What sets someone on the path to becoming a playwright?

Where’s the box marked “playwright” on our high school career advisor’s Preferred Employment form?

There are many ways to become a playwright but perhaps the only sure fire way is to sit down and write that first play. And then the next, and then the next.

We asked our playwrights to tell us how they began their careers and which plays and/or writers gave them that all important early inspiration.

I have always loved reading and creative writing. I originally trained as an actor before making the transition to playwriting as I realised that what all these disciplines had in common was the process of storytelling. Early inspiration: Sam Sheppard, Samuel Beckett, JM Synge, Jarry. Caleb Lewis says ...

I worked as an actor … and became increasingly interested in the art of writing – I was an avid reader … and I wanted a creative career that was self-motivating. I had a stab, sent that to NIDA and was accepted into the Playwrights Studio. From there it has all been go go go, I love it! Early Inspiration: Chekhov, Beckett, Sarah Kane, Bond, Ravenhill Suzie Miller says ...

I studied theatre in Perth and wanted to be an actor, I had the bug big time…Then I realized some days I didn’t want to get up in front of an audience. Early inspiration: Michael Gow’s The Kid Catherine Zimdahl says ...

On the tail end of the London punk scene. Through playing music in bands, then expanding into alternative cabaret and performance poetry, and eventually into theatre. I began writing for myself and the group/s I was in to perform—we had a radical agenda and so you had to write your own material. Early inspiration: Caryl Churchill. Noelle Janaczewska says ...

I was in a street theatre group and wrote a one-act play and sent it off to La Mama in Melbourne. It was accepted and produced. At that time I had no intention of becoming a playwright - I just wanted to see if I could write a play. Early Inspiration: The Greeks, Elizabethans, Joe Orton and Edward Bond. Louis Nowra says ...

I always did acting classes and I always wrote short stories. One time when I was fourteen I had a traumatic/thrilling experience caving and I wanted to write about it. I realized that if I wrote it as a play I wouldn’t have to write so much description, which I never liked having to do…I had two drama teachers who really encouraged me to write plays for myself and the other students to put on. That was huge for me. Early Inspiration: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town Lally Katz says ...

….a few short skits while at High School, a few more short pieces for Uni Revues, …Stumbled around shyly offering bits and pieces to various cabaret collaborations, then bit the bullet and went to VCA in an attempt to find out if I could really do this theatre making, theatre writing thang Early Inspiration: Augusto Boal, Brecht, Caryl Churchill, Jenny Kemp, Beckett. Catherine Ryan says ...

I was part of the first Interplay, in 1985.From that relationship with Shopfront Theatre (the force behind Interplay back then), I started working there as Playwright-In-Residence. Early Inspiration: Noel Coward, Gilbert and Sullivan, Weill and Brecht, Stephen Sondheim, and Hollywood musicals of the '30s. Hilary Bell says ...

I wrote a play and staged it with some friends in a local hall. My City Council Arts Officer helped with photocopying and the hall. That was in Queanbeyan in 1996. Tommy Murphy says ...

All through primary school I enjoyed writing stories. Once I started going to see theatre, I fixed on the idea of writing for the stage. I wrote my first play at 12 and madly sent plays off to theatre companies and competitions. At 17, I was lucky enough to have a play workshopped at the Australian National Playwrights’ Conference. Early Inspiration: Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Dorothy Hewett. Debra Oswald says ...

At the time I was working in advertising as a copywriter; the agency went bust and, seeking a new job I looked under ‘writer’ in the newspaper. There I found a very small ad – ‘writer/researcher wanted for production…No experience necessary’. It had to be fate – there’s never any ads under ‘writer’ in the newspaper! Jane Harrison says ...

Wrote my first play when I was nine. Always wanted to write, ever since I could read, but couldn’t write or be bothered to write the descriptive prose bits. Just the words people said and sometimes their physical actions. I liked writing for a group of friends who put the play on. Early Inspiration: Writer: Botho Strauss, Play: Seagull. Michael Gow says ...

At uni I was acting in revues which were mostly written by men. When I complained that the sketches didn’t have good enough parts for girls I was told to write my own. So I did. After uni I got a job as a writer and actor with a theatre in education company. Then I had a play selected for the Australian National Playwrights Conference which then got picked up by the Sydney Theatre Company and on it went. Early Inspiration: Caryl Churchill, Arthur Miller, Luke Devenish, Ron Blair Vanessa Bates says ...

I was an actor and a director asked me to do an adaptation, then another director asked me, then another asked me to write a short play. And so on. Early Inspiration: Ted Hughes, Barrault, Tadeusz Kantor, Thomas Bernhard, Christopher Hampton and Tony Harrison's translations, Heiner Muller, Botho Strauss, Franz-Xaver Kroetz, Edward Bond. Tom Wright says ...