Griffin playwright wins NSW Premier’s Literary Award
26 May 2006
One of Griffin Theatre Company’s resident playwrights, Tommy Murphy, was named winner of the $15,000 NSW Premier’s Literary Award at a special dinner at the Art Gallery of NSW on Tuesday night. Murphy’s win for his play Strangers in Between makes him the youngest playwright to receive the award in 23 years.
Strangers in Between premiered at Griffin in February last year following its development through the company’s residency program. The play was a huge success for Griffin and gathered a great critical response.
The Sydney Morning Herald called it "bitter and sweet and replete with raw emotion". The Sun Herald found it "irresistibly heart-warming" while the Sunday Telegraph had a "charming and often exhilarating experience". SX News went a step further and claimed it to be "the best new Australian play since Michael Gow's Away".
The NSW Premier’s Literary Awards honour distinguished achievement by Australian writers. Established by Premier Neville Wran in 1979 (the playwrights award was introduced in 1983), they were the first comprehensive awards of their kind in Australia, and remain the most comprehensive and best remunerated in the country.
Griffin’s artistic director David Berthold was thrilled “Tommy’s beautiful play” had been honoured given the company had commissioned the work and developed it through its resident playwrights program.
“Tommy is still with us, and we’re now developing a new commissioned work, an adaptation of Tim Conigrave’s brilliant memoir Holding the Man,” he said. “This new work has all of the qualities that made Strangers in Between so affecting and so memorable and we are looking forward to it hitting the stage in November. Tommy is the real thing.”
Tommy Murphy, 26, is a NIDA directing graduate. His first play For God, Queen and Country won both the ACT (1996) and the Sydney Theatre Company Young Playwright’s Award (1997). Troy's House played at ATYP, SUDS and the Old Fitzroy. He also contributed to 360 Positions in a One Night Stand for the Sydney Festival. Aside from developing his latest project at Griffin, Murphy is also writing his first feature film for producer Margaret Fink.
Here’s what the award judges had to say about Strangers in Between:
‘”Sixteen year old Shane flees small-town NSW for Kings Cross. He's running from a lot of things: a violent family, small town homophobia, and his own realisation he's gay. But the Cross, he finds, is a lonely and fearful place. He befriends Will, who briefly becomes a lover, and Peter, an older man. Together they form an unlikely new family for Shane, and help him enter his new life.”
“After we leave the care of parents and family come the ‘strangers in between'. Tommy Murphy has written a funny, tender, achingly well-observed play about three strangers, exploring in deft, spare style what belonging is and how we make sense of who we are through our often fraught relations with others.”
“Constantly surprising, with an inventive use of vernacular, Murphy has created three very real people in Will, the alternative to Shane's violent, damaged brother Ben, and Peter, the possible new father. Dangerous, seamlessly crafted this is a beautiful work and a hopeful antidote to the climate of fear in which we live.”
