The desire to affirm and challenge: an interview with Hannie Rayson

Abstract

Hannie Rayson is one of Australia’s leading playwrights whose career spans more than twenty years. Her first major success, Hotel Sorrento (Playbox Melbourne, 1990), won that year’s Green Room Award for Best Play as well as the Australian Writer’s Guild Award. In 1994 Richard Franklin filmed it in association with the Australian Film Finance Commission, and both the playscript (revised and reprinted in 2002) and the film as video are regularly prescribed for secondary and tertiary courses. A decade later, Life After George (MTC, 2000) broke box office records for the Melbourne Theatre Company and, amongst its many awards, was the first Australian play to be nominated for the Miles Franklin Award. One could say that after Rayson’s nomination playwriting in Australia had finally been admitted to the Australian literary mainstream.