Melbourne playwright Sarah Matthews is the winner of Canberra Youth Theatre’s 2024 Emerging Playwright Commission.

Her play, The Hit List, focuses on teen experiences and language to explore the themes of sexism and gender-based violence in Australia. It has a cast of eight characters whose relationships come under intense pressure in the final days of school.

Matthews is a writer and primary school teacher who has recently completed her Master of Theatre (Writing) at the Victorian College of the Arts and has also attended the Australian Theatre For Young People’s national studio residency.

Her play was selected from more than 60 submissions from across Australia and Matthews receives $17,000 to create a full-length work that brings the voices of Australian youth to the stage. While the selected playwright need not be from the Canberra region, the development will be done here.

This piece of good news comes at the end of a week when the 52-year-old Canberra Youth Theatre announced that it would drop all productions in 2025.