Tommy Murphy – 2020 Australia Council Award For Theatre
Tommy Murphy is a renowned playwright and screenwriter.
For the past 20 years, Tommy has been drawing the attention of theatre makers and theatre audiences alike with his creation of the kind of deeply nuanced characters who both challenge and clarify what we share as people.
As an emerging artist he won the ACT Young Playwrights Award in 1996, and the following year he received the Sydney Theatre Company’s Young Playwright’s Award.
Now Tommy devotes considerable time to supporting young artists, quietly nurturing and empowering a new generation of Australian playwrights.
Tommy’s contribution to the Australian theatrical cannon is wide ranging – from illuminating the experience of 90 year old Gwen in the existential comedy Gwen in Purgatory; to an internationally acclaimed adaptation of Peter Pan
He has explored the lives of the very public Packer family and of Mary-Ellen Field and Mark Colvin’s friendship, as well as the universal coming of age journey in Saturn’s Return.
From 2004 to 2006, Tommy was a resident playwright at Griffin Theatre Company where he wrote Strangers in Between and his now iconic and multi-award-winning adaptation of Holding The Man. Widely recognised as a seminal work of Australian theatre.
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Learn more about the 2020 Australia Council Awards.