Opportunity Beckons Our Young Talent
By Rod Smith
26 May 2002
One has just finished making a film with Kiefer Sutherland, one sings in a band and studying for a Ph.D. The third is writing two books at once.
As different as their talents may be, playwright Brendan Cowell, poet Kate Fagan, and novelist Laura Budd have one thing in common: they were born to write.
The young trio will join dozens of Australian and international wordsmiths showcasing their latest works at the 2002 Sydney Writers' Festival, which begins tomorrow.
They wil rub shoulders with vetern writers such as Bryce Courtenay, Robert Drewe, Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan during the week long series of forums and readings.
It will be a chance for Alexandria-based Cowell, 25, to promote his new play, Bed Head, which, with an earlier play, Men, is bound for a combined season in London's West End.
"It's about one man's life, told as he moves from lover to lover: how he changes as a lover and what people take from him," he says.
Cowell says he began writing plays after becoming fed up, as an actor, with sub-standard scripts.
"Ever since I was ten years old, I've been doing poetry in exercise books. But I began writing plays about three years ago in frustration after seeing 19 bad plays.'
Not that Cowell has abandoned acting. He's in the return series of SBS's Life Support (as Todd the handyman), and recently finished shooting a World War II film, To End All Wars, in Hawaii with Kiefer Sutherland and Robert Carlyle.