The Seeds Are Sown

Earlier this year, more than 50 writers from across the country gathered at the Seymour Centre to discuss their craft. The need for a central place for writers to collaborate and corroborate became a topic of interest, thus the Wild Seeds Playwright Nexus was born.

This initiative will be introduced via Fringe Festival putting writers front and centre. “There’s a huge amount of writing talent in this country and for a long time the craft has been a kind of sideline to the producer game,” says creator and organiser Rowan McDonald. “The process is really to take every industry cliché we can think of and crush it into a tiny ball of submission.”

The project is driven by writers, for writers and about writers – and may very well be the most ambitious of its kind in a long time. To introduce Wild Seeds Playwright Nexus, McDonald plans to “call all cars, pull all strings and bar no holds”. “You never know who might turn up for an impromptu song,” he says, describing the eclectic bill which includes emerging, established and unexpected artists.

McDonald is no stranger to the Fringe scene with 2014 marking his third festival in Sydney as a performer and second as a producer. Last year, his team won Festival Pick for Theatre, and took their show Decadence to Adelaide 2014. “Fringe can mean all kinds of things to different people whether it’s dance or theatre or comedy or experimental live art,” McDonald says. “They’re are great for meeting like minds, so the Festival Hubs and theatre foyers are electric. If it were up to me we’d have this kind of thing running all year round...”