AustLit logo

AustLit

ABC Play Competition
Subcategory of Awards Australian Awards
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

History

The Australian Broadcasting commission awarded bonuses of £25, £10, and £10 to the authors of the best three plays purchased. Australian broadcasting rights of plays which the commission acquired were paid for at the usual rates by arrangement with the authors.

A number of plays were produced and broadcast over a period of some months, under the umbrella series 'ABC Competition Plays'. Listeners were invited to award marks to each play as it was produced. Prizes were given to the three listeners whose individual markings most nearly agree with the aggregate markings of all participating listeners. The plays that won first, second, and third prize were then rebroadcast.

For a full list of plays (including those that were not placed), see the record for the series ABC Competition Plays.

(Source: The Courier-Mail : 5 February, 1940 p 14)

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 1942

winner form y separately published work icon Portrait of a Gentleman : Thomas Griffiths Wainewright 1794-1847 George Farwell , Australia : Australian Broadcasting Commission , 1940 9518972 1940 single work radio play

Based on the life of the poet and painter Wainewright transported to Australia for forgery in 1837.

winner (Verse Section) form The Golden Lover Douglas Stewart , 1942 (Manuscript version)7183153 Z521567 1942 single work radio play humour
— Appears in: Five Plays for Stage, Radio and Television 1977; (p. 152-211)

Author's Introduction: This play is not merely a comedy of love, or an evocation of New Zealand, or the dramatization of a Maori legend; it also seeks to express what I must call a view or vision of life. ... I was looking through James Cowan's charming little Fairy Folk Tales of the Maori when I came across the chapter which Cowan calls "Whanawhana of the Bush": the legend of The Golden Lover. The whole play thereupon flashed into my mind complete.'

Introduction by Douglas Stewart. (1962: 8, 10).

Year: 1940

winner Gwen Meredith Listener's Choice for 'The Opportunist'.
X