Press release from DMCPRMEDIA
The Australian Writers' Foundation is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2010 Kit Denton Fellowship for courage and excellence in performance writing, named in memory of writer Kit Denton, the father of Andrew Denton. This year’s finalists tackle some big issues including fear, social inclusion, morality and the meaning of life.
Andrew Denton says “Once again the shortlist for the Kit Denton Fellowship is as surprising as it is diverse. We look forward to seeing the encouragement of another strong and distinctive Australian voice.”
The $30,000 Fellowship was set up in 2007 in memory of Kit Denton, scriptwriter, author, poet and lyricist, whose most famous work was the international best-selling novel The Breaker. The Kit Denton Fellowship allows the selected writer to develop their proposed project into a marketable script. The winner of the fellowship will be announced at the 43rd Annual AWGIE Awards on Friday, August 20 in Melbourne.
In presenting the Kit Denton Fellowship, the Australian Writers’ Foundation, the charitable arm of the Australian Writer’s Guild, is demonstrating its commitment to increasing opportunities for satisfying and rewarding work for Australian performance writers.
The Kit Denton Fellowship is supported by Zapruder's other films, Animal Logic, GNW Productions, TressCox Lawyers, FremantleMedia, Hopscotch, Princess Pictures and Shine Australia.
The 2010 Kit Denton Fellowship Shortlist:
Angela Betzien – The Very True and Unusual Life of Chook
The Very True and Unusual Life of Chook is an epic mythical tale exploring consumerism, globalisation and the most urgent issue of our time, climate change. This play about fear is a hopeful and apocalyptic tale for both children and adults. With the Fellowship, Angela would like to further develop the play in workshop with actors, a director, composer and designer and with teaching artists and children from a range of cultural and economic backgrounds. RealTV intends to present this play in theatres and schools across Australia in late 2011. Angela Betzien (Melbourne) has been writing for children and young people for nine years, with the majority of her work writing and producing plays for RealTV.
George Catsi – I Want to be Slim
Inspired by his experience as a teenage volunteer for the evangelist Billy Graham’s famous Randwick meeting and his Greek Orthodox mother’s decision to become a born again Baptist, George created the comedy act Gods Cowboys. I Want to be Slim, is a morality tale centred on the Rev Slim Limits, leader of ‘The Church of the Holy Cowboy’, a satirical organisation that parallels the American Evangelical style churches, with references to Hillsong. The support of the Fellowship would give George the opportunity to develop the project to a more sophisticated and challenging format. George Catsi (Sydney) has a diverse background which includes being co-owner/Executive Producer of FLICKERFEST International Short Film Festival.
Moira Finucane & Jackie Smith – Carnival of Mysteries
Finucane & Smith’s latest project is a surreal, indoor Carnival of Mysteries; a lush, multilayered, seductive, beastly and wild exploration provoked by some of the most profound mysteries of human life. Overhead, underfoot, through the senses and in four extraordinary intricate sites; a hand-painted Carnival will seduce its audiences with the work of 30 unique and internationally acclaimed artists, across every art form, commissioned to respond to the Mysteries of Innocence, Passion, Mercy, Forgiveness and Love and their absence, loss and destruction. The Fellowship would be used to financially support the writers and give them adequate time to develop this large and ambitious project. The work of Finucane & Smith (Melbourne) has been performed locally and internationally with acclaimed seasons in festivals in Scotland, England, Japan, Sweden, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and Croatia.
Paul Livingston (Flacco) – Demeaning of Life
Demeaning of Life will take the form of a solo performance by comic creation Flacco, Paul Livingston’s alter ego, where he answers ten of the biggest questions we face. After a quarter of a century not one scrap of evidence exists on DVD of Flacco’s meanderings on the meaning of life. The plan is to use the Fellowship to record for posterity a performance of Demeaning of Life. Paul Livingston (Sydney) has written several stage plays, seven radio plays, written for Channel 10’s Good News Week (for which he won an AWGIE Award) and was a contributing writer on Happy Feet 2.
Suzie Wicks – Crocs, Frocks…and the Untimely Disappearance of the Documentary Film-Maker
When Suzie Wicks heard that a small rural disability support service from Inverell was planning to take a group of 15 people with disabilities on a road-trip to remote Burketown in the Gulf of Carpentaria, she travelled to Inverell to meet with the workers and clients and introduced herself as a writer and film-maker who would like to document the adventure. However the documentary transformed into an action packed comedy, reworking famous scenes from some of Australia’s classic movies. Suzie will use the Fellowship to continue their unique storytelling method, travel back to Inverell, film remaining scenes and for post-production. Suzie Wicks (Sydney) is an award-winning scriptwriter with experience across a variety of written and visual formats, including theatre, radio, short film, animation and television.