Oriel Gray

Oriel Holland Bennett (26 March 1920 – 30 June 2003) known by pen name Oriel Gray, was an Australian dramatist, playwright and screenwriter who wrote from the 1940s to 1990s. The major themes of her work were gender equality and "social and political issues such as the environment, Aborigines, assimilation and bush life".

Early life

Gray was born Oriel Holland Bennett in Sydney, New South Wales. Her father and grandfather owned a newspaper in Young, New South Wales. With the death of her mother in 1926, her older sister Grayce became the guiding female presence of her formative years. Gray came from a politically active family, her father briefly held the seat of Werriwa for the Australian Labor Party. She remained active in the peace movement until the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. and she moved on to a long-term relationship with writer John Hepworth, with whom she had two more sons, Peter and Nicholas. In 1942, Gray was appointed as the first paid Australian playwright-in-residence.

In reviewing plays, L. L. Woolacott, critic and editor of the Sydney Triad magazine, described Gray as "one of the most significant and talented Australian playwrights whose work has so far been produced here".

Gray's play, with its themes of "feminism and the saving of the environment", did not have popular appeal in a very conservative era with only one amateur performance recorded (New Theatre, Adelaide 1957). In the eighties the play was turned into a light-hearted musical, called A Bit O' Petticoat (1982), with music composed by Peter Pinne.

Major stage plays

Lawson (1943) Published Yackandanda Playscripts Western Limit (1946) My Life is my Affair (1947) Hewers of Coal (1947) Had We But World Enough (1950) Published Playlab New Vintage Sky without Birds (1952) Published Currency Press The King Who Wouldn't (1953) The Torrents (1954) Published Currency Press Drive a Hard Bargain (1957) Published Rigby Burst of Summer (1958) Published Currency Press

Screen writing

Gray adapted Sheridan's The Rivals as a television play for ABC-TV and her stage plays Burst of Summer and The Torrents. She wrote six original television plays for ABC-TV, also working as a team member on the television serial Bellbird for nearly a decade. In 1970 she co-wrote the feature film script for Beyond Reason, directed by Giorgio Mangiamele. The Brass Guitar (1967) Beyond Reason (1970) - co-writer with Robert Garlick The Man Upon the Stair (1972) - episode of A Time for Love The Dancing Star (1972) Frank and Francesca (1973) Rush (1974) - episode We Should Have Had a Uniform (1975) - episode of The Quality of Mercy

Radio plays Beginning with the serialised version of her play Western Limit. Gray wrote radio adaptations of several of her major stage plays, many educational radio dramas for the Victorian Education Department and original plays for ABC Radio including: Philip of Australia (1944) The Ghosts in My Family (1982) The Man Who Wanted to Murder Sherlock Holmes (1987)

Other writing In 1985, her memoir Exit Left was published, detailing her life in New Theatre, personal relationships and growing unease with the leadership direction of the Australian Communist Party. It was republished in 2020.

Gray published one novel, The Animal Shop (1990).

Her last work for the stage, Joan and The Errant Soul, A Moment in the Permanent War, was written for and produced by Sydney's Belmore Theatre in 1997.