Best Australian Playwrights

As always with creating a ‘best of’ list, it has been a difficult task to put together a list of best Australian Playwrights. However, here is what we’ve come up with. We considered many factors including: contribution to the Australian theatre, main-stage production, writing style, and of course the popularity of their plays. Australian plays are often gritty and intense, but tend to accurately capture Australian culture. If you are looking for a good place to start your exploration into Australian playwrights then you’ve come to the right place.

We have listed some of the best plays by each author below their names, so make sure you have read of some of these or go along to see Australian plays when they are on!

Our Top Picks

• Andrew Bovell
  1

  Speaking in Tongues, When the Rain Stops Falling

• Joanna Murray-Smith
  2

  Bombshells, Rockabye, Honour

• Nick Enright
  3

  Blackrock, Daylight Saving

• Dorothy Hewett
  4

  The Chapel Perilous, This Old Man Comes Rolling Home

• Louis Nowra
  5

  Cosi, Radiance, The Golden Age

• Patricia Cornelius
  6

  The Call, Love, Do Not Go Gentle 

• Patrick White
  7

  Ham Funeral, The Season at Sarsaparilla 

• Michael Gow
  8

  Away, Europe, The Kid

• David Williamson
  9

  The Club, Don’s Party, The Removalists

• Peter Kenna
  10

  A Hard God, The Slaughter Of St. Teresa’s Day

• Leah Purcell
  11

  The Drover’s Wife, Box the Pony

• Nakkiah Lui
  12

  Kill the Messenger, Blackie Blackie Brown

• Jack Davis
  13

  No Sugar, The Dreamers

• Kate Mulvany
  14

  The Seed, The Harp in the South

• Declan Greene
  15

  Moth, Pompeii, L.A. 

• Hilary Bell
  16

  Wolf Lullaby, Fortune

• Ray Lawler
  17

  Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

• Wesley Enoch
  18

  The 7 Stages of Grieving, Black Medea

• Glace Chase
  19

  Triple X

• Stephen Sewell
  20

  The Blind Giant is Dancing

• Tommy Murphy
  21

  Holding the Man, Strangers in Between, 

• Angela Betzein
  22

  The Hanging, Hoods 

• Susan Miller
  23

  Driving into Walls, Medea 

• Kendall Feaver
  24

  The Almighty Sometimes

• Angus Cerini
  25

  The Bleeding Tree, Wretch

Australian Plays Transform

If you’re interested to learn more about Australian playwrights, or if you’re looking for where you can find Australian plays to read, visit Australian Plays Transform. This is the new home of Australian Playwriting, and is the result of a consolidation of the two organisations Playwrighting Australia, and Australian Plays.

Australian Theatre for Young People

If you’re looking for fresh, emerging, and up and coming playwrights, Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) is where you want to go. Pound for pound, ATYP produces the most work of new Australian playwrights of any company in the country! This is the place to go for work by Australian writers, for young Australian audiences.

Griffin Theatre Company

If Australian writing is something you want to see more when you go to the theatre, then Griffin Theatre Company should definitely be on your radar. Griffin is Australia’s leading new writing theatre, dedicated to bringing the best Australian stories to the stage.

Griffin Theatre Company hosted this forum in 2012 to discuss Australian Playwrighting: