É«ÇéÖ±²¥ old scholar actor and playwright Ryan Ennis (2013) has won the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award 2022-23.
His play, DRIZZLE BOY, is a story about a young autistic man trying to make his way in a world filled with miscommunications, misnomers, and misunderstandings. This is a prestigious and important award for Australian theatre guaranteeing a professional production of the play in the QT's 2023 Season.
Ryan was educated at É«ÇéÖ±²¥ from Kindergarten in 2002 through to Year 10 in 2013, and after self-publishing his first novel, Legacy, at 14, acknowledges that drama was his calling when he studied Drama in Year 10 with teacher Mr Mike O'Brien. He performed in school plays, including 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night' and in monologues. Ryan continued studying drama at GYC then graduated with a Bachelor of Contemporary Arts from the University of Tasmania in 2018. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting) at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2021. He was the Artistic Director of the Fawkes Theatre Company for 2017, and his play, Watching, won the Community Theatre Judges Award at the Tasmanian Theatre Awards in 2018.
His entry Drizzle Boy is about a young man just trying to make his way in a world filled with miscommunications, misnomers, and misunderstandings. It seems like everyone in his life and beyond has an opinion on how to cure him and make him like everyone else. But he's not. In his mind no one is really all that much like anyone else. And he's just trying to figure it all out, like everyone has to at some point. In this tongue-in-cheek coming of age story, he navigates the challenges of a world that wants to change him, a family that doesn't understand him, and the profound sense that he's somehow doing it all very wrong.