Stephen Carleton

Stephen Carleton is a leading Australian playwright, being one of only a small handful to have won both national awards for new Australian playwriting: the Griffin Award, and the Patrick White Playwrights' Award. His plays have generated more than $2m in box office earnings, and played before audiences around the country. He received a 2010 ARC Discovery Grant with colleagues Jane Stadler and Peta Mitchell to undertake research towards producing a Cultural Atlas of Australia which mediates spaces in theatre , film and literature. It is an interdisciplinary research project that investigates the cultural and historical significance of location and landscape in Australian cinema, plays and novels.

Stephen's recent playwriting practice has moved into speculative fiction and 'cli fi' drama incorporating elements of the gothic, the grotesque and eco-criticism to examine catastrophic climate change and denialism. He has also conducted research into contemporary Gothic drama around the world. An Early Career Resarch Grant allowed him to conduct study into the Irish Gothic. His PhD thesis, entitled "Imagining and Performing an Australian Deep North", employed Spatial Inquiry and strands of contemporary cultural studies and theatre theory to explore the ways in which the Australian North has been constructed in theatre history from 1900 to the present day. Recent theatre productions include: New Babylon (2021), The Turquoise Elephant in Sydney and Darwin (2016 and 2018), musical Joh for PM with Paul Hodge in Brisbane (2017), and Bastard Territory in Brisbane (2016), Darwin and Cairns (2014). His seminal work, Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset, sits on the senior drama Australian Gothic curriculum in Queensland.