The National Studio

connecting young writers with Australia’s leading playwrights

Since 2010, ATYP’s iconic National Studio has been dedicated exclusively to emerging playwrights and their practice. Each year, twenty emerging writers (aged 18-26) are selected from all over Australia to spend a week in rural NSW.

During the residency, the writers are mentored and nurtured by playwrights and dramaturgs through masterclasses, small group tutorials and one-on-one sessions in a formative creative experience.

Over the course of the week, writers create a short piece for the stage for performers aged 14-17. Since 2016, selected plays have been produced under the title ‘Intersection’, and these scripts have been published by Currency Press, to be purchased and presented by schools around Australia.

Building on from National Studio, the selected plays published in Intersection are showcased at ATYP’s Intersection Festival. Schools and youth theatre companies across Australia create their own self-taped performance using one or more of the published plays, which acts as an audition for Intersection Festival. Out of these submissions, ten performances are selected and invited to participate in Intersection Festival, hosted at ATYP’s prestigious location in the Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. This is an opportunity for young performers to get a taste of performing on a professional stage, showcase their talents at The Rebel Theatre, and celebrate the tremendous work of Intersection’s writers. 

In 2024 the ATYP National Studio will be held from Monday 8 – Saturday 13 July at Bundanon Art Museum, Illaroo, NSW.

Please note: In light of the ongoing COVID-19 issues facing arts organisations, ATYP reserves the right to postpone the National Studio to a later date, or pivot to an online program at any time.

ATYP acknowledges the support of the Jibb Foundation and the Packer Family Foundation, who help make National Studio accessible to those who otherwise would not be able to attend.

THE FINER DETAILS:

  • Writers must be aged 18-26 years old at 8 July 2024
  • Writers can be based anywhere in Australia. Applications are encouraged from writers based outside NSW
  • Writers can be of any experience level from beginner to professional
  • We strongly encourage applications from First Nations people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, people from Disabled and d/Deaf communities, and people from LGBTQIA+ communities.

HOW TO APPLY:

To complete your application, you will need :

  • CV/Resume (maximum 2 pages) detailing any writing, theatre or creative arts experience, including any study
  • A writing sample (maximum 3 pages). This can be from an existing script and can be an excerpt or whole scene, or if you are new to theatre writing you can provide a sample of other writing (screen, poetry, audio work etc).

COST: The National Studio costs $500 for successful participants, regardless of where in Australia you live. Thanks to support from our donors, every person successfully selected for National Studio receives a scholarship subsidy of $1,500 from the total cost of the program. ATYP offers full scholarship places for those who could not attend otherwise. Please email [email protected] for a scholarship form.

Participation in National Studio includes:

  • Flights and transport to and from Bundanon
  • All meals and accommodation for the week during the stay at Bundanon
  • One week of mentorship, masterclasses and small-group tutorials with leading Australian playwrights.

THE DATES:

3 May – Applications due by 9am
30 May – Applicants notified
10-15 July – National Studio 2024

For further information please contact us on 02 9270 2400 or [email protected]

Applications for National Studio 2024 will open 25 March 2024.

the 2021 national studio

THE FINER DETAILS:

  • Writers must be aged 18-26 years old at 19 July 2021.
  • Writers can be based anywhere in Australia. Applications are encouraged from writers based outside NSW.
  • Writers can be of any experience level from beginner to professional.
  • We encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, gender identities, and all levels of mobility to apply.

HOW TO APPLY:

  • Complete the online application form below.

COST:

Thanks to generous support, the National Studio fee is subsidised and costs $450 for successful participants, regardless of where in Australia you live. ATYP offers scholarship places for those who could not attend otherwise. Please email [email protected] for a scholarship form.

Participation in the Studio includes:

  • Flights and transport to and from Bamarang
  • All meals and accommodation for the week during the stay at Bamarang
  • One week of mentorship, masterclasses and small-group tutorials with leading Australian playwrights.

THE DATES:

10 May – Applications due by 5pm
7 June – Applicants notified
19-24 July – National Studio 2021

For further information please contact us on 02 9270 2400 or [email protected].

APPLY:

1 Step 1
NATIONAL STUDIO 2021 APPLICATION

Please upload a PDF of your CV/resume.

Maximum 2 pages detailing writing experience, other experience in theatre, relevant employment history, and any study.

Please upload a PDF of your 3-page scriptwriting sample.

This can be from an existing work, and can be an excerpt or whole scene. If possible, your characters should be young people.

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Writers and mentors from past years

  • Jaz Allen (NSW)

    Jaz Allen is a writer, actor, and artist that enjoys the finer things, like daydreaming made up situations instead of asserting themself into the material affliction of shared reality, and cleaning out their childhood bookshelves and finding a scratch and sniff in a old picture book that still scratches and secretes sniffs and thinking wow that remind me of a different time, oh life, oh life, ohhhh……………………… Life. They current live alone in a studio apartment that has taken on the quality of a creepy storage unit containing all their mental breakdowns and lip synchs to Charlie xcx. They have worked at Sydney Fringe Festival, PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, and more. Jaz is loveable and warm, sometimes sticky when exposed to an open flame. They have worked as a producer of arts and culture at FBI Radio, been nominated for a CBAA award as a documentary editor and you can hear them every Wednesday at 4:30pm on FBI radios culture guide.
  • Emmett Aster (WA)

    Twenty-year-old Emmett Aster is an emerging multidisciplinary storyteller with an inability to commit to just one art form. Emmett burst onto the WA arts scene at fourteen as a musician and spoken word poet, where they were set apart by their honest and vulnerable writing style. Now, as the founder and director of ‘perhaps, a theatre company.’, Emmett has found his niche: sharing real, human stories through multi-modal performances that blur the lines of theatre.
  • Bella Battersby (NSW)

    Bella Battersby is queer non-binary award-winning writer who has just finished their MFA in Writing for Performance at NIDA. In 2020 they won the Darebin Mayor’s Writing Award for their prose piece titled ‘Bird’ and the following year they finished in the top 2% of RMIT, making it onto the ‘Vice Chancellors List for Academic Excellence’. They recently finished up as a digital editor for the literary publication Voiceworks and are currently working on a web-series titled Roaches, which is like Friends expect it’s actually funny, queer and Joey is a Russian sea-urchin. You can find them on twitter @mxbellabatman.
  • Ella Callow-Sussex (VIC)

    Ella sincerely hopes that as a writer and a person this bio will quickly become a misrepresentation. That she will learn and write and love so much between now and when you read this that she’d just have to give it another shot. For now, she is grateful, in awe and slightly terrified – but that is how all good things, friends and ideas have found her in the past. People are art and art is people. It’s one of the big reasons that anything matters. This all does matter, so very much.
  • Tyler Dias (NSW)

    Tyler Dias (he/him) is a Sydney-based writer/performer who creates relatable, flawed characters in stories that are rooted in his lived experience, yet feel universal. Passionate about creating comedy with heart, he is exploring the intersection between different forms of live comedy with theatre. Tyler directed the Screen Australia funded TikTok series Coach Dayum!, and frequently performs in live improvised comedy shows, including at Improv Theatre Sydney, Sydney Fringe Comedy, and Meraki Arts Bar with various teams. His team, Friends No Benefits, recently placed as overall runners-up in the Improv Comedy Cagefight grand final during Sydney Comedy Festival 2023.
  • Taylor Fernandez (SA)

    Taylor Fernandez is an emerging creative based on Kaurna land. She is studying her Honours in English at the University of Adelaide. Taylor sits on the board of the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild and is the elected President of the Student Society (TGSS) for 2023. With TGSS, she has performed in multiple productions, and directed Robert Egan’s stage adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Breakfast of Champions’. She was awarded the 2022 Flinders University Young Playwrights’ Award by State Theatre Company South Australia, for her play ‘Artifice Factory’.
  • Blake Hohenhaus (QLD)

    Blake Hohenhaus is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based playwright, producer and actor. Blake was a participant in ATYP’s Fresh Ink National Mentorship program (2022), La Boite’s Assembly (2020) and was the co-recipient of Queensland Theatre Young Playwright’s Award (2017). Blake is one-half of the creative team behind theatre collective Lunch Friend, who debuted at Anywhere Festival in May with “34 Scenes About the Weather”, for which Blake was producer and dramaturg. As an actor, he was a member of shake & stir theatre co’s Primary School Touring team (2021-2023). He holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts (Acting & Theatre Studies) from USQ (2020).
  • Aliyah Knight (NSW)

    Aliyah Knight (they/them) is a 21-year-old Sydney-based writer & filmmaker, currently in their final year of a Bachelor of Screen: Production at AFTRS. Their work explores queerness, coming-of-age, and navigating identity through lenses of horror and humour. Their screenwriting credits include short film ‘home bodies’ and short form episode ‘Haunted’. Aliyah is currently working on ‘Consume’, a body horror short that explores ideas of internalised homophobia and religious trauma.
  • Callum Mackay (VIC)

    Callum Mackay is a Melbourne/Naarm based award-winning playwright and actor originally from Sydney/Eora Country. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018, Callum has written five plays: ‘Brittany & The Mannequins’ (Fever103 Theatre), ‘the last train to madeline’ (Fever103 Theatre), ‘MEAT RAFFLE’, and ‘The Book of Daniel’ which will be performed mid next year. ‘Waterfowl’ won the 2023 Queer Playwriting Award, was long listed for Red Stitch’s INK program, a top ten finalist of the Lysicrates Prize and selected to be a part of kXt bAKEHOUSE’s 2022 Storytellers season. Callum also founded Fever103’s Greville Street Play Readings and currently serves as their literary manager.
  • Tasman McClymont-Griffiths (ACT)

    Tasman is a passionate writer and actor with a particular focus on telling queer stories that centre around the lives of LGBTQAI+ people. Growing up in Canberra, he developed a love for storytelling which led him to complete a summer intensive at the Los Angeles Stella Adler Art of Acting Studio and earn a diploma of screen acting at the New York Film Academy. With years of experience in story telling, he is committed to writing unapologetically for underrepresented communities. Currently, Tasman is pursuing a degree in Psychology at the University of Canberra, with a major in Creative Writing, exploring the complexities of the human experience and translating them into powerful narratives for stage and screen.
  • Caitlin Monk (NSW)

    I am a student at the University of Wollongong, doing a Bachelor of Arts in Western Civilisations with a Bachelor of Creative Arts, my major in creative writing. I am eager to write in theatrical on-stage pieces and am also interested in most prose writing. I enjoy writing serious dramatical pieces that have an awkward comedic quality to them, my work usually surrounds the comedy and tragedy of mundane life.
  • Olivia Niethe (NSW)

    Olivia Niethe is an emerging actor, writer, and sketch comedian from Woolgoolga, currently residing in Eora, Sydney. Olivia is interested in engaging with different mediums, particularly devised theatre, as she produces stories exploring rurality, friendship, nostalgia, and sexuality. At the core of her work Olivia seeks to explore questions of existentialism through grounded human experiences.
  • Jake Parker (NSW)

    Jake Parker (he/him) is a multidisciplinary writer currently working on Gadigal land. With a background in prose writing, his short stories and personal essays have lead him to work with Australian literary publications such as Overland. Following a recent shift into screen and playwriting, he is now completing his Masters of Writing for Performance at NIDA. Throughout all of his works, there is a particular focus on class, voluntary displacement and the mechanisms of friendship.
  • Bronte Rose Locke (QLD)

    Bronte Locke (she/her) is a writer and actor. Bronte studied Theatre at Naarm’s Victorian College of Arts and was cast in the Stan Original miniseries “Bad Behaviour” upon graduation. At VCA, she was an artist-in-residence at Arena Theatre Company and a cast member of the 2020 Melbourne University Law Revue, “Everything is Fine”. In 2022, she had the privilege of interning on Queensland Theatre’s “Bernhardt/Hamlet” (dir. Lee Lewis). If you asked Bronte to describe her writing style, she would say: “irreverent, rhythmic, dark; like a merry golden retriever playing the drums in a poorly lit room”.
  • Makaela Rowe-Fox (WA)

    Makaela Rowe-Fox is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based in Boorloo on Whadjuk Noongar land. Recently, she was commissioned by WA Youth Theatre Company to write her play The Pelican (2022) and was a writer/performer in Seven Sisters (Perth Festival, 2023). Makaela has independently choreographed and danced in December Project at AGWA (2020) and has exhibited at Bus Projects (VIC) and Cullity Gallery (WA). In 2019, she was awarded Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award for her leading role as a climate activist in the global School Strike 4 Climate movement. Makaela is interested in ecological interdependence across borders/bodies/biomes, as well as intervening in and disrupting neoliberal capitalist structures.
  • Megan Rundle (NSW)

    Megan is a writer and director from Boorloo/Perth WA, who recently relocated to Gadigal Land to develop her craft through NIDA’s Masters of Writing for Performance. Since 2018, she has put her distinct brand of comedy onto stages to critical acclaim, most recently winning her the Best Musical Weekly Award at Fringe World 2022 for her pop-rock musical Time Capsule. She has flexed her youthful, upbeat comedic voice through various plays, sketches and musicals, and aspires to continue exploring new stories relevant to the perspectives of young Australians.
  • Naleen Sandhu (NSW)

    I am Naleen Sandhu, a South-West Sydney writer who lives in Cringila for half the year to study at the University of Wollongong (UoW). I use writing as a vessel for my thoughts and I enjoy making art out of them, so that’s what I’ll do! I like to write about a lot but mainly my experiences with family and friends through relationships, love, morality and death. The bumps and potholes in our life paths are the most valuable parts of life, and we should treat them as such.
  • Pip Thoroughgood (NSW)

    Pip started their theatrical life as a frog; something no one would expect in the natural world, but then when have they ever been natural? They fully chose the creative life when they were given the opportunity of playing Michael Banks in the Sydney cast of Disney’s Mary Poppins (2011). They have worked extensively as a playwright, debuting with ‘I Hope It’s Not Raining In London’ (Bearfoot Theatre) and then going on to write the 2021 City of Newcastle Drama Association (CONDA) Award-winning Play; ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. They also have a passionate career in adaptation, adapting classic scripts such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Ghosts and Chekhov’s The Seagull.
  • Michael Van Berkel (NT)

    Michael has been an avid lover of theatre ever since his middle school and recently performed at Adelaide Fringe Festival with Big Dog Salad. However, through the Fresh Ink program last year, he’s recently become a novice script writer. For a while now he has wanted to explore concepts of identity, family, time and youth in creative writing and hopefully one day see those works performed on stage.
  • El Waddington (QLD)

    El Waddingham (they/them) is an artist, dancer & theatre maker from Yugumbeh country, currently studying a BFA (Acting) at QUT. They are an unapologetically loud voice in challenging theatrical convention, describing their work as a slap in the face with a palm full of biodegradable glitter. A proud queer artist, El performs in drag under the name Lady Diana, and will embark on a national tour of their drag show ‘HOMILY’ in 2023. El is also the artistic director of theatrePUNK co. They’ve worked across professional independent theatre sectors with companies such as The Farm, Queensland Theatre, La Boite, QPAC, Vena Cava and Tits Akimbo.
  • :: Mentors ::

  • George Kemp

  • Anchuli Felicia King

  • Lewis Treston

the voices project 2011-2016

Each year from 2011 – 2016 ten monologues were selected from the work created by the participants of the National Studio to go on to form The Voices Project production. It brought together the best new monologue writing from ATYP’s emerging playwright program, giving it a place on stage. Check out more in our Past Productions.

Some of the outstanding monologues from The Voices Project were adapted for film. Highlights below:

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