SUDS 2026 Winter Festival - August 2nd Event 1

Workshop: Playwriting with Hilary Bell

In collaboration with the TaPS department, SUDS is very excited to host Paul Dwyer and Hilary Bell in a theatre-writing workshop to send you on your playwrighting journey! Come join us for this special opportunity! Limited spots available!

Story Seeds: Playwriting Workshop with Hilary Bell

Character, conflict, subtext, dialogue… Where do you start if you’re new to playwriting? How can you crack open the seed of a story, park your perfectionism, and keep getting ideas down on paper? When is it time to raise the stakes for your characters and your audience? What are you looking for as you interrogate and refine your early ideas? Join Hilary Bell, one of the Australia’s preeminent writers for stage, radio, screen and music theatre, for a half-day workshop to get that play you didn’t know you had to write underway.

Portions of this event may be filmed for departmental use in the development of an educational resource. If you would like to make sure yourself and/or any appearance of your work are excluded from this material, please let the event co-ordinators know either on the day or by emailing us at sudsthewash@gmail.com.

When: 2pm on Sunday August 2nd.

Where: Those who RSVP will recieve information about where on campus to meet in an email the night before the event!

About the creative:

Hilary is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Her plays have been produced nationally around Australia, by The Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir, Griffin, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Black Swan, La Boite, Arts Centre Melbourne, and other leading companies. Internationally she’s been produced in Europe, in the USA by companies including Atlantic and Steppenwolf, in London by The National’s Connections programme, and at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe/House of Oz. She also writes lyrics and libretti for opera, musicals and song cycles, including Starstruck The Stage Musical (with Mitchell Butel) and Picnic at Hanging Rock: The Musical (with Greta Gertler Gold which premiered last year Off-Broadway.

A very special thanks to the TaPS department for making this collaboration possible!

Please RSVP to this event if you wish to attend. There are a limited number of spots available.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, on which this event takes place. As a society that exists to tell stories, it is important to acknowledge that stories were being told on this land for thousands of years before colonisation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Contact the host of SUDS Winter Festival 2026; Workshop - Writing for Stage with Hilary Bell