Ian Robinson at Chisholm Institute.CHISHOLM professional writing program coordinator Ian Robinson has been awarded first prize in the 2006 National Playwright Competition.
Mr Robinson’s work will be performed at the Daylesford SwissItalian Festival in April. He has been a parttime teacher with the Berwick campus since 1996.
His repertoire extends far beyond writing for the stage and includes contributing over the years to publications and newspapers such as The Age, Farrago, Melbourne University Magazine, National U, Compass, The Australian Rationalist, Digger and The Curriculum and Research Bulletin; including writing and critiquing theatre for The National Times, Sunday Observer and briefly for The Melbourne Herald.
“I really enjoy a bit of playwrighting in my spare time.”
The Boroondura Theatre Company performed the top three scripts in the competition in the David Williamson Theatre at Swinburne University’s Prahran Campus.
Mr Robinson said they performed the last three short listed entrants on the night before going on to announce each placegetter in order of the performances.
The Fountain of Love is a 45 minute Commmedia dell’arte, which means the comedy of professionals. The Commedia was the origin of modern stage comedy and by the 16th century playwrights like Goldini in Italy and Moliere in France had begun to write plays based on commedia characters.
“The main characters in my piece were all familiar to the genre Harlequin, Scapino, Columbine, Pantalone, Isabella and il Dottore,” Mr Robinson explained
He said he particularly enjoyed writing The Fountain of Love, as it presented new challenges in formulating structure.
“The idea is that the fountain gives magical powers and whoever drinks from it first will cause those around them to fall in love – except everyone falls in love with the wrong person.
“So I had to work backwards in order of setting up characters so that in the end the right two characters fell in love,” he said. “There are a lot of standard comedic devices throughout the play, and I think I was able to use those well.”
Along with Mr Robinson’s involvement with a number of writer’s workshops and associations, he regularly maintains his interest in theatre, performance and across other mediums.
“I’m working on a screenplay at the moment with a friend who is a journalist and it’s a historical piece about a Lady Grace O’Malley and so we’re doing the research for that which is in its early stages.”
