Shirley van Sanden – January 24 2016

International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust – January 27 2016

Shirley’s commissioned work for young people’s theatre includes 1001 Nights, Ghost Train,  Trains of Thought and Grendel and the Gladiator. In 2004, The New Girl, a puppet play she wrote as part of The Constable Care Child Safety Project, won the Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Award. Also in 2004 Hidden Dragons was nominated for Best New Play and won Best Production and Best Actor, Female at the WA Equity Guild Awards. Hidden Dragons also attracted a 2005 AWGIE Award nomination in the Children’s Theatre category. Trains of Thought has been nominated in the Theatre for Young Audiences category for the 2007 AWGIE Awards. Shirley has also written for children’s television.

The Warrior and the Princess
Australian Script Centre, 2013
70 minutes; 6 female, 9 male roles; 12+
The Warrior and the Princess is inspired by the extraordinary, little known true story of Chiune Sugihara, the WWII Japanese diplomat who disobeyed his government in order to save the lives of over 6000 Jewish refugees. Beginning in 1944 with Kiyoshi in an internment camp in Romania, starving and bereft of hope, it launches into the events that brought the protagonists together during the early years of WWII, with numerous flashbacks that flesh out the circumstances shaping the man who saved the lives of so many.

Hidden Dragons
Australian Script Centre, 2004
55 minutes; 1 female, 2 male; children +
A play about acceptance and conquering fear. On the morning of his 11th birthday, Brendan, an Australian-born Chinese boy, experiences a recurring nightmare where he witnesses a fight between a red and a blue dragon. Instead of his nightmare ending, Brendan’s deceased grandmother, Popo, appears to him in a continuing dream. Popo has enlisted the help of Brendan’s best friend, Scottie, in an attempt to help Brendan accept his ‘dragons’. Using traditional stories, make-believe and physical comedy, Popo and Scottie help Brendan come to terms with his red Chinese and blue Australian dragons.