By Alesha Capone
A TALENTED Footscray resident has 10,000 reasons to celebrate, after her play won a prestigious international competition.
Shannon Murdoch’s work ‘New Light Shine’ was selected as the winner of the 2011 Yale Drama Series contest, which attracted entries from 20 countries.
For her efforts, Ms Murdoch will receive a $10,000 prize, a staged reading of her show at the Yale Repertory Theatre in Connecticut and publication of her play.
Ms Murdoch said she went into “absolute shock” upon finding out she had won the competition.
“I had to have them repeat it about 10 times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming,” she said.
“You enter competitions like this hoping you will win but never thinking it will actually happen to you.”
Ms Murdoch’s playwriting career began she studied Theatre and Creative Writing at Griffith University and graduated from The Playwrights Studio at NIDA.
She has already chalked up some impressive theatrical achievements, with her other plays staged in America, Canada and Australia and several fellowships to her name.
As a full-time legal assistant, Ms Murdoch said she does not get to write as much as she would like.
However, she put a lot of work into ‘New Light Shine’ which centres on small-town characters whose lives are linked through crime and their attempts to erase the past.
“It took about 18 months to write and I wrote nine drafts of the play before being happy with it,” she said.
“The word count comes in at about 15,000 words, but I would have written about ten times that to get to the final draft.”
Ms Murdoch said playwriting could be hard to break into and advised budding writers to be persistent.
“My mum was a speech and drama teacher for many years and that was when my interest in theatre began,” she said.
“She took me to see ‘Cats’ when I was eight and that was the end for me. I was addicted for life.
“I’d love a play on Broadway. I’d also like to be a position where I can do it full time. I’m inching closer and closer to that being a reality.”
