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Photo courtesy of Marcel Dorney
Marcel Dorney Marcel Dorney i(A84011 works by)
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

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.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2020 recipient City of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grants
2020 recipient Australia Council Grants, Awards and Fellowships Theatre Arts Projects for Individuals and Groups     $24,976 
2002 recipient Lord Mayor's Young and Emerging Artists Fellowships

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Fractions Hypatia 2011 Brisbane : Playlab , 2011 Z1554911 2011 single work drama 'Hypatia (c365-415 CE) was the foremost mathematical authority of her time, an exponent of Platonist philosophy, and as such, a pagan woman on the incipient Christian culture of Egypt. The Life of Hypatia follows her struggles to protect the famous library of Alexandria - the Roman Empire's greatest repository of knowledge - as well as her integrity, in a city where multiple ethnicities, religious and economic interests vie for power in the shadow of a rapidly changing Europe. Source: www.qldtheatreco.com.au (Sighted 20/01/2009).
2012 winner Matilda Awards Best New Australian Play
2010-2011 winner Queensland Premier's Drama Award
New Royal 2006 single work drama humour

Described by the author and director, Marcel Dorney as a 'wicked black comedy' the play was written during his current Playwright Residency (2006) at Griffin Theatre Company, Sydney. New Royal is played out in a world of unlimited credit, bizarre sex and impeccable design. In explaining his decision to write a comedy (his first) Dorney notes : "'Joe Orton said that accepting people to be irredeemably bad is what makes them incredibly funny." Up until recently, I'd never cracked the first part of the equation. Then I spent some time in Sydney...' (Metro Arts media release)

The story concerns Hera, Gold Coast girl, aspiring designer, and one of the most charismatic and resourceful heroines on any stage anywhere, who gatecrashes the opening of her hometown's new Centre for Excellence in Science and the Arts out of genuine curiosity. She doesn't intend to strike an unlikely rapport with Lachlan Vaunt, recent inheritor of a vast media empire, nor to become involved in a bizarre and lucrative arrangement. The moment the couple hit Sydney, however, Hera meets the twisted, flamboyant architect Pritikin, and begins to learn a game - as played by a new global elite - where the most important relationship is, as always, the one between Form and Function.

2006 winner Matilda Awards Griffith University Applied Theatre Silver Award for a New Script
Last amended 5 Aug 2020 09:00:14
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