By Sharon Verghis
12 February, 2002
Three plays about small town politics, mortality and the idea of love as a "strange, twisted rose" have taken the $20,000 SMH/Patrick White Playwrights' Award.
The winners - Melbourne-based Jackie Smith and Sydneysiders Toby Schmitz and Brendan Cowell - yesterday split the prize with stories inspired by personal experiences of life in the city and the country, soured love and the search for soulmates.
It has been a journey marked by financial hardship, says 38-year-old Smith, originally from rural NSW, who adds that her $5000 share of the prizemoney will alleviate the penury that has so often "nibbled into her writing time".
Her play, The Aliens, deals with the dynamics of country life, the problems of isolation and youth suicide.
It is a far cry, she says, from the ideal of the "drover and his dog" that so often drives urban Australians' view of the bush and crops up so obsessively in our literature.
For Brendan Cowell, 25, his play, Bed, was a means of exploring the idea of how love changes someone, what impact relationships have on the soul and character over a lifetime.
A few key questions "niggling at the back of the head" proved to be the catalyst for his winning work. "Are we the same lover throughout our lives? Do we change in love? What in love is true and hence what is true love?"
The prizemoney represents a move into a creative life far from Cowell's early days at the Old Fitzroy theatre, when a dead rat fell from the ceiling on an audience member while he was staging his first play.
He laughs, still aghast at the memory. His fortunes have improved since those days, with his third play, ATM, staged as part of the recent Sydney Festival
For Toby Schmitz, 24, who was awarded $10,000 of the total prize money for the high creative standard of his play, Lucky, love is "a strange and twisted rose".
It is a universal tale for the young, says Schmitz, who says he was motivated to write of these topics - alienation in a big city and the search for love - because of his own experiences coming from Perth to Sydney a few years ago.
In the end, there is love to be found out there, he says, albeit in often strange forms. "There's some comfort to be drawn, too, in the fact that at least you're not the only one looking for a soulmate," he explains. "So many others out there are too."
This article was found at http://www.old.smh.com.au/news/0202/12/entertainment/entertain6.html