Joanna Murray-Smith (born 17 April 1962) [1] is a Melbourne-based Australian playwright, screenwriter, novelist, librettist and newspaper columnist.
Joanna Murray-Smith (born 17 April 1962) [1] is a Melbourne-based Australian playwright, screenwriter, novelist, librettist and newspaper columnist.
Murray-Smith was born in Mount Eliza, Victoria; her father was the literary editor and academic Stephen Murray-Smith (1922–1988). Her uncle was the actor John Bluthal. [2] She attended Toorak College [3] and graduated with a BA (Hons) from the University of Melbourne. [4] On a Rotary International Scholarship in 1995, Murray-Smith attended the writing program at Columbia University, New York. [5] In 2003, she took a sabbatical in Italy. [6] She is married to Raymond Gill and has two sons and one daughter. [7] [8]
In 2000 she was awarded a Commonwealth Medal for Services to Playwriting and in 2012 she was made a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne. [9]
Many of Murray-Smith's plays have been performed around the world. Honour has been produced in more than three dozen countries, including productions on Broadway and at the Royal National Theatre in London. [7]
Honour was created in 1995 when Murray-Smith was studying in the writing program at Columbia University in New York. There, the play's first public appearance was in a reading with Meryl Streep, Sam Waterston and Kyra Sedgwick. [5] [10] The play was then performed at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway in 1998 with Jane Alexander, Robert Foxworth, Laura Linney and Enid Graham; [11] it earned Tony Award nominations for Alexander and Graham. It was performed at London's Royal National Theatre with Eileen Atkins who won best actress in the Laurence Olivier Awards for the role. Its West End performance took place at Wyndham's Theatre in 2006 with Diana Rigg, Martin Jarvis and Natascha McElhone. [12] The play was remounted in London in 2018 at the Park Theatre starring Henry Goodman and Imogen Stubbs in the lead roles.
Ridge's Lovers was performed in New York under the direction of Brian Leahy Doyle. [13] Honour, Nightfall, Rapture, Ninety, Fury and Day One, a Hotel, Evening have all had staged readings or productions at the annual New York Stage and Film Festival at Vassar College.[ citation needed ]
Scenes from a Marriage was performed in January 2008 at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Iain Glen and Imogen Stubbs. [14] Nunn recast the production for its West End season at the St James Theatre in 2013; Olivia Williams and Mark Bazeley played the warring couple. [15] The adaptation was produced in Australia at Queensland Theatre in 2017 starring Marta Dusseldorp and her husband Ben Winspear. [16]
The Female of the Species , based on events in the life of Germaine Greer, [17] opened in the West End at the Vaudeville Theatre in July 2008, directed by Roger Michell and starring Eileen Atkins. A Broadway production, originally planned for 2008 with Annette Bening was postponed. [18] [19] It was nominated for Best New Comedy in the 2009 Olivier Awards. In February and March 2010, the play was staged at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles with David Arquette and Bening. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times wrote about this production: "The Female of the Species is not just antifeminist. In its depiction of women as variously pompous, deluded, self-obsessed, hypocritical, sexually obsequious or just plain crazy, it comes closer to being antifemale." [20]
Switzerland was commissioned by the Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles but by arrangement with the Sydney Theatre Company artistic directors Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett had its world premiere production at the Sydney Theatre Company starring Sarah Peirse as Patricia Highsmith in 2014. A new production of Switzerland was produced at the Geffen Theatre in 2015 directed by Mark Brokaw and starred Laura Linney in the Highsmith role. The play was also produced at the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Queensland Theatre Company, the State Theatre Company of South Australia and Black Swan Theatre, Perth. It has been produced in numerous productions in Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. In 2019 it played an off-Broadway season at 59E59 Theaters in New York City. [21] Its UK premiere was in 2018 at the Theatre Royal, Bath, starring Phyllis Logan as Highsmith. The production moved to the West End in November 2018 at the Ambassadors Theatre. [22]
Murray-Smith's 2010 one-woman play written for Bernadette Robinson, Songs for Nobodies, opened immediately after Switzerland at the same theatre in January 2019 and marked Robinson's West End debut. The show was nominated for an Olivier award. [23] Songs for Nobodies has toured Australian cities starring Robinson three times since its 2010 premiere production. The play's first production featuring another performer in the role was in New Zealand in 2017 and 2018 when Ali Harper performed the play. [24] Its US premiere at Milwaukee Rep in 2018 starred Bethany Thomas [25] who will perform the role at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago in May 2020. [26]
Murray-Smith made her directorial debut when Queensland Theatre produced her 2019 comedy L'Appartement. [27]
The plays and novels of Murray-Smith have been translated and performed widely around the world. [10] [28] According to the Australia Council, Murray-Smith and Daniel Keene account for half of all foreign productions of Australian plays. [29] However, Murray-Smith feels that within Australia, and especially at the Sydney Theatre Company, her work and that of other Australian writers, e.g., David Williamson's, is insufficiently supported. [30] [31]
Opera Australia is the principal opera company in Australia. Based in Sydney, its performance season at the Sydney Opera House accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra runs for approximately eight months of the year, with the remainder of its time spent in the Arts Centre Melbourne, where it is accompanied by Orchestra Victoria. In 2004, the company gave 226 performances in its subscription seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, attended by more than 294,000 people.
Anthony Warlow is an Australian opera and musical theatre performer, noted for his character acting and considerable vocal range. He is a classically trained lyric baritone and made his debut with the Australian Opera in 1980.
Jane Harrison is an Indigenous Australian playwright, novelist, writer and researcher.
Debra Oswald is an Australian writer for film, television, stage, radio and children's fiction. In 2008 her Stories in the Dark won Best Play in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She created and was head writer of the Channel 10 drama series Offspring, now on Netflix, for which she won the 2011 NSW Premier's Literary Award and the 2014 AACTA Award for best TV screenplay. Her novel Useful was released in 2015, followed by her novel The Whole Bright Year in 2018, both published by Penguin Random House. Her novel The Family Doctor was published by Allen and Unwin in March 2021. Oswald's one-woman stage show, Is There Something Wrong With That Lady, premiered at Sydney's Griffin Theatre in April 2021.
Queensland Theatre, formerly the Queensland Theatre Company and Royal Queensland Theatre Company, is a professional theatre company based in Brisbane, Australia. It regularly performs in its own Bille Browne Theatre and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre's Playhouse.
The Green Room Awards are peer awards which recognise excellence in cabaret, dance, drama, fringe theatre, musical theatre and opera in Melbourne.
Deidre Rubenstein is an Australian television and theatre actress, as well as a dramatist and playwright well known for her performance in Australian soap operas and main stage dramatic roles. She has won the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award as Best Actress.
David Berthold is one of Australia's most prominent theatre directors and cultural leaders. He has directed for most of Australia's major theatre companies, as well as in London and Berlin, and has led several key arts organisations. He was Artistic Director of Brisbane Festival, one of Australia's major international arts festivals and Queensland’s largest arts and cultural event. Through his tenure of five festivals, 2015-19, Berthold transformed the Festival into Australia's largest major international arts festival, presenting more works to more people than any other, with an audience of more than one million people.
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the performing arts in Australia, or produced by Australians. There are theatrical and dramatic aspects to a number of Indigenous Australian ceremonies such as the corroboree. During its colonial period, Australian theatrical arts were generally linked to the broader traditions of English literature and to British and Irish theatre. Australian literature and theatrical artists have over the last two centuries introduced the culture of Australia and the character of a new continent to the world stage.
Robyn Anne Nevin is an Australian actress, director, and stage producer, recognised with the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards and the JC Williamson Award at the Helpmann Awards for her outstanding contributions to Australian theatre performance art. Former head of both the Queensland Theatre Company and the Sydney Theatre Company, she has directed more than 30 productions and acted in more than 80 plays, collaborating with internationally renowned artists, including Richard Wherrett, Simon Phillips, Geoffrey Rush, Julie Andrews, Aubrey Mellor, Jennifer Flowers, Cate Blanchett and Lee Lewis.
Caroline Ann O'Connor is a Helpmann Award-winning, Olivier Award-nominated Anglo-Australian singer, dancer and actress. For her theatre work she has won three Helpmann Awards: Best Female Actor in a Play for Edith Piaf in Piaf in 2001 and the same category for Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow in 2006, and Best Female Actor in a Musical for Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes in 2015.
Stephen John Sewell is an Australian playwright and screenwriter.
The Female of the Species is a comic play by Joanna Murray-Smith first performed in 2006. The play is a satire about celebrity feminists, with a plot loosely inspired by a real-life incident in 2000, when author Germaine Greer was held at gunpoint in her own home by a disturbed student.
Matt Cameron is an Australian playwright, screenwriter and director, born and based in Melbourne.
Gregory "Greg" Jonathon Stone is an Australian actor who has appeared in films, television and on stage.
Sally McKenzie also credited as Sally MacKenzie, is an Australian actress, director, playwright and screenwriter. She graduated from Australia's prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1977. She later earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Queensland University of Technology.
Marta Dusseldorp is an Australian stage, film and theatre actress. Her television credits include BlackJack, Crownies, Jack Irish and A Place to Call Home.
Bombshells is a play by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith.
The Sydney Theatre Awards are annual awards to recognise the strength, quality and diversity of professional theatre in Sydney, Australia. They were established in 2005 by a group of major Sydney theatre critics. The awards recognise mainstage and independent plays and musicals.
Aubrey Mellor is an Australian theatre director, dramaturge and teacher.
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