Richard Murphet – October 20 2019

Richard has worked in theatre for over forty years as an actor, director, playwright and teacher. He has directed theatre in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Toronto, New York, Utrecht and Ghent and in 1996 he received a National Teaching Fellowship which allowed him to travel and establish enduring connections with fellow practitioners in Belgium and Holland. Richard’s plays have been produced throughout Australia and internationally and his other plays include Quick Death, Slow Love and The Inhabited Woman, co-written with Leisa Shelton. He has also written the non-fiction publication Platform Papers 28: The Fall and Rise of the VCA. A member of the Australian Performing Group, Richard has also been Artistic Director of the Mill Theatre Company. He holds a PhD on late-modernist theatre practitioners and is currently an Honorary Lecturer in Performing Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, having previously been Head of Drama and Head of Postgraduate Studies at that institution.

Dolores in the Department Store
Australian Script Centre, 2000
120 minutes; 8 female, 3 male
Dolores in the Department Store dramatises the experience and ramifications of split personality syndrome. Dolores, a struggling, patient housewife with a weak husband who takes his frustrations out on her and their daughter, finally snaps one morning as she irons. Suddenly another Dolores appears, then another, then another. The split in Dolores is brought about by pressures at home and triggered by the seduction of retail therapy. But it originated in an incident of childhood sexual abuse repressed for decades. In making their way back to retrieving that memory, the four Doloreses discover a way that all four aspects of the woman may co-exist. Comic, wild, moving and unusual, the play contains songs and dramatic language and action which vary unpredictably as the alters fight for supremacy.

The Inhabited Man
Australian Script Centre, 2008
90 minutes; 1 female, 2 male
Fifty-eight year old Vietnam Vet, Leo Bone, carries with him the deep wounds of war: a prosthetic leg, a replacement liver, suspected bowel cancer, paranoia, guilt, sleeplessness and an aversion to social interaction. He also carries with him unforgettable memories and deep regrets. But he has the saving grace of a dry, ironic wit. On the night that the play covers, Leo is working as a motel night security guard and has his suspicions about a young couple who check in. These prove to be well founded and Leo and the couple move towards a fatal and explosive encounter. Based on considerable research, The Inhabited Man is about a lost generation of Australian men told through song, film and video, intense action and deep and poetic language.