The inaugural Young Adult Achievement Award for Theatre was awarded at the 2019 Hills Festival of Theatre, hosted annually by Perth Hills own Darlington Theatre Players at Marloo Theatre.

The winner was Rachel Vonk, 27, of Stratton – a long time participant in the work of Darlington Theatre Players. She was presented her Award by Iain Martin, representative of the Award’s sponsor, the Mundaring Bicentennial Scholarship Trust (administrators of the annual Robert Juniper Award for the Arts) and Janet Holmes à Court. Iain spoke about the Trusts work and the creation of this new Award as another way of recognising art in all its forms.

Rachel has been organising and running the Hills Festival of Theatre for more than four years. She organises all aspects of the Festival from issuing invitations to state-wide theatres to submit plays, collating submissions, making scripts available to the adjudicators, programming the plays into the weekend and running the day to day works of the event. Truly an amazing young lady.

Rachel is a part time educator and is currently completing her PhD in this field. She is the Secretary of the Darlington Theatre Players as well as an accomplished actor, director and a sought-after choreographer. Rachel has unbounded energy and talent and is an outstandingly worthy inaugural Award recipient