensland Press). 
  • Kate Grenville won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction prize of $40,000 for “A Room Made of Leaves” (Text Publishing). 
  • Laura McPhee-Browne won the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing ($5000) for “Cherry Beach” (Text Publishing). 
  • Kate Fullagar won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction ($40,000) for “The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire” (Yale University Press). 
  • Ellen van Neerven won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry ($30,000) for “Throat” (University of Queensland Press). 
  • Amelia Mellor won the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature ($30,000) for the “The Grandest Bookshop in the World” (Affirm Press). 
  • Davina Bell won the Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature ($30,000) for “The End of the World is Bigger than Love” (Text Publishing). 
  • Dylan Van Den Berg won the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting ($30,000) for “Milk” (The Street Theatre). 
  • Laurence Billiet won the Betty Roland Prize for Scriptwriting ($30,000) for “FREEMAN” (General Strike & Matchbox Pictures). 
  • Ellen van Neerven won the Multicultural NSW Award ($20,000) for “Throat” (University of Queensland Press). 
  • NSW Translation Prize ($30,000) – biennial award – joint winners, “Autumn Manuscripts” by Tasos Leivaditis, translated by N.N. Trakakis (Smokestack Books) and “Imminence” by Mariana Dimópulos, translated by Alice Whitmore (Giramondo Publishing)
  • Special Award ($10,000), Melina Marchetta
  • People’s Choice Award, “The Dictionary of Lost Words” by Pip Williams (Affirm Press).

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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