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Supporting emerging writers to create their biggest work yet
The Telescope New Writing Program supports emerging playwrights to make their ambitious new works a reality on stage. We commission them to write daring, adventurous and imaginative stories, encouraging growth, learning and experimentation across the process. Writers are given creative license to run amok, throw all ideas on the table and see what sticks. The program also offers unique opportunities to have their work seen by audiences and industry through a premiere production.
Across the process, playwrights work with the Observatory team and associate artists, receiving guidance, feedback, workshopping and creative development to grow the play to its fullest, most creative potential.
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
Previous writers
GRACE WILSON
"Observatory’s focus on nurturing writers from script to stage facilitates this learning, and the collaborative nature of the process means that the work is enriched by insights and ideas from a wide variety of artistic perspectives"
OLIVER GOUGH
"Telescope has helped to open up a wealth of new perspectives and ideas about the work, and the craft of writing and making theatre in general. It’s been great to feel both supported and productively challenged by the company and generous associate artists across the whole process"
SAMANTHA HILL
"Observatory's expertise and thoughtful guidance have shaped my work in exciting and unexpected ways, while their trust has given me the freedom to fully explore the ideas that drive my writing"
In development
Currently in development
WASTED (Working Title)
Writer Annabel Gilbert
About The Play: Corporate events are famously flashy, often to a bizarre extent considering the mundane nature of business they usually address. But what weight does this level of consumption bear? Frighteningly, The Wharves event spaces generate approximately 10kg of food waste per employee everyday, and at the ColaGren annual corporate dinner, amongst the crowd of attendants and employees alike, it won’t just be wasted food but wasted people, wasted potential, wasted time and one wasted life. Set in our era of increased decadence and frivolousness, yet also increased inequality, Wasted is a multi-protagonist environmentally political farce that explores the intersections of environmental and social issues, questioning when does protocol hinder progress?
Wasted is commissioned through the Telescope New Writing Program. Observatory Theatre receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
About Annabel: Annabel is a Meanjin based playwright and theatremaker with a knack for the colourful and quirky. Having graduated from QUT’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (Drama) with Distinction, she has further developed her craft through La Boite’s 2024 Assembly (Writing Stream), Dead Puppet Society’s 2025 Lab and Playlab’s 2025 Incubator. In 2023, under Steve Pirie’s mentorship she wrote Bug House, a one act play that had productions at La Boite with Vena Cava Productions and at The Big Penny Social in London by Performers' College Brighton alumni in 2025 (as a staged reading). Additional international projects include The Art of Courage Ukraine of which Annabel was a co-writer for both its Italian season by the QUT 2023 Acting Cohort and its 2024 Brisbane season at PIP Theatre. Currently, she is writing Trolley Bandits, a two act magical realism comedy exploring the Australian supermarket duopoly and youth crime fear mongering, under Kathryn Marquet’s mentorship.
PAID! (Working Title)
Writer Alexandra Ellen
About The Play: PAID! follows the relationship between Azzi, a disabled woman and her new support worker, Didi. As their dynamic unfolds, Azzi begins to find her voice and agency, while Didi is challenged on her unconscious ableism and learns new, inclusive ways of working together. Azzi’s world is complicated by family: her neurodivergent sibling Charlie is also her housemate, and their overbearing and judgmental mother Heather drops in often to “help,” though her presence usually causes more chaos than calm. When Charlie and Didi begin to form an unexpected bond, Azzi is confronted with feelings of betrayal, independence, and the messy overlaps of family and paid care. At its heart, PAID! is about power, trust, and intimacy. It explores how ableism can creep into the everyday, but also how new ways of listening, supporting, and collaborating can emerge.
PAID! is commissioned through the Telescope New Writing Program. Observatory Theatre receives funding from Creative Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.
About Alexandra: Alexandra is a Meanjin-based actor, playwright, and multidisciplinary artist. She believes artists are storytellers and is passionate about disabled stories being told by authentic voices through disability-led creative processes, an ethos that underpins all her art and advocacy. From 2017 to 2025, Alex was a member of the indelarts professional ensemble, participating in the development of Love Me; and performing in the award-winning Wilbur the Optical Whale. Her disability-led show Betsy and I premiered to a sold-out audience at Undercover Artist Festival in 2023 and was published by Playlab in 2024. With support from Redlands Performing Arts Centre, she is developing her cabaret Flabaret through the PASSAGE program. Alex was the Access Arts Achievement Award recipient in 2020 and part of La Boite’s ASSEMBLY writers’ cohort. Alex also serves on the Crossroad Arts Inclusive Advisory Group and board, and the Matilda Awards judging panel.
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 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.
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.
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