Writing your city

Write about what you know, we're often told. So why do so few playwrights set their work in their home towns?

Photo: Marcel Dorney’s Prehistoric at Metro Arts. Image by Leesa Connelly. 

In their eagerness to tell universal stories, Australian playwrights sometimes fall into the trap of writing generic stories instead; plays written with an eye to a national or international market that could be set anywhere, and consequently have no sense of place to distinguish them.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts