Craft Bites International with Challito Browne and Mishka Lavigne

The Australian Writers’ Guild is excited to collaborate with the Playwrights Guild of Canada in Craft Bites International, an exciting initiative designed to connect playwrights across borders.

Two AWG playwright members have been paired up with Canadian peers. These talented duos will join together to offer audiences readings from new work and discuss their craft in a free and fascinating series of webinars. These events are free and open for anyone to attend.

Craft Bites International is free to attend but registration prior to each session is essential.

About the Playwrights
Challito Browne is a Sydney based playwright, screenwriter & actor.

Challito’s acclaimed play Beyond the Break, produced downstairs at Belvoir for 25A, was nominated for the 2024 AWGIE Award in the Best Original Stage Play category following his nomination as Best Lead Performer by the Sydney Theatre Awards in 2023. Earlier that year, the short film he wrote and starred in, My Neighbour Maleko, was an official selection at the Lebanese Film Festival.

He has two plays in development: Sacred Hands, originally programmed for Griffin’s BATCH festival in 2019, and Diamond Hands – a comedy, rap-musical, selected for The Hayes Theatre’s SHOWLAB. Challito has written and performed in immersive theatre projects Dancing Bear (2024), Eternityland (2023) and Message Bank (2023), the latter selected for Sydney Festival

Challito regularly works as a notetaker and contributor in writers’ rooms. Companies include Matchbox, Hopscotch / Brouhaha, Lingo, and Co-Curious. He’s also writing for We Are Gladiators – a videogame with a playable demo on Steam.

Mishka Lavigne (she / her) is a playwright, screenwriter, and literary translator. Her plays have been developed and performed in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Haiti, and Mexico. In 2023, she was a finalist to the prestigious Siminovitch Prize.

Her play Havre, created at La Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon) received the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2019. Copeaux, produced by Théâtre de Dehors (Ottawa) was also awarded the same prize in 2021, as well as the Prix Jacques-Poirier. Murs, first produced as a podcast by Transistor Médias, Créations In Vivo and the Théâtre Populaire d’Acadie, received rave reviews in France and was produced for the stage in 2023. It was also a finalist to the 2024 Michel-Tremblay Prize.

Mishka also writes in English. Her play Albumen, produced by TACTICS in 2019 (Ottawa), received the QWF Playwriting Prize. Her play Shorelines, produced on stage in Ottawa (TACTICS) in 2023, is a recent finalist to the Governor General Award, the QWF Playwriting Prize and the Carol Bolt Award.

As a translator, both in French and English, Mishka has more than twenty credited translations of theatre, prose and poetry.

The Craft Bites International program also features many other playwrights from around the globe. You can read more about the program here.