About Stages
Origins of Stages
STAGES was formed in the late 1980’s by the merging of two West Australian play development organisations; The Writers’/Performers’ Workshop and the WA Theatre Company’s Playwrights’ Workshop based at the Playhouse Theatre. It was felt at the time that play development services needed to be rationalised and that there was too much potential duplication in maintaining two separate organisations. With the encouragement and support of the Department for the Arts (now ArtsWA) the initial steering committee was formed and held its first meeting at the Alexander Library in late 1989. Members of that committee included playwrights, theatre company representatives and Australian Writers’ Guild members.
Agreement was reached that there should be an independent organisation raising and administering resources dedicated to the development of playwrights and their works. It was felt that theatre companies didn’t have the resources to respond quickly to playwright submissions and that this could be done much more efficiently through the new organisation which was to be called the Western Australian Playwrights’ Consortium. Later on the more user-friendly name STAGES was adopted. Together the initial steering panel which consisted of Aarne Neeme, Bruce Ridley, Phil Thomson, Pippa Williamson, Murray Oliver, Duncan Ord, Graham Gavin, Dickon Oxenburgh and John Aitken amongst others worked to raise the necessary funding to provide play development resources, office expenses and a salary to employ the first Director who was Stephen Agnew. STAGES opened its doors for business in April of 1991.
Vision
To be the leading professional organisation supporting, advocating and promoting the development of Western Australian playwrights and performance writing.
Mission
To maintain a professional organisation which supports new, emerging and established WA playwrights across a range of styles and genres to achieve the highest standards of professional performance writing, and to promote WA performance writing locally, nationally and internationally.