PAUL KOOPERMAN
Paul started his writing career writing songs, more than 400 in four years from ages 18-22, before studying Drama teaching and writing his first play, The Ides of March, which was produced first at Edith Cowan University but then soon after at the prestigious Regal Theatre in Perth. Pauls' first review said:
"There have been many successful parodies of Shakespeare. This was not one of them."
Nowadays, Paul is a Melbourne-based playwright, screenwriter, and author who has built a prolific career across theatre, film, and television. His first professional stage production, Ernest, premiered at the Effie Crump Theatre in Perth in 1994, and just three years later he was appointed the Established Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Centre.
In 2001, as Drama Teacher of Carmel School in Perth, Paul wrote his first feature film, Zitz, which was directed by and co-produced with Tim Brain and Ally Snell (From the Hip Productions) with students from the school and screened at the Astor Cinema.
Paul then moved to Sydney, taking a role in the story team at Channel Seven writing for Home and Away, followed by serving as the Script Coordinator on TV shows such as The Wedge, Wicked Science 2, and StreetSmartz.
In 2005, Paul took the plunge and wrote his second feature film script, immediately finding success with it. His feature film, Wil (2006), was heavily funded and achieved international recognition, winning Best Picture at the Independents Film Festival in Florida, Best Director at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and earning official selection at both the Hollywood Film Festival and the Cardiff Film Festival.
Paul became the sole in-house writer of feature films for Stacey Testro’s production company ZTudio in 2006, writing several feature film scripts and pitching them to Hollywood production companies. In 2009 he was commissioned to write the television bible for a 13-part children’s television series, Chester and the Goobles.
In 2011, Paul was commissioned to write DragQueensland for the Queensland Music Festival, co-writing the script with Christopher Gist and working with Willy Zygier, who wrote the music. He then went on to write The Erin Minogue Experience with Christopher Gist (a one-woman musical about Kylie and Danni's younger fictitious sister, Erin), which premiered at the Festival of Voices in 2014 and subsequently was produced at many Australian festivals.
Paul has written books on how to write films and plays for schools published by Macmillan Education. He was a featured speaker at the UBUD Writers and Readers Festival in 2012 and has run workshops domestically in Australia and internationally on how to write for stage and screen. Paul has also lectured at Swinburne University (2015-2017) on screenwriting and storytelling.
Across his career, Kooperman has remained a dedicated advocate for Australian writing and screen storytelling, contributing to both the creative and institutional growth of the arts sector while continuing to produce original works for stage and screen.
