Richard Murphet
Head of Department
Theatre Making
Richard Murphet was trained at Monash University and the University of Toronto where he obtained an MA in Drama. His career following this has seen him constantly alternating between professional theatre work and the teaching of drama and/or the training of theatre practitioners. Theatres he has worked in have included the Pram Factory, La Mama, the Mill, the Universal and Anthill (Melbourne), the Performance Space, the Australian and Nimrod (Sydney) and various theatres in Toronto, Montreal, New York and the Nederlands.
Colleges and universities where he has taught include Rusden, University of New South Wales, Monash University, Deakin University and the VCA and most recently a guest lectureship at the University of Utrecht. In his professional work he has been seen as an actor, director and playwright.
Over the past 10 or 15 years he has been particularly focused on the creation of and/or the presentations of new theatrical work. This has either been through writing new plays himself (Quick Death, Slow Love, Tom, Frankenstein's Shadow) or the presentation of initial productions of plays, or working with theatre companies to create plays relevant to the concerns of the local community.
In 1993 he received a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council to write a play based on the 1950s movie The Three Faces of Eve, entitled Dolores in the Department Store. This received a creative development workshop by Handspan Theatre, Melbourne, in early 1998. At the VCA, Richard has undertaken the development of fully articulated three year courses in Directing, Writing and Animateuring. Most recently he has converted these courses to the Postgraduate level.
In 1996 he received a National Teaching Fellowship from the Committee for the Advancement of University Teaching, for excellence in teaching.
