The Turquoise Elephant takes out the 2015 Griffin Award

30 June, 2015

Our congratulations go out to AWG member Stephen Carleton who has won the 2015 Griffin Award for his play, The Turquoise Elephant.  Another member, Christopher Bryant, was one of four shortlisted playwrights.

The Griffin Award is a national prize recognising an outstanding play that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice. Stephen receives a $10,000 cash prize, and each shortlisted playwright receives a $1,000 cash prize.

According to Stephen, The Turquoise Elephant is a black farce that explores the absurdity of the denialist position in relation to climate change, and parodies the inadequacy of the political response to it. The work was described by Radio National as a play about contrasts – grotesque privilege and dispossession, sanity and insanity, hope and fatalism.  

Stephen says The Griffin Award award was a terrific shot in the arm and is very important for him as a mid-career writer based in Brisbane.

“It helps get my work back out in front of a national audience and really is a wonderful opportunity to communicate what the piece has to say with a broader community. I can't wait to see how the humour and urgency of the piece - its absurdity, its very heightened playing style, its satirical riffing on our government's do-nothing approach to climate change - connects with audiences in Sydney and around the country."