From the late-80s to the mid-90s I formed collaborations with theatre practitioners including Julian Meyrick and Ariette Taylor, Louise Fox and Paul Capsis, designer Louise McCarthy and composer Anthony Crowley.
My first plays were staged by Kickhouse Theatre for the Melbourne Fringe Festival (St Rose of Lima; Grace Among the Christians; Fun & Games with the Oresteia). St Rose of Lima was nominated for a Green Room Award for Best New Australian Play. Fun & Games with the Oresteia won the ABC Radio National Pick of the Fringe Award.
Other productions of my original or co-written works were produced by the Melbourne International Festival (Sabat Jesus), Playbox Theatre and the Adelaide Festival (Disturbing the Dust), the Sydney Festival (St Rose of Lima), St Martins Youth Arts Centre (Vincent: an Acapella Opera), and the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (The Villain of Flowers). In 2010 I co-adapted (with Louise Fox) Dario Fo’s Elizabeth: Almost by Chance a Woman for Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre. This adaptation was also staged by the Queensland Theatre Company in 2012.
My Ancient Rome-set historical fiction novels, Den of Wolves and Nest of Vipers, were published by Penguin Random House in Australia and New Zealand in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and later translated into Spanish, Serbian, Russian and Turkish international editions. My most recent novel, the Australian Gothic mystery The Secret Heiress, was published by Simon & Schuster in Australia and New Zealand in April 2016.
| DISTURBING THE DUST by Luke Devenish |
