Canberra playwright Dylan Van Den Berg continues his winning streak with the announcement at the Australian Writers’ Guild’s 56th Annual AWGIE Awards that he had won three prizes.

He was awarded the David Williamson Prize for Excellence in Writing for Australian Theatre for Whitefella Yella Tree, the Stage – Original award also for Whitefella Yella Tree, and the Community and Youth Theatre award for Ngadjung.

“I’m truly stoked” he told CityNews of his win.

Van Den Berg, an ANU graduate in drama and Indonesian with a family background in the Palawa people of Tasmania, is very much a product of the Canberra theatrical scene, having developed plays and acted professionally at The Street Theatre, seen his work staged Canberra Theatre Centre and directed his script Ngadjung at Belconnen Arts Centre.

In the past several years, he has won the 2020 Griffin and Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Awards, the 2021 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting, the 2022 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for drama, the 2023 Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award and the 2023 Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.

Whitefella Yella Tree also won him a 2022 Canberra Critics Circle award and the 2023 Marion Special Book Award.

He takes home $20,000 in prize money, while Griffin Theatre Company, which developed and staged Whitefella Yella Tree, will receive $80,000 to develop and program a new work for the stage.

At the event, NCIS: LA creator and celebrated Australian screenwriter, Shane Brennan, received the Richard Lane Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication to the Australian Writers’ Guild, recognising his “fierce and unwavering advocacy for Australian writers over many years”.

The full list of Awgie winners is here