Oriel Gray
| Oriel Gray | |
|---|---|
| Born | Oriel Bennett 26 March 1920 Sydney, New South Wales |
| Died | 30 June 2003 (aged 83) Heidelberg, Victoria |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter |
| Nationality | Australian |
Oriel Gray (26 March 1920 – 30 June 2003) was an Australian dramatist, playwright and screenwriter who wrote from the 1940s to 1960's. The major themes of her work were "social and political issues such as the environment, Aborigines, assimilation and bush life".
Gray was born Oriel Bennett in Sydney, New South Wales. She came from a politically active family and was herself a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1942 to 1950.
She married John Gray in 1940, an actor whom she met while at the Sydney New Theatre and they had a son, Stephen. By 1947 her marriage had broken down and she moved on to a long term relationship with John Hepworth with whom she had two more sons, Peter and Nicholas. Gray died from a heart attack, aged 83 in Heidelberg, Victoria, on 30 June 2003.
From 1937 to 1949 Gray wrote and acted for the Sydney New Theatre, and it was here that her first play Lawson, a play based on the short stories of Henry Lawson, was performed in 1943. The Sydney New Theatre had the reputation of being left wing and avant garde and was modeled on the new radical and political theatre movement in the United States.
In 1942 Gray was appointed as the first paid Australian playwright-in-residence. She was commissioned to write a weekly radio segment for the New Theatre on 2KY.
In reviewing plays, L. L. Woolacott, critic and editor of the Sydney Triad magazine, described Gray as "one of the most significant and talented Australian playwrights whose work has so far been produced here".
The 1955 award by the Playwrights' Advisory Board for best play was given jointly to Gray's play The Torrents and to Ray Lawler's play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Gray's play, with its themes of "feminism and the saving of the environment", did not have popular appeal in a very conservative era, and there was only one amateur performance recorded. It was not published until 1988 and did not have a professional production until 1996 by the State Theatre Company of South Australia at the Adelaide Festival of Arts. In the sixties the play was turned into a light-hearted musical, called A Bit O' Petticoat, with music composed by Peter Pinne.
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