Daniel Keene – October 15 2017

International Anti-Poverty Day – October 17 2017

Daniel has written for the theatre since 1979, with over 80 productions having been presented in Europe since 2000. His work has been presented at the Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide International Arts Festivals and at the Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company. Daniel has won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama twice, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Drama three times, the Adelaide Festival Award for Literature, the Wal Cherry Play of the Year Award, the Sumner Locke Elliot Prize (New York) and the Sydney Myer Performing Arts Award. Together with Ariette Taylor, he has also been awarded the Kenneth Myer Medallion for the Performing Arts for his contribution to Australian theatre through the Keene/Taylor Theatre Project. He was the first (and so far, the only) Australian playwright to be produced at the main program at the Avignon Festival, and major productions and tours of his work include theatres such as the Théâtre de la Commune in Paris, Scéne Nationale de Toulouse, Scéne Nationale de Valence, Scéne National de Bordeaux and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Seven volumes of his plays (French translations by Severine Magois) have been published by éditions Theatrales, Paris.

Mother
Currency Press, 2015; ISBN 9781925005547
Full length play; 1 female 0 male

Mother is a one-woman play that tells the story of Christie, a homeless woman in a world detached, unforgiving and destructive. It gives voice to the fallen and dispossessed, to those who exist at the edge of safety, at the point of being undone. It speaks of madness, denial, ignorance and free-falling poverty. Utterly devastating, yet written with Daniel Keene’s characteristic lyricism, Mother is wrought with tenderness, violence and loneliness in equal measure.

The Ninth Moon
Australian Script Centre, 1999
130 minutes; 1 female, 4 male
Cast age: 16-18, 18+; Audience age: young adult, adult
The Ninth Moon tells the story of a modern Mary and Joseph as they begin to construct a family. Aged 20, pregnant, runaways from violence and neglect, they have only love and hope to sustain them. This play charts the 9 moons of their pregnancy and sees a young couple taking their first steps into the adult world. Here Keene’s theme of the role of employment in society is examined in an inversion. It is the people Dan meets in his new job as a labourer who help to build their new family.