Already an award-winning playwright, Michelle Law has been named the new Patrick White Playwrights Fellow by Sydney Theatre Company, while regional writer and theatre-maker Disapol Savetsila has won the 26th Patrick White Playwrights Award for his play Ama and Nana.

The announcements were made by Sydney Theatre Company on Wednesday 19 May, with Savetsila’s winning play presented as a rehearsed reading at the company’s Wharf 2 Theatre on Tuesday 18 May.

Michelle Law and Disapol Savetsila. Photo © Daniel Boud

Law, whose stage works include Single Asian Female, Top Coat and Miss Peony, will undertake a year-long fellowship that includes developing a new work for STC and mentoring participants in the company’s Watershed: Writers program.

Calling the appointment “one of the biggest pinch-me moments” of her career, Law reflected on travelling from regional Queensland with her family to see productions at Sydney Theatre Company as a young person.

The fellowship, now in its 16th year, carries a $25,000 commission for an established playwright in recognition of their body of work and supports the creation of a new play. Previous fellows have included Joanna Murray-Smith, Wesley Enoch, Andrew Bovell and Kate Mulvany.

Savetsila received the Patrick White Playwrights Award for Ama and Nana, a contemporary drama exploring migration, motherhood and political inheritance through the lives of two older women navigating social and political marginalisation.

“I’m so proud to accept the Patrick Playwrights Award,” Savetsila said. “Ama and Nana is proudly a regional story, and I am proudly a regional writer.”

Savetsila, a graduate of the University of Wollongong, first worked with STC when his debut full-length play Australian Graffiti was staged in 2017. He has since co-written several works for Theatre versus Everything and has become an advocate for regional theatre practice in Bathurst, NSW.

The Patrick White Playwrights Award, established in 2000 in honour of Nobel laureate Patrick White, awards $7,500 annually for an unproduced full-length play by an Australian playwright.