The AWGIE Awards are the Australian Writers' Guild's annual awards for excellence in screen, television, stage and radio writing. Presented annually since 1967, the AWGIES are unique in the industry in that they are the only writers' awards judged solely by writers, and the judging is based on the written script - the writer's intention rather than the finished product.
The AWGIES presentation dinner has become one of the industry events of the year, and has attracted a host of prominent Guests of Honour and Guest Speakers, including: Manning Clark; Ken Hall; Fred Schepisi; Tom Keneally; Gough Whitlam; Senator Bob McMullan; the Prime Minister, Paul Keating; and H.G. Nelson with Roy Slaven.
May-Brit moved from Norway to Australia in 1975. She has however maintained a strong connection with Norway through her work in Australia.
May-Brit was Resident Dramaturg and Literary Adviser for Sydney Theatre Company for many years. Then she was Artistic Director of the Australian National Playwrights’ Centre, and the annual National Playwrights’ Conference, held at the Australian National University in Canberra. During her ten years there she developed new works by a large number of Australian playwrights, with actors, directors and dramaturgs. She still dramaturgs new plays, the last was Soft Revolution by Alana Valentine, which was produced by the Alex Buzo Company at the Seymour Centre in Sydney. The next project is 14 Lessons for a Wolfboy by Timothy Daly, for East Coast Theatre Company.
More than 20 of May-Brit’s play translations have been produced by major theatres around the country. She is the English translator for the Norwegian author, Jon Fosse, and several of her translations of his work have been produced, including one in London. Oberon Books in London published two volumes of her Fosse translations. She also works as a ‘trial translator’ for the Norwegian publishing houses Aschehoug, Oktober and Gyldendal, and translates articles and reviews for Ibsen.net (the Ibsen website run by The National Library in Oslo).
May-Brit has now taken a year’s leave as a scholarship student at Sydney University, where she is writing a PhD thesis on translation and dramaturgy, to take part in an international project called Ibsen Between Cultures, based at Flinders University in Adelaide. The group is researching Ibsen’s plays, and especially world-wide productions of A Doll’s House and this play’s impact on world literature and drama.