Press release from AWG
The Australian Writers’ Foundation is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2012 Kit Denton Disfellowship is award-winning playwright Angela Betzien.
The $30,000 Disfellowship was presented by Andrew Denton as part of the 45th Annual AWGIE Awards held on Friday 24 August at Doltone House in Sydney.
Andrew Denton said: "Congratulations to this year's winner, Angela Betzien, for her script 'War Games'. This is the fourth consecutive year a Disfellowship has been awarded for a script written for the stage. The gauntlet has been well and truly thrown down to Australia's screenwriters to come up with a bold and courageous idea for next year's Disfellowship"
Angela is an internationally renowned writer for children and young people and co-founder of the company Real TV. Her winning project is a screen adaptation of her play War Crimes, the story of three very different girls living in a country town that is facing the closure of the local abattoir and adapting to the recent arrival of Iraqi refugee families. When a local boy is killed serving in Afghanistan it triggers a series of violent and disastrous events in their small town.
Angela was also shortlisted in 2010 for the prize, then known as the Kit Denton Fellowship. She was unable to accept the award in person as she is currently in Stockholm attending the Women Playwright's International conference, a gathering of women from 52 countries.
In her acceptance, read by celebrated television writer Susan Smith who will be mentoring Angela on the project, Angela said that several of the women at the conference were "from countries where courageous writing, action, thought is far from rewarded; rather it is met with intimidation, harassment and persecution. How fortunate we all are to be working in a free society."
Angela Betzien also said that writers must be eternally vigilant. "We must strive to write courageously, to visit the dark, difficult and dangerous places and never take our liberty for granted."Angela paid her respects to the late Kit Denton for his "maverick work".
Also shortlisted amongst the hundred of applications for this year’s Disfellowship were Andrew Urban for That Man, Vanessa Bates and Bronwyn Purvis for The Daniel Dynasty and Bojana Novakovic for The Vitches.
Kit Denton was a scriptwriter, author, poet and lyricist, whose most famous work was the international best-selling novel The Breaker. The Disfellowship was set up in 2007 in his memory.
The Disfellowship is generously supported by Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder and TressCox Lawyers.