Daniel Keene (playwright) won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama twice, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Drama twice, the South Australian Literary Award for Drama, the Wal Cherry Play of the Year Award, and the Sumner Locke Elliot Prize (New York). He has also been awarded, with Ariette Taylor, the Kenneth Myer Medallion for the Performing Arts for his work with the Keene/Taylor Theatre Project.

His work has been presented at the Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide International Arts Festivals. Since 2000, more than 75 productions of his work have been presented in Europe, predominately in France (including at the Avignon Festival, the Theatre de la Commune in Paris, the National Theatre of Toulouse, and The Theatre de la Ville in Paris) but also in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. Seven volumes of his work (French translations by Severine Magois) have been published by éditions Theatrales, Paris.

Daniel’s latest play, The Serpent’s Teeth, commissioned by the Sydney Theatre Company, opened at The Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, in April 2008; and his To Whom It May Concern opened at the Tantarantana Theatre in Barcelona, Spain, in January 2008. Three of his screenplays have been produced: Silent Partner, Em 4 Jay, and Tom White, which won the Australian Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay in 2004. Several of his plays, including Somewhere in the Middle of The Night, have been produced on ABC Radio National and, in France, on Radio France Culture. Other works include Five Men; Scissors, Paper, Rock; Half and Half; The Nightwatchman; and Elephant People, written for the French director Renaud Cojo, which opened at the National Theatre of Bordeaux in October 2007 and is currently touring nationally. Right now, Daniel is working on a play, commissioned by Compagnie Tabula Rasa in Toulouse, France, responding to the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (in particular his 1974 film Fear Eats The Soul). He recently completed two short plays to be performed in French High Schools for Compagnie La Federation in Lyon, France. He is also currently under commission from both the Melbourne Theatre Company and The Sydney Theatre Company.