11 Facts About Oriel Gray

Oriel Holland Bennett known by pen name Oriel Gray, was an Australian dramatist, playwright and screenwriter who wrote from the 1940s to 1990s.

Oriel Gray came from a politically active family, her father briefly held the seat of Werriwa for the Australian Labour Party Oriel Gray was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1942 to 1950.

Oriel Gray remained active in the peace movement until the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975.

Oriel Gray married John Gray in 1940, an actor whom she met while at the Sydney New Theatre and they had a son, Stephen.

Oriel Gray died from a heart attack, aged 83 in West Heidelberg, Victoria, on 30 June 2003.

From 1937 to 1949, Oriel Gray wrote and acted for the Sydney New Theatre which had the reputation of being left wing and avant-garde, being modelled on the new radical and political theatre movement blossoming in the United States.

In 1942, Oriel Gray was appointed as the first paid Australian playwright-in-residence.

Oriel Gray was commissioned to write a weekly radio segment for the New Theatre on 2KY and her first stage play, based on the short stories of Henry Lawson, was performed at New Theatre in 1943.

Oriel Gray adapted Sheridan's The Rivals as a television play for ABC-TV and her stage plays Burst of Summer and The Torrents.

Oriel Gray wrote six original television plays for ABC-TV, working as a team member on the television serial Bellbird for nearly a decade.

Oriel 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:.