Gray, Oriel (1920–2003)
Gray, Oriel (1920–2003)
Australian playwright. Name variations: Gray; Oriel; Holland; Oriel Holland. Born Oriel Holland Bennett, Mar 26, 1920, in Sydney, Australia; died June 30, 2003, in Heidelberg, Melbourne, Australia; dau. of Benjamin Bennett and Ida Bennett; m. John Gray (actor), 1940; children: (1st m.) Stephen (b. 1945); (with John Hepworth) Peter and Nicholas.
Joined Communist Party at 18, prompted by the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Nazi Germany; worked as actress at New Theatre; wrote plays for theater as well as radio and tv; wrote the play Lawson (produced 1943), an adaptation of Henry Lawson short stories; wrote the pioneering feminist play, The Torrents (1955), for which she won the Playwright's Advisory Board Competition; won J.C. Williamson Play Competition for Burst of Summer (1959); also wrote My Life is My Affair (1947) and Had We But World Enough (1950); worked on the ABC-tv series "Bellbird" for 11 years.
See also memoir Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman (1985).