Copacabana playwright Sally Bartley has taken out the People’s Choice award at Short+Sweet 2024 with her play Three Sides to Every Story.
Thirteen short plays, each under 10 minutes in length, competed in the recent final of the competition in Sydney, now in its 21st year.
Directed by Daniel Maher and starring Ashley Fraser, Samuel Zerger and Henry Twomey, Three Sides to Every Story showcased the uncomfortable and awkward side of adolescence and growing up in modern day.
Self-doubt and overthinking are experiences everyone goes through and the play shows how self-sabotaging these thought patterns can be.
It tackles the themes of fitting into a new crowd of people and struggling to come to terms with your sexuality, showing that people are not as alone and as isolated as they think.
Bartley has been involved with community theatre on the Central Coast for more than 15 years.
A life member of Wyong Drama Group, she has performed in numerous productions, the most recent being To Kill A Mockingbird in 2023 where she played the adult Scout Finch narrating the play.
Her play Walk a Mile also featured recently in the showcase final of Sage to Stage – a playwriting competition for seniors.
Bartley has had many of her short plays performed in festivals such as Short and Sweet (Sydney, Canberra and New Delhi), the Woy Woy Little Theatre Flash Festival, and the Port Players Festival of One Act Plays.
Her first full-length play, Illuminati, was recently presented by Uniting Productions in Gosford.