Melissa Reeves Wins 2016 Griffin Award

Griffin Theatre Company has awarded Melissa Reeves the 2016 Griffin Award for new Australian writing, for her play The Zen of Table Tennis.

The Griffin Award is a national competition that recognises an outstanding play or performance text that displays an authentic, inventive and contemporary Australian voice, with the winner receiving a $10,000 prize.

Melissa was announced as the winner of this year's Award at a special event at the SBW Stables Theatre last night, at which excerpts of the five shortlisted plays were read by actors Wadih Dona, Sophie Hensser, Lucia Mastrantone, Charles Wu and Elan Zavelsky. The other shortlisted plays were: Savage by Jane Bodie; Body Farm by Michael Collins; promiscuous/cities by Lachlan Philpott; The Age of Bones (Jaman Belulang) by Sandra Thibodeaux.

Melissa is well known to Melbourne audiences. Her plays have been seen at Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Back to Back Theatre and Melbourne Workers Theatre. Her plays include Furious Mattress, The Spook, Sweetown, Road Movie and Salt Creek Murders. She has also co-written a number of works including Who's Afraid of the Working Class and it's film adaptation Blessed, with Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius and Christos Tsiolkas.

Her winning play The Zen of Table Tennis explores the impact of both real and imagined war. The play centres around two characters - a soldier who has returned from Afghanistan and a 13-year-old boy who has been playing violent video games. Both suffer from the horrors of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. About her inspiration for writing the play Melissa said, "I became interested in society's misconception around the realties of war. And how popular culture amplifies our false awareness through movies, and in particular, video games. I hit upon the idea of a young boy who experiences the horrors of PTSD through playing war games."

The Griffin Award has a long history of recognising new talent and cementing the careers of Australian writers. Previous winners include Lachlan Philpott, Debra Oswald, Mary Rachel Brown and Brendan Cowell. Last year's winning play, Stephen Carleton's The Turquoise Elephant will be directed by Gale Edwards as part of Griffin's 2016 Season later this year. Angus Cerini's The Bleeding Tree, which took out the Award in 2014, was recently awarded a NSW Premier's Literary Award and last week received a Helpmann nomination for Best Play.