Interview with Mary Anne Butler
Mary Anne Butler is a multi award-winning playwright based in Naarm, Melbourne. A Sidney Myer Creative Fellow, an Arts NT Fellow, a Winston Churchill Fellow, a Regional Arts Fellow and an Asialink Fellow, Mary Anne is known for her sharp writing, resonating characters and powerful, honest dialogue.
In 2024 Mary Anne was a member of APT’s National Playwriting Groups cohort, a program which embeds a national playwriting group model within the Australian theatre ecosystem and connects playwrights across the country.
In this interview, Mary Anne shares some insights and highlights from her time in the group and how the experience connected her back to theatre.
Q: What was your experience in the group?
Mary Anne Butler: This program has been game changing for me – and I don’t say that lightly. At a time when I was seriously doubting my place in the national theatre world, this group has been one of the most empowering, inclusive, inspiring and motivating supports in my entire career. I have spent so much of my playwriting life feeling lonely, and isolated. This program has really helped alleviate that, by curating a terrific opportunity to connect with like-minded souls with whom to further build a community of trusted peers.
Q. What connected you back to your play and theatre?
Mary Anne Butler: The APT team, with Wesley, created an incredibly safe space wherein which we playwrights read and debated extant plays, wrestled opinions and ideas, shared resources and inspirations, and championed each other in our achievements. We read drafts of each other’s works in progress, and each received an hour-long group feedback session, which really moved my work along.
I was ready to abandon theatre and this particular play – but after every session, I was driven back to my laptop, writing intensely for days afterward. Somehow the courage of Wesley and the courage of my peers to rise through their shared doubts [this sharing being a vital part of the sessions] has given me the courage to stick with it.
I was also reminded: writing is just hard work. Write through the tough patches to the other side and all will be well!
Q. What were the sessions like?
Mary Anne Butler: A terrific opportunity to connect with like-minded souls – plus a heap of fun, to boot. The right balance [for me] of respect and irreverence, intellect and heart.
Wesley Enoch is a fiercely intelligent, cohesive, generous leader – a brilliant role model for how to conduct oneself in this industry. His questions to, and feedback on my work were pivotal in getting me to think deeper about the issues, and he offered me new structural choices which I hadn’t seen. He also affirmed everything that WAS working, which gave me courage to keep going.
I loved the relaxed-yet-pointed nature of the content, and the informal tone of delivery. There’s an agenda – but it’s pretty organic, which is perfect, it grows with us, and us with it. The days immediately after each session, I felt supercharged: re-energised, and re-inspired.
Q: What was your experience working with the other playwrights?
Mary Anne Butler: It’s one of the most inclusive and inspiring things I have ever done in my playwriting life. I felt nationally connected and included in a way I have never felt before. It truly is focused on us all rising together, in an industry which can – at its worst – tend towards division and elitism. As a national program, it’s a game-changer. I just wish that every playwright in Australia could be part of this!
Q: How did APT support you throughout the program?
Mary Anne Butler: The APT team managed this program impeccably and efficiently: providing us with ready access to scripts to read and then discuss, supporting us through any specific questions we may have, and sitting in on the sessions to provide further resources and support, as we go.
I know APT runs many great programs, but this one – to me – seems to nail an essential need of writers: community, networks, peers.
APT feels like a leading national organisation with this visionary model, showing national leadership by forging connections and equality between playwrights.
Photo of Mary Anne Butler by Emily Goddard.
