Actor and emerging playwright Wendy Mocke has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Griffin Award, a $10,000 prize directed to “an outstanding play or performance text that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice.”

Indicative, perhaps, of the number of plays written or conceived during the COVID lockdowns, this year’s Griffin Award judges received a record 144 entries.

From those, a shortlist was compiled of plays by writers Kate Bubalo, Cassie Hamilton, Laurence Rosier Staines, Grace Wilson and Brendan Hogan.

The 2023 Griffin Award winner Wendy Mocke. Photo © Sarah Hadley

Mocke’s play I Am Kegu, the story of a Papua New Guinean woman pressured into a marriage to the son of a village chief, was selected as the winner by a panel including Griffin’s Artistic Director Declan Greene, its Literary Manager Dylan Van Den Berg and playwright Angela Betzien.

Accepting the award, Mocke said “I know my ancestors held my hands writing this play. It has been a labour of love and self-realisation.”

Mocke is an actor, writer and visual artist. A former member of Sydney Theatre Company’s Emerging Writers Group, Mocke’s I am...