Laura Lethlean is a published playwright and theatre maker living and working on the lands of the Wurundjeri, Woi Wurrung and Bunnurong people. Lethlean trained at NIDA, receiving a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Performance in 2015.
Lethlean’s award-winning plays have been programmed at theatres and festivals across Australia and New Zealand. Her plays include How Are You (DESIGNcanberra Festival 2015), The Space Between the Fuel and The Fire (NIDA, 2016), Two Hearts (Kings Cross Theatre, 2018 and Butter Fly Club One Act Play Festival, 2019) The Three Graces (Theatre Works 2019), Fading (Canberra Theatre Centre/CYT, 2018) and Pillow Fight (Gasworks, 2022).
Two Hearts, was published by Australian Plays Transform in 2019 and will again be produced in 2025 by Sydney’s Space Jump Theatre.
In 2020, Laura’s play Pillow Fight was shortlisted for the Max Afford Playwrights Award and in 2021 it was shortlisted for STC’s Patrick White Award. The play premiered as a co-production with Gasworks Arts Park as a part of the Melbourne International Fringe Festival in 2022, where it won a Tour Ready Award and has subsequently toured to Wellington, New Zealand and Castlemaine State Festival in Victoria in 2023.
Lethlean wrote and directed her first play, Plastic Pacific, for The Substation’s Fringe Festival season in 2013, receiving a ‘Get it On’ grant to fund the production. Her NIDA graduating play, The Space Between the Fuel and the Fire, was selected for production at NIDA in 2016 and subsequently published by NoPassport Press.
Laura’s commissions include scripts for Canberra Youth Theatre, The National Drama School, Sydney Chamber Opera, and the Victorian Seniors Festival.
Laura is an alumnus of ATYPs Fresh Ink, The National Studio, and TheatreWorks’ She Writes programs. Through opportunities like these, she has benefited from mentorship from incredible and pioneering Australian playwrights.
In 2024 Laura began teaching playwriting through Gasworks Arts Park and Melbourne Writers Theatre. There, she has the privilege of mentoring six playwrights, helping them to develop their work.
Her next project is a libretto titled Aphrodite, composed by Nico Muhly and produced by Sydney Chamber Orchestra in 2025.
Laura’s longer form writing has been published by the Wheeler Centre and Vice Magazine.
Laura Lethlean and Katie Cawthorne in the rehearsal room of Honey, 2021
Devising and Collaborations
Laura’s ongoing collaboration with Katie Cawthorne has led to The Anchor’s process of devising. With each project, the pair utilises their robust artistic practice, based on collaboration. Their process involves inviting individual creatives and performers to join the team. The Anchor explored their process in 2020 at Footscray’s Bluestone Church residency to make a short piece of physical theatre called Circuit, which they toured to Canberra’s Art Not Apart festival. They then received significant funding from The City of Port Phillip to develop a longer version of this piece, entitled Rope Burn, in 2021. Cawthorne and Lethlean have worked together on commissions such as Fading (Canberra Youth Theatre, 2018), The Cockatoo (Victorian Seniors Festival, 2020) and Honey (The National Drama School, 2021)
The cast and crew of Two Hearts at Kings Cross Theatre, 2018
Review Quotes
“Lethlean excels in projecting people’s inner thoughts about their relationships with others onto the stage.”
- Jenna Schroder, Audrey Journal 2018“The strength of the night is the writing detail from scene to scene from Ms Lethlean – its preoccupations are indeed off-centre, quirky and refreshing”
- Kevin Jackson, The Blurb Magazine 2018“In each of Lethlean’s plays she is constantly driving forth a strong message that leaves us with new ideas. She is confident in what she portrays across her stage, bringing out a collection of emotions and ideas. “
- Lara Franzi, PLAYWAVE 2018“Playwright Laura Lethlean is a restive thinker with a keen ear for contradictions and obfuscations in language that speaks to the failures between communication, intention and experience.”
- Lisa Thatcher 2018
“Let me just say writer Laura Lethlean and director Katie Cawthorne are a powerhouse duo and all elements of this production are masterfully executed.”
- Lucy Lucas on Pillow Fight, Theatre Travels 2022“This piece of theatre is beautifully presented – the script, set, lighting and performances are all first class.”
- Maryanne Cathro on Pillow Fight, Theatre Review 2023“A sensational production led by an exceptional team, it’s a show not to be missed. I look forward to what the Anchor Theatre Company produces next.”
- Irene Bell on The Three Graces, Theatre Press, 2019“The Anchor theatre company has provided new and insightful theatrical challenges that are dramatically absorbing and daring in style and technique.”
- Flora Georgiou on Two Hearts, Stage Whispers, 2019“The Anchor Theatre Company lends heart to the future of theatre that looks to the future and is not manacled by tradition, but has learnt from it.”
- Peter Wilkins on How Are You, Canberra Critic Circle 2015"Skilfully crafted exposés that shift and turn, avoiding the banal, the predictable and the cliché, while at the same time establishing relationships and interactions with an instantly recognisable truth.”
- Peter Wilkins, Canberra Critics Circle, 2015“Conscious drama that boasts great stage and lighting design, puppetry and visual reveals.”
- Cameron Woodhead, the Age, 2013
