Van Badham - Early Career

Early Career

In 1999, Badham withdrew from organised political activity to return to campus life and her writing. That year, she won the Naked Theatre Company's first "Write Now!" play competition and with it both a production of her winning play, The Wilderness of Mirrors, at the Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf studio and mentoring from established Australian playwrights Nick Enright and David Williamson.

The success of The Wilderness of Mirrors - a play about secret service infiltration of an activist organisation, based on Badham' experiences in the NUS - brought her to public attention and she began to stage more work across Australia. By 2001, however, her radical themes and attacks on the Australian establishment had won her little favour with the prevailing conservative political climate in her home country and she relocated to the United Kingdom initially studying at the University of Sheffield.