MJ Wilson’s background in the performing arts was established as a professional actor in the 1980’s. Wilson’s performance background informs his writing practice. More recently, MJ has crafted performance works and emerging practice as an independent producer. This includes the performance works Homage to Bricolage, SBSQ directed by Maude Davey, performed at the Butterfly Club, Testing Grounds and toured to Adelaide Fringe at the Bakehouse Theatre. His other works include Y Kan’t I be Tori as part of Mudfest at Union Theatre and Which E, What Tag produced through Footscray Community Arts Centre. Wilson is a proud queer writer and performance artist, a cancer survivor and a recent graduate of Master of Arts and Cultural Management from the University of Melbourne.
MJ’s script Agenda Conversation was selected for development in PAGE TO STAGE 2021, MWT’s dramaturgical program supporting the sustained development of new full-length scripts. You can read more about this program, which sees MWT playwrights working alongside experienced dramaturgs across a six-month period, here. MJ comments:
I was inspired by the off-Broadway play Afterglow, by S. Asher Gelman and Declan Green’s Homosexuals and or Fagots. I was interested in examining how queer relationships are depicted on stage and striving for authenticity in dialogue. At the time, I was a member of a writers -in-residence program at Union Theatre. The play started as a few pages of dialogue from a verbatim writing exercise.
The dramaturg for Agenda Conversation is Elizabeth Walley. The script will be presented to audiences in the Page to Stage Reading Series, to be presented first online in October and then at Kensington Town Hall in November.
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