A few weeks ago when I was first asked the question: What are you reading? I had a really, really good answer. I was reading a contemporary Australian novel, and I was loving it. I would write a nice feel good piece about new Australian writing, the type of writing assignment that when finished makes you feel like you’ve swum twenty laps or eaten a particularly good sandwich.

But this feel good experience was taken away from me in a cruel turn of events when I received an email from a producer in Sydney saying we had funding for a project. In the world of theatre we all continually have our fingers in many creative pies. At each funding round, we offer up a few half-eaten creative concepts to the gods (read: funding bodies) and then wait to see if they get spat back down at us. I like to think of being a playwright as like being a secret agent, or a contestant on an elimination-based reality TV show, you have a metaphorical suitcase packed and ready to go whenever you get the word. And we got the word. FUNDING APPLICATION APPROVED! And so I put down The Rosie Project and jumped head first into my new world for the next few months: Biloela, an 1870s reformatory school for wayward girls located on Cockatoo Island. You know, that old world.