AustLit

Playwright, actor, director, music director, musician.

Marcel Dorney has worked as a professional playwright, director and performer since graduating from the University of Queensland in 1999 with Honours in Drama. His dissertation for this degree, submitted in June 1999, dealt with the Bulldog Front project. Written by Dorney the play involved twelve actors, three crew members and one musician and imagines that an Australian public which thinks that consigning the unemployed to forced labour might be a good idea. The production was staged in May 1999.

As a student Dorney was involved in a number of theatrical productions both as actor and director, including the 1998 rock musical, The Last Word for which he was engaged as director, music director, designer, musician and actor. He also contributed a song to the production. Other student productions he was involved with include: Ruth Park's The Harp in the South, Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden (as director) and two David Mamet plays - Speed the Plow and Glengarry Glen Ross.

Since 2000 Dorney's acting credits have included : the Australian premiere of Sarah Kane's Blasted; Angela Betzien's The Kingswood Kids; The Suitcases; and Macbeth at the Singapore Festival. He received a Brisbane City Council Performing Arts Fellowship in 2002 to study with the Maly Theatre (Theatre of Europe) in St Petersburg, Russian Federation ; and in 2006 became resident playwright at Sydney's Griffin Theatre. That same year he won a Matilda Award (Griffith University Applied Theatre Silver Award) for a New Script; while his adaptation of Viktor Pelevin's novel Omon Ra was produced by the Restaged Histories project at Brisbane Powerhouse and the Adelaide Fringe Festival. His other commissioned scripts include Harriers (QTC), Thousand and Flag (La Boite) and as co-writer The Knowing of Mary Poppins (Nest/Powerhouse/Arts Qld).

Following the success of his play Thieves Like Us (2008) at Wollongong's Merrigong Theatre Dorney was one of four playwrights commissioned by the company to create short plays dealing with Wollongong as part of the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre's 20th year of operations. In 2010 he received the Queensland Premier's Drama Award for his play, Fractions, which tells the story of an ancient Egyptian female mathematician. It was given its premiere in November 2011 by the Queensland Theatre Company.