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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

On the Beach 2023 single work drama

'A small group of friends in Melbourne – some local, some survivors from the US Navy – are living out their eerily prosaic lives and loves in the wake of World War III. But when a mysterious distress call rings out across the Pacific Ocean, the characters are called to choose between duty to the ones they love and duty to the human race.'

Source: Sydney Theatre Company.

2023 nominated Sydney Theatre Awards Best Stage Design of a Mainstage Production
form y separately published work icon Significant Others ( dir. Tony Krawitz ) Australia : FremantleMedia Australia Australian Broadcasting Corporation , 2022 23923560 2022 series - publisher film/TV

'Significant Others tells the intriguing story of a single mother who fails to return from her morning swim, leaving behind two teenagers and a fractured family searching for clues in the rubble of the catastrophe. Putting the pieces together is the awakening that threatens to tear this family apart.'

Source: Screen Australia (https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/media-centre/news/2021/11-25-abc-screen-australia-significant-others). (Sighted: 03/03/2022)

2023 nominated Logie Awards Most Outstanding Drama Series
form y separately published work icon The Twelve ( dir. Daniel Nettheim ) Australia : Warner Brothers Easy Tiger Productions , 2022- 23923232 2022 series - publisher film/TV crime

Series 1: Twelve jurors must decide on the case of a woman accused of killing a child.

Series 2: A local landowner and respected town matriarch is found dead at the bottom of the farm's well, and two ex-lovers stand accused of her murder.

2023 winner Logie Awards Most Outstanding Drama Series
2022 nominated Logie Awards Most Popular Drama Program
2022 winner Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards Best Telefeature or Mini Series
Last amended 15 Oct 2019 16:02:02
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