The Critical Friend - NOW ON SALE

The Critical Friend brings your draft play into a focused, sustained conversation with an experienced dramaturg and playwright. Before we meet, you'll receive a written first response to your script — an honest account of what's working, what the central questions are, and where the real work lives. Then we spend eight hours together, either in two four-hour blocks or across several two-hour sessions, going deep into structure, character, voice, and whatever the play most needs. It's not a script assessment or a report — it's a working relationship, built around your draft, designed to leave you with a clearer play and a clearer sense of how to write it.

What you'll leave with

A clearer draft, or at least a clear sense of what the next draft needs to be. A deeper understanding of how your play works and why it does what it does. And the kind of conversation about your writing that's genuinely hard to find.

Who this is for

Playwrights at any stage who have a draft they're serious about. Writers who want a real conversation, not a checklist. People who are ready to interrogate their own work and hear an honest response to it. This isn't for writers who want to be told their play is great. It's for writers who want to know how to make it better.

About Dave Burton

Dave Burton is a Brisbane-based playwright and dramaturg with over forty professionally produced plays, and long-standing relationships with Queensland Theatre Company, La Boite Theatre Company, and QPAC. Recent work includes Icarus for QTC's The Scene Project, Space Cowboy for QUT, and QPDA finalist The Good Dad. He has been working with writers, in workshops, in rehearsal rooms, and one-on-one, for over two decades.

Investment: $750

This includes your written first response and eight hours of sessions, structured to suit you.

Places are limited. This is not a scalable product — it's a finite amount of attention, offered to a small number of writers at a time.

To apply or ask a question, contact me.

Creative Writing Studio

A powerful eight week intensive course with limited offerings. Spots currently closed, but you can reach out to book a spot on the waiting list.