All lit and no play

Lot of heat in the blogosphere about the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards judges’ decision that no plays this year are worthy of nomination. Currency Press have issued a media release (which seems to have disappeared from their website, but you can read it here on James Waites' blog), but I think the best discussion is—perhaps not surprisingly—at Theatre Notes. Let’s use the NSW judges’ omission to have a real discussion about performance writing—what it is, and what it might be.

I’ve left a few comments around the traps, including on the Australian Literary Review blog. Unfortunately the responses there (those that aren’t in-crowd chit-chat about the event where the short-list was announced) dump on Australian performance writing. Sigh.

BTW I didn’t enter a play, so have no personal axe to grind.