Pioneer Play Festival: Celebrating Australian voices

A two-day festival celebrating Australian voices will be held in Castle Hill this weekend.

Tom Harwood, Jannie Gee and Andrew Guy from Boy Out of the Country. Picture: Alison Lee Rubie

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A two-day festival celebrating Australian voices will be held in Castle Hill this weekend.

Presented by the Sydney-based Company of Rogues, the Pioneer Play Festival showcases Australian theatre and performance.

The inaugural festival, at the recently reopened Pioneer Theatre, includes performances, workshops and activities on Friday and Saturday.

The festival includes the 50th anniversary performance of Norm and Ahmed, a pioneering work about difference, culture and generational change.

The festival includes a performance of Alex Buzo's Norm and Ahmed.

Also on the bill is the Sydney premiere of Boy Out of the Country.

It is a fast, funny and darkly observant look at family, property and the progress of life, starring Brendan Miles (A Place to Call Home), Tom Harwood (Things Not to do After a Break Up) and Jason Glover (Van Dieman’s Land).

For younger theatre fans, the festival will host an interactive workshop for children aged 12 and under called Kid’s Creative Play.

IN OTHER NEWS

As part of the festival, a new playwrighting competition called the Pioneer Play Award was created and an inaugural winner has been chosen: Gravity Guts by Sophia Simmons.

Gravity Guts tells the story of a teenage girl as she tries to follow her dream of being an astronaut and break free from her father’s orbit.

Simmons will receive her award on Friday, November 23, in an event that will also include a prepared reading of the play by Belvoir Street’s Dom Mercer.