Supporting writers to create their boldest work yet
The Telescope New Writing program commissions up-and-coming playwrights to make their big, bold and ambitious concepts a reality on stage. The program gives life to new plays that are experimental, inventive and imaginative in their style, form, themes and topics. We throw all ideas on the table and make that happen on stage. The program supports writers to create work that they may not be able to anywhere else.
Across the development period, playwrights work with the Observatory team and associate artists, receiving dedicated feedback, workshopping and creative development. The program culminates in a premiere season of the brand new play.
If you are a playwright, find out how you can get involved by clicking here.
Reading and Creative Development of Dead Bat on the Night Shift by Samantha Hill, November 2024
Photo by Lucy Rayner-Toy
Moved Reading of Pony Club by Grace Wilson, supported by Backbone's HUB Residency, October 2024
Photo by Georgia Haupt
Welcome new 2025 commissions
Introducing our newest playwrights who are developing work through the Telescope program - Sophie Wickes and Jules Broun
Find out more about their plays below.
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Currently in development
THE PRINCESSES IN THE TOWER (Working Title)
Writer Sophie Wickes
About The Play: What would teenage princesses do if their uncle had their parents murdered to reclaim the crown, opened the gates for Nazi domination across Europe, and locked them in a tower? They would seek violent revenge. Duh. The Princesses in the Tower is a darkly comedic, feminist revenge tragedy set in an alternate 1944 Britain, where King Edward VIII rules as a Nazi puppet and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret are held captive in the Tower of London, unaware of their uncle’s role in their parents’ deaths. The play is a sharp tale of sisterhood, vengeance, and the brutal cost of survival under fascism.
The play was first developed in 2021 as part of Sophie's Honours project. Her research explored the masculine legacy of the revenge tragedy in contemporary theatre and argued there is space for female voices to re-vision the genre with nuance and power. Sophie is excited by the prospect of re-developing this play with freedom to explore its scope without limits. She is also very interested in expanding upon themes that feel disturbingly relevant in our current political climate.
The Princesses in the Tower is commissioned through the Telescope New Writing Program. Observatory Theatre receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
About Sophie: Sophie Wickes (she/her) is an emerging playwright, performer and producer based in Magandjin. She is a graduate of the University of Queensland, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Drama – culminating in a practice-led research project in playwriting. Sophie has produced and performed in independent theatre productions in Queensland, most notably Good Time Theatrics’ production of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman (2022) – where she co-directed and played the role of Katurian. Her short plays have been presented by the Backbone Youth Ensemble (2020) and through Underground Theatre Company’s Short Play Festival (2023). In 2024, Sophie was a part of La Boite Theatre’s Assembly cohort and the ATYP Fresh Ink National Mentorship Program. She currently works for Monkey Baa Theatre Company as their Queensland-based Associate Producer and Teaching Artist. Sophie is ultimately interested in creating work that centres the female experience and makes people laugh, cry and feel a little less alone.
OUROBOROS (Working Title)
Writer Jules Broun
Ouroboros (pronounced oo-ruh-bo-ruhs) centres around the matriarchal noble class in a neighbouring galaxy not-too-far away from ours in a not-too-distant future. Heightened, dramatic, comedic and uncomfortable, relationships and power dynamics are explored and challenged in this misandristic – utopia?
Ouroboros is inspired by current conversations about feminism/equality and the manosphere, and the global trends of democratic backsliding and rises in totalitarianism and autocracy. Following her recent work Famished Future Feeders, Jules returns with sharp banter, eccentric characters, and visually … striking (gruesome!) staging as she outlandishly toys with futurism while tackling topics only too relevant today. Taking inspiration from popular media, Jules has been brain-rotting on A Song of Ice and Fire fanfiction for the past three years and wrote part of a scene directly after rewatching the pilot episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Ouroboros is commissioned through the Telescope New Writing Program. Observatory Theatre receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
About Jules: Jules (she/they) is a Queensland-based actor and playwright. Graduating with a Bachelor of Acting and Performance from the University of Canberra/TAFE Queensland (South Bank) in 2021, her first attempt at playwriting resulted in the short play Valour Victory Virtue (2019) during a Critical Performance unit. Her first full-length play Famished Future Feeders (2024) was commissioned and produced by TAFE Queensland Acting’s alumni theatre company Robert the Cat in 2022, co-directed by Lisa O’Neill and Anatoly Frusin, and premiered at Metro Arts. She has collaborated with Georgia Politakis on Hey, You (2023) for La Mama Explorations as well as Observatory Theatre in the creative development of various new works since 2022. She is also working on an original script for Profound Visions and wrote a live children’s show for OZPIX Entertainment featuring Humphrey B. Bear that is planned to debut in early 2025.
PONY CLUB (Working Title)
Writer Grace Wilson
Development History
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Backbone Youth Arts HUB Residency, October 2024 - Work-In-Progress Reading. Find Out More.
About The Play: "Pony Club" is an overnight fan-fiction sensation - with over 90 thousand reads and 22 thousand favourites, the name is synonymous with success. Little does the public know that the author PonyLuvr459 is a group of five teenage writers and they plan to keep it this way. One doesn’t have time for stardom, two have overbearing parents, one owns a cattle farm and the other is scared to be seen writing, well, fanfiction. That is until one team member anonymously leaks the identities of the five writers to the world before their big finale chapter. Confused, conflicted, and thrust into a world of Harry Potter superfans, a Twitter coup and a Tom Felton cameo, the team must figure out who the mole is before the rest of PonyLuvr459 is leaked to the rest of the internet.
Pony Club is commissioned through the Telescope New Writing Program. Observatory Theatre receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
About Grace: Grace Wilson is a 19-year-old playwright living in Meanjin, Queensland and has been involved in writing for stage for several years now. She has received awards for her works in this genre including the 2022 Queensland Theatre’s Young Playwrights’ Award, and was shortlisted for Sydney Theatre Company’s Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the Griffin Award and the Queensland Premier's Drama Award. She has prose published with Regional Arts Australia, and has also been longlisted for two commissions: the ATYP Foundation Commission, and the Martin Lysicrates Prize. Over the past two years, she has completed playwriting training programs including JUTE WriteSparks, Queensland Theatre’s Young Writers’ Ensemble and ATYP Fresh Ink Mentoring. She is currently under commission with Queensland University of Technology.
DEAD BAT ON THE NIGHT SHIFT (Working Title)
Writer Samantha Hill
Development History
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December 2024 - Reading and Creative Development
Sloane is disillusioned with mindless, low-skilled work, but knows it's her path for the next 30 years. Relationships and children are not going to happen, and it’s been so long since she had a real friend that she’s wondering if her life has any purpose at all. But then she hits on a solution. That special tarot card that has followed her around her whole life has been trying to tell her something: Sloane’s meant to kill her boss and save everyone. Obviously. Dead Bat on the Night Shift is a black comedy about people searching for community, and some kind of life and identity beyond work.
Dead Bat on the Night Shift is commissioned through the Telescope New Writing Program. Observatory Theatre receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
Samantha Hill is a Brisbane-based writer, teacher, and actor. She predominantly works in theatre but was one of the 2022 winners of Queensland Writers' Centre's Scriptable competition for emerging screenwriters, with her TV series, ‘Miss Teen America & the Wooltown Roadkill.’ She has developed scripts with Playwriting Australia, Small & Loud, and ATYP. In 2016, she was commissioned to write ‘Binary Stars & Best Lives’ by Red Line Productions for the Old Fitz Theatre, and previously had ‘Dancing Dogs’ commissioned by St. Martin’s Youth Theatre, Melbourne. In 2017, Samantha was awarded the inaugural playwriting Hot Desk Fellowship through the Wheeler Centre (Vic). She has had two scripts published by Australian Plays Transform. In 2021, she won Best Actress at the British Web Awards for ‘Incoming: Words of War,’ and in 2016, she was nominated for the Best Emerging Talent Award at the Ozflix awards for her starring role in the feature film, ‘Trench.’