Van Badham

Vanessa "Van" Badham (born 1978) is an Australian writer and social commentator. A playwright and novelist, she writes dramas and comedies. She is a regular columnist for Guardian Australia.

Early life

Badham was born in Sydney in 1978.^[1] Her parents worked in the New South Wales gaming and track industry, with her father eventually working as a manager in the registered club industry.^[2] The influence of her upbringing was evident in work presented to her teachers at school; Badham's first script was a second grade assignment to write up the class Nativity Play, which she set in the beer garden of a public house with Mary and Joseph ejected by a manager for failing to meet dress regulations.^[3]

She studied creative writing and performance at the University of Wollongong,^[4] graduating with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) degrees.^[5] At university, Badham won the Philip Larkin Poetry Prize in 1997, and the Des Davis Drama Prize and Comedy Prize in 2000.^[6] In 2001, she went on exchange to the University of Sheffield to study English literature.^[7]

While a student she began to publish poetry and short fiction as well as write student dramas.^[8] At university, she was drawn into involvement with student politics and left-wing activism,^[7] and she was elected editor of the Wollongong University Student Representative Council newspaper, Tertangala. She worked with the Student Union as Media Officer and Women's Officer, and sat on the Academic Senate and University Internationalisation Committee.^[9] By 1998, Badham was an avowed anarchist^[10] and Small and Regional Campuses Officer and then President of the New South Wales branch of the National Union of Students, caucusing with radical group Non Aligned Left. In 2013, she completed a Master of Arts degree with First Class Honours in Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Writing career

In 1999, Badham won the Naked Theatre Company's first "Write Now!" play competition and with it a production of her winning play, The Wilderness of Mirrors, at the Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf studio. About secret service infiltration of an activist organisation, the play brought her to public attention and she began to stage more work across Australia.^[11] In 2001, she relocated to the United Kingdom.

In the UK, Badham's work was discovered by the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, who staged a collaborative production of Kitchen with Nabokov Theatre in 2001. A play about marriage as a metaphor for capitalism, it then toured to the 2002 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it became a critical success.^[12] A 2003 play, Camarilla, was a critical success at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, cementing Badham's international reputation as a proponent of radical political theatre.^[13] Badham was appointed Literary Manager of London's Finborough Theatre in 2009 and worked there until relocating to Melbourne to become an artistic associate at the Malthouse Theatre from 2011–2013.^[14][15] Badham's awards for her theatre work include the 2005 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Black Hands / Dead Section,^[16] the 2014 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Muff ^[17][18] and the 2014 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards for The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars.^[19]

In 2009 it was announced that Badham had been signed for a three-book deal by Pan Macmillan Australia.^[20] Her first book, Burnt Snow, was released in September 2010.

Media career

In 2013, Badham began publishing political commentary and arts criticism in Guardian Australia.^[21] Her commentary has also appeared in publications The Sydney Morning Herald, The Hoopla, Women's Agenda, Australian Cosmopolitan and Daily Life. As a commentator, she has been a guest of Radio National, Tonightly, Sunrise and The Project and in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018 was a panellist on ABCTV's Q&A programme.^[22] Additionally, she's been a featured speaker at the Wheeler Centre, Festival of Dangerous Ideas, All About Women festival, Melbourne Writers' Festival and Australian Council of Trade Unions National Congress.

As of 2018, Badham appears as a regular contributor to The Drum on ABC Television and Politics HQ on Sky News Australia.

Bibliography

Badham's works for stage include:

• We Met at the Demo (1996)
• Thrown to Earth (1997)
• The Wilderness of Mirrors (1999)
• Kitchen (2001)
• Dole Diary (2001)
• Bedtime for Bastards (2003)
• Camarilla (2003)
• Material Girls (2003)
• Still Life with a Dead Artist (2004)
• Letters to W (2004)
• Nikolina (2004)
• Waitin' 4 Da G (with Jonny Berliner) (2004)
• Bang on the Nerve (2004)
• Black Hands / Dead Section (2005)
• Petrograd (2005)
• The Gabriels (2006)
• Persae (an adaptation of The Persians by Aeschylus) (2006)
• Cash in Christ (with Jonny Berliner) (2007)
• Poster Girl (2008)
• Die Tod und Leben von D-Star K / Snatch Paradise (2009)
• Hot Man (2009)
• The Sameness of the Days (2009)
• The Bull (2011)
• How It Is Or As You Like It (2011)
• Muff (2013)
• The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars (2013)
• Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (2013)
• Notoriously Yours (2014)
• The Trollhunter (with Catherine Deveny) (2014)
• Big Baby (with Sam Routledge) (2014)
• Late Night Story (2015)

References

External links

• Van Badham scripts held by the Australian Script Centre
• Camarilla by Van Badham, published by MIT Press