Sally McKenzie (born 8 February 1955) also credited as Sally MacKenzie, is an Australian actress, director, playwright and screenwriter. She graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1977.[1] She later earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Queensland University of Technology.[2]
Sally May McKenzie was born on 8 February 1955 in Lindfield a suburb of Sydney. McKenzie grew up in South Australia. From the age of 11 she took drama classes run by Morna Jones[3] who went on to establish the Patch Theatre. During her teenage years McKenzie performed with the Pioneer Players, the Arts Theatre, Theatre 62 and the Bunyip Children’s Theatre. She began an arts degree at Flinders University but only completed 2 years of it[4] before moving to Sydney to study acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) graduating in 1977[5] with a Diploma of Acting, which she later converted to a Bachelor of Dramatic Arts - Acting.
Career
McKenzie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1977.[6] In 1978 McKenzie performed under the direction of Peter Schumann with the Bread & Puppet Theater at the Adelaide Festival. That year in Sydney she understudied all the female roles for the Queensland Theatre Company touring production of King Lear in which Warren Mitchell played Lear and Geoffrey Rush played the Fool. In 1979 she was part of the Early Childhood Drama Project[7] then professional arm of the La Boite Theatre Company. During this year she also performed for La Boite in their productions of Visions, playing Madame Lynch, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? playing Gloria Beatty and Alexandra Hills in The Hills Family Show.[8]
McKenzie successfully auditioned for the role of Lady Macbeth for the Queensland Theatre Company. For this company she appeared in 20 productions, including performing Ruth Carson in Night and Day, Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet. For the Queensland Theatre Company she also played many characters in plays by playwright David Williamson including Jane Fredericks in Top Silk, Barbara Milson in A Conversation and Vicki Calabresi in the premiere production of Money and Friends directed by Aubrey Mellor, which toured nationally in 1992. McKenzie turned down several theatre roles to pursue a Master Degree in Fine Arts, which she completed in 1996.
As a playwright McKenzie’s plays include Scattered Lives, Martha’s War on War, i dot luv dot u☺ and WAY, which was praised in Stage Whispers for its theatricality: "Sally McKenzie grips the audience’s attention for a complex seventy-five minutes with an astonishing sustained theatre performance. If you love theatre, see this”.[10]
As a screenwriter and director works include documentary Acting Class of 1977 AKA actingclassof1977.com, which looks at actor training in Australia in the late 1970s.[11] The film features Steve Bisley, Mel Gibson and Debra Lawrance and first viewed on the ABC in June 2008.[12] McKenzie won the highest writing accolade awarded in Australia for performance writing, an Australian Writers' Guild AWGIE Award for Best Documentary Public Broadcast in 2014.[13]
Jacqueline Susan McKenzie is an Australian film and stage actress.
Constance Lalage "Lally" Katz is an American and Australian dramatist writing for theater, film, and television. She now resides in Los Angeles.
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.
Nicholas Paul Enright AM was an Australian dramatist, playwright and theatre director.
Heather Lee Mitchell is an Australian actress, appearing in Australian productions of stage, television and film. She is a graduate of NIDA. She is best known for her leading role in the 1990s television show Spellbinder.
David Berthold is an Australia theatre director. He has been theatre director of several Australian, London and Berlin theatre companies. He was artistic director of the Brisbane Festival over five festivals from 2015 to 19.
Tommy Murphy is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, adaptor and director. He created and was head writer for the 2022 TV series Significant Others. He is best known for his stage and screen adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's memoir Holding the Man. His most recent plays are a stage adaptation of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach, Mark Colvin's Kidney and Packer & Sons.
Kenneth Graham Ross is an Australian playwright, screenwriter, and lyricist best known for writing the 1978 stage play Breaker Morant, that was based on the life of Australian soldier Harry "Breaker" Morant.
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the live performing arts in Australia: performed, written or produced by Australians.
Ann Burbrook, sometimes credited as Annie Burbrook,, is an Australian actress.
Alan Edmund William Edwards AM MBE was a British actor and founding Artistic Director of the Queensland Theatre Company in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Scott Johnson is an Australian actor, singer and musician.
Toby Schmitz is an Australian actor and playwright.
Timothy Daly is an Australian playwright, dramaturg, and teacher, whose plays have won awards and been produced around the world since 1982.
Suzie Miller is an Australian-British playwright, librettist and screenwriter. In April 2022, Miller made her West End debut with Prima Facie starring Jodie Comer.
Actingclassof1977.com, or Acting Class of 1977, is a 2008 Australian documentary television film that looks at the Australian entertainment industry and the actor-training practices of the National Institute of Dramatic Art during the 1970s. Written, directed and produced by Sally McKenzie, the documentary first aired on the ABC in June 2008.
John Sheedy is an Australian theatre director, born in Geelong in 1972. He was educated at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). Based in Melbourne, he is a director of drama and musicals for the stage as well as opera. He has been described as "a director of bold vision both filmic and theatrical”.
Leticia Cáceres is an Argentinian-born Australian stage and film director. She is co-founder of RealTV theatre company, based in Melbourne.
Andrea Moor is a Brisbane-based actor known for with roles in theatre, film and television. She is also a stage director and coordinator of actor training at QUT.
Aubrey Mellor is an Australian theatre director, dramaturge and teacher.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
