The controversial Australian playwright had passed away aged 87.

Playwright and screenwriter Alan Seymour has passed away aged 87.

Born in Fremantle in Western Australia in 1927, Seymour began his career somewhat inauspiciously after leaving school at 15. After working within local radio as an announcer on the commercial station 6PM, and then briefly as an advertising copywriter and film critic, he began writing drama for the ABC in Sydney.

Seymour first came to national prominence in 1958, after penning the controversial, divisive, but hugely thought provoking play The One Day of the Year. Inspired by seeing drunken veterans brawling outside pubs on ANZAC Day, and by an article in the Sydney Newspaper Noi Soit lambasting the annual commemoration, Seymour’s play caused outraged when it was first performed in Adelaide in 1960. In stark contrast to the accepted sacrosanct attitude toward the annual ANZAC memorial day, The One Day of the Year was a critique of the blindly nationalistic and imperial mindset behind the war commemoration, suggesting a growing social divide existed within Australia as more people began questioning old values.

It was a radical narrative and Seymour received death threats, and a bomb scare delayed the opening of the first...