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Feature

Meet the playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer

One of Australia’s most produced and well loved playwrights brings his play The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You to MTC’s stage.

One of Australia’s most produced and well loved playwrights, Finegan Kruckemeyer, brings his play The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You to MTC’s stage.

Finegan Kruckemeyer has had 88 commissioned plays performed on six continents and translated into six languages, and was a recipient of the 2017 Mickey Miners Lifetime Achievement Award for services to international theatre for young audiences, the 2015 David Williamson Award for Excellence in Australian Playwriting, and an inaugural Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.

This year 51 seasons (including four world premieres) are presented globally, with seasons in seven countries and five Australian states. In Germany, he is represented by Rowohlt Agency.

To date, Kruckemeyer’s plays have had seasons in 200 international festivals; all Australian states and territories; eight US national tours; five UK national tours; at Sydney Opera House (six works), Scotland’s Imaginate Festival (three works), New York’s Lincoln Center for the Arts (three works), Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Arts (three works), Ireland’s Abbey Theatre (two works) and Shanghai’s Malan Flower Theatre (two works).

As well as the Mickey Miners and David Williamson Awards, and Sidney Myer Fellowship, Kruckemeyer and his work have received 37 awards, at least one each year since 2002. These include seven Australian Writers Guild (AWGIE) Awards, the 2018 Hope Prize, 2015 Theatre Council of Tasmania Award for Exceptional Writing, 2013 Most Excellent Theatre Award at Shanghai’s International Children’s Theatre Festival, 2012 Helpmann Award for Children’s Theatre, 2010 Rodney Seaborn Award, 2006 Jill Blewett Playwrights Award, and 2002 Colin Thiele Scholarship.

Kruckemeyer has been a keynote speaker at the Ubud Writer’s Festival (Indonesia), the TYA USA National Conference, and the ITAYRN Argentina Conference, among others. He has delivered papers or sat on panels at conferences/festivals in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Denmark, England, Indonesia, Scotland, Sweden and the US, with papers published.

He was one of 21 selected worldwide for the ASSITEJ Next Generation (young leaders in children’s theatre), and has sat on the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board, Australian Script Centre board, Australian Writers Guild Playwrights Committee, and various Arts Tasmania panels. He is currently a board member of the Story Island Project board (promoting youth literacy and empowerment through storytelling with Tasmania’s most marginalised young people).

Kruckemeyer was born in Ireland, and emigrated to Adelaide at eight. In 2004, he moved with his wife Essie to Hobart, from which he now writes for national and international companies. He is committed to making strong and respectful work for children, which acknowledges them as astute audience members outside the plays, and worthy subjects within. His son Moses was born in 2014.

The Violent Outburst That Drew Me To You plays at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler from 2 May to 18 May 2019.

Published on 4 September 2018

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