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Tommy Murphy, image from Wikimedia Commons: By PeterTheatreMan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
Tommy Murphy Tommy Murphy i(A76304 works by) (a.k.a. Thomas Murphy; Tom Murphy)
Born: Established: 1979 Queanbeyan, Queanbeyan area, Canberra region (NSW), Southeastern NSW, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

One of eight children in an Irish Catholic family, Murphy says that he grew up 'in an arena of constant performance and mimicry' (Murphy's cv, 2005). At the age of sixteen he booked a local hall in Queanbeyan and put on a staged reading of his first play, For God, Queen and Country, which dealt with homosexuality in a small rural town. It was afterwards performed by Canberra Youth Theatre and won awards including the Sydney Theatre Company's Young Playwrights' (ICI) Award.

Tommy Murphy was named Singapore Airlines Young Shakespearian of the Year in 1997. In the same year he was chosen to represent Australia at the 1998 United Nations International Youth Conference in The Hague in July and won the Sydney Theatre Company award for young playwrights.

He attended Sydney University and became President of the Sydney University Dramatic Society, where he directed a variety of works including The Operating Theatre Festival three years running and three 24 hour non-stop plays involving up to 200 actors each time. He graduated from the NIDA Directing course in 2004, and as well as continuing to write plays, he has also directed his own work and that of other dramaturgs. He has adapted works by Marlowe and Shakespeare for the Australian Theatre for Young People, and in 2004-2005 he was one of five Emerging Writers in Residence at the Griffin Theatre Company. Murphy's Strangers In Between was the result of this residency and was included on Griffin's 2005 programme. At this time he also wrote the stage adaptation of Timothy Conigrave's autobiography Holding the Man, for which he later wrote the sceenplay for the film adaptation produced in 2015. Holding the Man has been produced annually around Australia and internationally.

Murphy has had a stellar career with numerous awards, writer-in-residences, and successful productions by leading theatre companies in Australia and internationally. His stage and screen plays have been published by Currency Press.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Packer & Sons 2019 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2019 14531207 2019 single work drama

'A battler at a Tasmanian racecourse finds ten shillings in the dirt. He puts it on a 12-1 long shot, and when it romps home he’s off to the mainland, and the Packer Dynasty is born. Fathers and sons across generations, through war, the Depression, technological change. The family myth grows with the influence, and each son feels the weight of time, of power. But now it’s the 21st century. Newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV – what are they? Now it’s time for entertainment through your phone. And back to laying bets on long shots.

'A deeply researched, muscular work from Tommy Murphy (Mark Colvin’s Kidney, Holding the Man), Packer & Sons puts on stage the men who have loomed large over Sydney for nearly 100 years.

'Plotted around the transitions of power from father to son over four generations, this is a play about power and what it does to the men who wield it.'

Source: Belvoir Street Theatre.

2021 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting
form y separately published work icon Fighting Season ( dir. Ben C. Lucas et. al. )agent Australia : Goalpost Pictures , 2018 10730603 2018 series - publisher film/TV war literature thriller

'Fighting Season is a timely and emotionally resonant series that follows the lives of a group of Australian soldiers, and their families, returned home suddenly after their commander is killed in suspicious circumstances in Afghanistan. Part mystery thriller, part relationship drama, it asks us to examine the human costs of war.'

Source: Screen Australia.

2019 nominated Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards Best Telefeature or Mini Series
Mark Colvin's Kidney 2017 single work drama

'A premiere Australian play based on actual events, showing just how startling real-life can be.

'Mary-Ellen Field is a successful Australian business consultant in London – until she’s accused of betraying the secrets of her clients to the press. Her life comes crashing down, and she starts to wonder if she’s losing her mind. Then it emerges that her phone was being illegally tapped by reporters, and she sets out on a campaign to restore her reputation.

'But along the way, her ideas of redemption change – she’s been interviewed by a journalist on the other side of the world, and his story puts everything into a new perspective.' (Production summary)

2018 nominated AWGIE Awards Stage Award
2018 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting
Last amended 15 Oct 2019 16:02:02
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