Dear Grif-friend,
The different day our Executive Director Julieanne Campbell was visiting the still-standing SBW Stables Theatre. She advised me she pulled up one of many hatches we put in within the stage for The Lewis Trilogy—the one Nikki Vivica opened as much as dig in her tiny sq. of barren backyard in Summer of the Aliens.
Inside the trapdoor she discovered jacaranda petals that had rained down throughout the last moments of This Much Is True. They had one way or the other labored their means by means of the cracks of the floorboards, down into the entice. Still sitting there, six months later, ready patiently.
At that point again in April, we imagined that, inside weeks, all of it could be gone… That trapdoor, the floorboards, the partitions, the roof… To be rebuilt into a brand new period of Griffin and Australian theatre. But then, it didn’t occur. A month handed. Longer. Dramatically inflated building prices meant we couldn’t begin constructing. Emergency conferences have been taken. Donors rallied round us with affords of assist. The City of Sydney made a outstanding donation to assist transfer us nearer to the brand new purpose. But for the primary time, a darkish cloud loomed over this challenge, and the a long time of toil that had introduced us up so far.
If you noticed the article in the Australian Financial Review final week, you already know of the miraculous factor that’s occurred—Griffin has been awarded almost $5 million by the federal Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts. The grant we acquired is a part of Thriving Suburbs—a brand new initiative to ship funding in neighborhood infrastructure tasks. This feels notably particular to us, recognising the position Griffin performs in its local people and the significance of our reference to our neighbours, with native enterprise and native not-for-profits and assist organisations with whom now we have partnered for years.
With this new assist we will now announce that building will start in early 2025!
But this isn’t our solely trigger for celebration, right here on the finish of 2024. Just a few weeks in the past Golden Blood by Merlynn Tong closed in Melbourne. This capped off outstanding seasons at each Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company—introducing Merlynn’s ferocious, humorous, idiosyncratic voice to new waves of theatre audiences (in fact, you all noticed it first in 2022, so that you get to pull in your vape pen and mumble to your normie theatre pals: ‘Yeah, I knew Merlynn before she was even famous’).
And, in November, our Associate Artistic Director Andrea James acquired the Creative Australia Award for Theatre for her a long time of labor, “honour[ing] a visionary theatre-maker whose contributions have transformed the Australian theatre scene.” This is the second legacy award Andrea has acquired throughout her time at Griffin (she additionally acquired the biannual Mona Brand Award for Playwriting in 2022!), and jogs my memory to as soon as once more pinch myself, remembering how fortunate I’m to work with an artist of Andrea’s expertise, her imaginative and prescient and her management day by day right here within the Griffin workplace.
Most of us within the Griffin workplace are winding down over the following couple of weeks… That is, in fact, excepting our small however hard-working field workplace staff! They shall be standing by over the approaching fortnight to ebook you in for Alana Valentine’s Nucleus, both as a standalone present or as a part of a reduced subscription bundle—bundle up Nucleus with Michelle Lim Davidson’s Koreaboo and Ang Collins’ Naturism, and provides your loved ones what they really need for Christmas: nudity and Ok-Pop (NB: not on the similar time).
Have an exquisite vacation break, and I’ll see you all in 2025!
Much love,
Declan
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