When she and a friend complained to the director, asking for better roles to play, they were told "Well, maybe you should write them yourself". So that's what she did.

Bates sits across from me now, a woman with 30 years' experience as a writer and an accomplished, award-winning playwright. From A Ghost in My Suitcase, which follows a girl discovering her Chinese heritage, to Every Second, a black comedy about infertility and infidelity, female voices have stayed at the forefront of her work. She has had numerous plays produced including Trailer, Light Begins To Fade, The Magic Hour, PORN.CAKE, Checklist For An Armed Robber and Darling Oscar. Her plays have been read in the US, the UK and Paris, and she has won awards including the NSW Premiers Literary Award, an AWGIE Award, Inscription Chairman's Award, Inscription New Work Award and two CONDAs.

Bates has also taught as a playwriting tutor and guest lecturer at NIDA, the University of Newcastle and the University of Wollongong. She finds that people in her line of work need to diversify their skills because "most people can't live on being a playwright". Similarly, she often has to leave Newcastle and go to Melbourne, Sydney or Perth to find work.

After graduating from university, she received a grant to work with Freewheels Theatre in Education and began writing (and starring in) plays aimed at children.

Magical and mysterious, the plays taught lessons about compassion and kindness, and their "slightly wacky" nature is what gave them their unique charm. Her first professionally paid play was Wishful Thinking, the story of a young girl who wanted to be popular and switched bodies with a boy in her class. Another prominent play was Here Is The Beehive which won a City of Newcastle Drama award. Writing and performing for students was "a really good way of learning on the job because if your play is not liked by the kids (or) the school, they'll tell you," she laughs.

"They're really blunt about what works and what doesn't work."

Bates has received blunt advice throughout her career, but not all of it has been positive or constructive. One of her early plays, A Little Bit Each Night, followed a Eurasian family with a mother dying of cancer. The script received praise, being shortlisted for the Patrick White Playwrights Award in 1993, however someone told her it would never make it to the stage as no-one would be able to cast it. Unfortunately, it was never performed. Being of Filipino-descent herself, it wasn't until recently when a fellow playwright asked why Bates hadn't written more about her own heritage that she took a step back and considered this.

"Maybe it's because at this really important moment in my life, someone said the kind of characters you're writing about can't be put on stage," she says.

She believes that "the tide is turning", however, and audiences are becoming more interested in Asian and non-Anglo stories, as seen with the success of her recent play A Ghost in my Suitcase. Adapted from Gabrielle Wang's award-winning novel, the play features a female-led cast of Asian-Australian actors who transport audiences to China, weaving a tale of family, identity, adventure and magic. Bates considers this play a definite career highlight because of how big it was: performed at the Opera House in Sydney, the Heath Ledger Theatre in Perth, and the Melbourne Arts Centre.

She wrote the play for three years and attended developments with the actors, directors and novelist. Everyone involved brought something different to the script.

"It's so much more than the words on the page," Bates reflects. "I love working with people and seeing things I've written come to life with them."

Theatre is more than simply a script and a performance to the 51-year-old playwright. Theatre tells stories about the human condition and allows audiences to imagine "would could be". It inspires (and even forces) audiences to reflect on and examine the world around them.

"In this current climate, anything that makes humans look at humans (and) ask questions and feel outraged - that's got to be a good thing," she says.

As Bate proclaims, theatre allows a nation to find its narration. Telling these stories is not always an easy task. She wrote her play Every Second after she and her husband Christopher Saunders had their own decade-long struggle with infertility.

While the story isn't autobiographical, "some of the feelings I had during that time are in the play".

She knows when something she is reading or watching is powerful because it makes her cry, or it makes her angry. It is quite often real-life experiences that elicit such responses. She believes it is better to pursue these stories, to dig through the fear and embrace vulnerability to "take the feeling that you had and give it to a different character". To make the audience truly feel something.

Choosing to go to these emotional depths when writing is a bold, brave choice. It is also difficult and can be terrifying at times. So, why do it? Why be a writer? According to Bates, it's not something you can really control. Years ago she applied to a graduate program, being interviewed and making it to the final two only to not be accepted. She was depressed and totally devastated, wandering the streets of Wollongong at night and reconsidering her career path.

"I have to try and get that job as a midwife I wanted during school," she thought. Crying and cold, she sought out a cinema to see what movies were showing.

"It wasn't until halfway through that I thought, 'Isn't this weird what I've done to be comforted? I've gone into a movie and watched a story'." That is when she knew for sure she was a writer.

"If I'm a successful writer that's awesome, and if I'm not a successful writer, that's a shame, but I'm still a writer. That makes no difference."

So Bates continued writing, following that call she could not ignore - and it paid off. A rich career with diverse stories under her belt - both on the stage and on the screen - shows no sign of stopping. She is in the early stages of writing a play for Ensemble Theatre titled The One, a family comedy-drama with a Eurasian cast. She is starting a PhD this year at the University of Newcastle to write about Eurasian characters in Australian theatre, film and television. There are also talks of a six-part television series, and a distraction side project that could take on a life of its own. Whatever comes next, we know it won't be the last we see of this daring playwright.

"The best is yet to come," she says.

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