Name Joanna Murray-Smith Role Playwright | Spouse Raymond Gill Movies Cassidy, Georgia | |
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Books Love Child, The Gift, Judgement Rock, Rapture, Nightfall, Redemption Children Lucy Hill, Sam Gill, Charlie Gill Plays Bombshells, The Female of, Honour Similar People David Williamson, Andrew Bovell, Paul Grabowsky, David Chesworth, Elena Kats‑Chernin | ||
Joanna Murray-Smith (born 17 April 1962) is a Melbourne based Australian playwright, screenwriter, novelist, librettist and newspaper columnist.
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Honour joanna murray smith
Biography
Murray-Smith was born in Mount Eliza, Victoria; her father was the literary editor and academic Stephen Murray-Smith (1922–1988). She attended Toorak College and graduated with a BA (Hons) from the University of Melbourne. On a Rotary International Scholarship in 1995, Murray-Smith attended the writing program at Columbia University, New York. In 2003, she took a sabbatical in Italy. She is married to husband Raymond Gill and has two sons.
Notable productions
Many of Murray-Smith's plays have been performed around the world. Honour has been produced in more than three dozen countries, including productions on Broadway and at the Royal National Theatre in London.
Honour was created in 1995 when Murray-Smith was studying in the writing program at Columbia University in New York. There, the play's first public appearance was in a reading with Meryl Streep, Sam Waterston and Kyra Sedgwick. The play was then performed at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway in 1998 with Jane Alexander, Robert Foxworth, Laura Linney and Enid Graham; it earned Tony Award nominations for Alexander and Graham. It was performed at London's Royal National Theatre with Eileen Atkins who won best actress in the Laurence Olivier Awards for the role. Its West End performance took place at Wyndham's Theatre in 2006 with Diana Rigg, Martin Jarvis and Natascha McElhone.
Ridge's Lovers was performed in New York under the direction of Brian Leahy Doyle. Honour, Nightfall, Rapture, Ninety and Day One, a Hotel, Evening have all had staged readings or productions at the annual New York Stage and Film Festival at Vassar College.
Scenes from a Marriage was performed in January 2008 at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Iain Glen and Imogen Stubbs.
The Female of the Species, based on events in the life of Germaine Greer, opened in the West End at the Vaudeville Theatre in July 2008, directed by Roger Michell and starring Eileen Atkins. A Broadway production, originally planned for 2008 with Annette Bening was postponed. It was nominated for Best New Comedy in the 2009 Olivier Awards. In February and March 2010, the play was staged at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles with David Arquette and Bening. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times wrote about this production: "The Female of the Species is not just antifeminist. In its depiction of women as variously pompous, deluded, self-obsessed, hypocritical, sexually obsequious or just plain crazy, it comes closer to being antifemale."
Works
The plays and novels of Murray-Smith have been translated and performed widely around the world. According to the Australia Council, Joanna Murray-Smith and Daniel Keene account for half of all foreign productions of Australian plays. However, Murray-Smith feels that within Australia, and especially at the Sydney Theatre Company, her work and that of other Australian writers, e.g. David Williamson's, is insufficiently supported.