Bell Shakespeare.

Romeo And Juliet is a play about a love that society cannot accept. It is sudden, powerful and ultimately destructive. In Love and Violence, playwright Tom Holloway is taking this sense of powerful and destructive love and using it to explore a controversial taboo in contemporary society. Through two companion works, Holloway is writing about society’s response to a female teacher who has begun a sexual relationship with a male student, and then also how we react if those genders are reversed.

 

At the heart of the work though is our desperate need to express love and how our confusion that comes from that need can often blend in to a world of violence, both physical and emotional. Sometimes our need for love drives us to look for it where it should never be and also our desire to keep love pure can lead us to react in violent and passionate ways if that purity is threatened.
 

Tom Holloway was born and raised in Tasmania. He completed one year of a Bachelor of Music in composition at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music before completing a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in English at the University of Tasmania.

 

His short play The Bus was first produced in 2004 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was also produced at St Martins International Festival of Young Writing in Melbourne in 2004 and Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2005. The Bus was adapted for radio and aired on ABC Radio National in 2006.

 

In 2006 Tom studied in London at the Royal Court Theatre’s Invitational Writers’ Program. Beyond the Neck, inspired by interviews with those affected by the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, was one of 10 plays chosen to be part of the Royal Court Theatre’s International Young Playwrights’ Festival in London in 2007. The play had a sell-out season in Tasmania in September 2007, won the 2008 AWGIE Award for Best Stage Play, was published by Playlab Press and will be produced in Sydney in 2009 for B Sharp at Company B.

 

Tom’s play Don’t Say the Words, inspired by the Greek tragedy Agamemnon by Aeschylus, was co-produced in 2008 between the Tasmanian Theatre Company and Griffin Theatre Company to great critical acclaim. The play was shortlisted for the 2009 NSW Premier’s Play Award along with the 2009 Young Vic/Theatre503 Season award in London and was published by Currency Press in 2008.

 

Tom was the playwright in residence at Red Stitch Actors Theatre in Melbourne from 2007-08. Red Sky Morning, which won the 2007 R E Ross Trust Development Award and received further development funding from Arts Victoria and The Australia Council, was commissioned and produced by Red Stitch Actors Theatre in Melbourne and described as ‘Play of the Year’ by the Sunday Age. Red Sky Morning was nominated for the 2008 Greenroom Award for Best New Writing for the Australian Stage and Best Production. The play will receive another season in 2009 with Full Tilt and The Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne and recently had a reading in London.

 

Tom is currently working on commissions for Melbourne Theatre Company and a research project for the Tasmanian Theatre Company. Tom is also writing the libretto for a new opera The Secret Life of Words for the Aldeburgh in London.