About Rebecca
Rebecca is an emerging playwright and screenwriter from Tasmania. Her undergraduate studies in English and Politics were taken at the Australian National University. At NIDA, she is the recipient of the Edward Federman Scholarship.
Rebecca is an alumni of the Australian Theatre for Young People’s writing programs, and Canberra Youth Theatre’s resident artist program. She has been published several times by Currency Press in anthologies of new theatre works. In 2023, her one-act play At Dinner, had a sold-out season at ACT Hub in Canberra.
While she is currently employed in marketing at Sydney Theatre Company, Rebecca has previously worked as a political reporter in the Federal Parliament Press Gallery and in 2023 was a newsreader on national radio. Her studies and work in politics often inform her dramatic writing, as her plays frequently interrogate questions of contemporary cultural and political life.
Writer’s Statement:
Too Close to Home, draws on the lasting national fascination of the girl found dead in the Australian bush and is inspired by Raymond Carver’s So Much Water So Close to Home.
Anna has a teenage son whose life she has carefully designed. We meet her triumphant at having convinced him to go on a camping trip close to home, instead of schoolies in Bali. On the trip, the boys discover a body in a river but they wait days to report the death. Afterwards, their actions are put under intense scrutiny and their futures are threatened.
