Playwright wins $25,000 award
PLAYWRIGHT Lally Katz’s dramatic play A Golem Story, set around the legend of the golem and staged at the Malthouse Theatre last year, has won the $25,000 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for drama.
In the play, which features Yiddish melodies, kabbalistic ritual and Hebrew prayer, a rabbi works to fashion an avenging monster after an invisible emperor has decreed a purging of the ghetto.
“There are so many great golem stories and the play is my take on the legend,” Katz explained in an interview with The AJN last year.
The acclaimed 16th-century scholar Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague (c1520-1609), was said to have created a golem out of clay to protect the city’s Jews.
Legend has it that the golem ran amok and threatened innocent lives, so Rabbi Loew rendered the golem lifeless.
Katz previously won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award in 2009 and a Churchill Fellowship in 2010 to study new playwriting techniques in the United States and Britain.
The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards are given in five categories – fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and writing for young adults. This year, author Bill Gammage, who won the award for non-fiction for his book, The Biggest Estate on Earth, won the major Victorian Prize for Literature, which carries an additional $100,000 in prize money.
REPORT by Danny Gocs
PHOTO of Lally Katz’
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