Cirrus@Austlit

Dramatist, screenwriter and director.

The son of theatre critic, Katharine Brisbane and theatre academic/editor Philip Parsons, Nicholas Parsons is a graduate of both the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He completed the directing and writing courses concurrently in both institutions. Since then he has directed more than a dozen stage plays, two short films, television drama, a documentary series and a feature film. He has also written a number of full-length stage plays, a stage musical, several one-act plays, a feature film, numerous episodes for television series and serials, and several radio plays.

As a theatre writer Parsons has produced such plays as The Visitor (1991), Pest House (1991), The White Room (1992), Dead Heart (1993), and Hollow Ground (2000). A reconceived version of Hollow Ground was produced by the Old Nick Theatre Company in Hobart in 2008. That same year also saw his musical, A Nasty Piece of Work premiere at the New Theatre in Sydney.

Parson's directorial credits for the theatre include: The Removalists (1990, NIDA), Norm and Ahmed (1991, Griffin Theatre), A Handful of Friends (1994, NIDA), The Devils (1994, NIDA), and a sold-out season of Tony Zeane's new play, Burnt (2008, La Mama).

In 1996 Parson's own feature film adaptation of Dead Heart (which he also directed) was released to much acclaim. It went on to be nominated for three AFI Awards and won a Film Critics' Circle Award for Best Screen Adaptation. He has since been involved in such films as Sun's Gateway (1998, as script editor), The Last Post and Serenades (2001, both as script editor), Homecoming (2004, writer), Restraint (2005, writer), Clubland, Newcastle, Cedar Boys, and Caterpillar Wish (all 2006, as script editor), and Beautiful Kate (2008, as script editor).

Parson's television credits as a writer include two episodes of Heartland (1993), four episodes of Pacific Drive (1996), The King (2005, as script editor), 'The Saviour (Two Twisted, 2006), Tipping Point (2007, 16-part mini-doc series for The Weather Channel), five episodes of the children’s TV series My Place (2009/2011), one episode of Rough Justice (2011) and five episodes of the crime drama series The Straits (2012).

Parsons has been recognised with a New South Wales Literary Award (for the Dead Heart play), an AWGIE Award and the Australian Human Rights Award (for The White Room, 1992), and the Ian Reed Memorial Grand Prize for radio drama. He has also had AFI nominations for Best Short Film and Best Adapted Screenplay, a second AWGIE nomination for best stage play for an early draft of Hollow Ground and a nomination for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for an episode of the ABC TV series My Place. He won his second AWGIE for ‘1868 – Minna’, an episode for the second season of My Place, and his third, with other writers on the series, for The Straits.