Biography
Alana Valentine is a librettist, playwright and director.
In 2021 she wrote and directed the Sydney Festival/Walkleys Award series THE JOURNALIST GENE, innovating a new form of interview panel with performance elements. As co-writer, with Ursula Yovich, of Barbara and the Camp Dogs she was awarded both a 2019 Helpmann Award and 2020 Green Room Award for Best Original Score, as well as a Helpmann for Best Musical and Green Room for Best New Australian Work. In 2019 Alana wrote the libretto for the critically acclaimed song cycle Flight Memory with composer Sandra France and many of her award-winning plays feature original songs including The Sugar House, Head Full of Love and Ladies Day.
Alana also works as dramaturg with Bangarra Dance Theatre and was part of the creative team for their Helpmann Award winning best new Australian work, Bennelong for which she wrote lyrics with composer Steve Francis, as well as working as dramaturg on their dance theatre productions of DARK EMU, PATYEGARANG, and ID (Belong).
In 2019 the Seymour Centre in Australia presented Made To Measure, a commission from the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, where Alana was Writer in Residence. Alana has been awarded four Australian Writers Guild awards and a Churchill Fellowship and she previously worked with six First Nations singers on the narrative concert Barefoot Divas: Walk A Mile In My Shoes. She has also received a Centenary Medal for her work on the Centenary of Federation, a Cultural Leadership Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts and a Literature Fund Fellowship.
‘Valentine, an essential Australian dramatist, who writes the marginalised and oft-persecuted fringes of Australia into our dramatic canon with long-denied dignity and grace.’
– TIME OUT MAGAZINE
News
Performing History
Playwright Alana Valentine and writer Sheila Ngoc Pham reflect on the writing of Sydney histories on the stage. Alana will speak about writing the history of Sydney institutions including the Parramatta Girls Home in her playParramatta Girls, the Pyrmont CSR Sugar...
Send For Nellie
As part of its Pride (R)evolution exhibition, the Library will be celebrating Nellie’s 33-year career in her own words, through archival recordings and newspaper interviews, as well as the words of her contemporaries, many of whom I interviewed more than 30 years...
2018 Philip Parsons Lecture
In this year’s Phillip Parsons lecture, award-winning playwright Alana Valentine reflects on her experience of bringing into the theatre the lived experience of diverse, community, regional and local audiences to hear their own stories in the context of the...