Michael Gurr (29 October 1961 – 2 May 2017) was an Australian actor, playwright, author, speech writer and screenwriter.
Early life
Gurr was born in East Malvern, in Melbourne where his father was a kidney doctor at the Alfred Hospital and his mother was a nurse. His first published work was a fictional poem at age 10, from the point of view of a paraplegic, which unintentionally earned him a donation from a
Herald Sun
The ''Herald Sun'' is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia, published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of the Murdoch owned News Corp. The ''Herald S ...
reader. He was the second of five children.'Genius' playwright and speechwriter Michael Gurr dies aged 55 /ref>
Career
Gurr studied at National Theatre Drama School (NTDS) in St Kilda, Victoria, and while there wrote a number of short plays which were sent to
Ray Lawler
Raymond Evenor Lawler (born 23 May 1921) is an Australian actor, dramatist, and theatre producer and director. His most notable play was his tenth, ''Summer of the Seventeenth Doll'' (1953), which had its premiere in Melbourne in 1955. The p ...
, then Literary Advisor to the
Melbourne Theatre Company
The Melbourne Theatre Company is a theatre company based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1953 as the Union Theatre Repertory Company at the Union Theatre at the University of Melbourne, it is the oldest professional theatre compa ...
(MTC). In 1982 Gurr was invited to be Writer in Residence at the MTC and it was there that his first plays were produced.
His best-known plays include ''Crazy Brave'' and ''Sex Diary of an Infidel''.
He worked as a speechwriter for a number of years for
John Brumby
John Mansfield Brumby (born 21 April 1953) is the current Chancellor of La Trobe University and former Victorian Labor Party politician who was Premier of Victoria from 2007 to 2010. He became leader of the Victorian Labor Party and premier ...
and
Steve Bracks
Stephen Phillip Bracks (born 15 October 1954) is a former Australian politician and was the 44th Premier of Victoria. He first won the electoral district of Williamstown in 1994 for the Labor Party and was party leader and premier from 1999 ...
, both of whom became
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
Premiers of Victoria
The premier of Victoria is the head of government in the Australian state of Victoria. The premier is appointed by the governor of Victoria, and is the leader of the political party able to secure a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembl ...
.
He died on 2 May 2017. He is survived by his four siblings and his partner Brandon Hardie Jones.
Bibliography
Autobiography
* ''Days Like These'' (2006)
Drama
* ''A Pair of Claws'' (1983)
* ''Magnetic North'' (1983)
* ''Imitation Real'' (1983)
* ''Dead to the World'' (1986)
* ''Worlds Apart'' (1987)
* ''What You Wanted'' (1988)
* ''This and That'' (1988)
* ''These Days'' (1988)
* ''The Hundred Year Ambush'' (1990)
* ''Victoria Bitter'' (1990)
* ''Sex Diary of an Infidel'' (1991)
* ''Desire Lines'' (1992)
* ''Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet'' (1994)
* ''Jerusalem'' (1996)
* ''Anna'' (1998)
* ''Shark Finn Soup'' (1998)
* ''Crazy Brave'' (2000)
* ''The Simple Truth'' (2002)
* ''Something to Declare'' (2003)
* ''Julia 3'' (2004)
* ''Our Beautiful Daughter'' (2008)
* ''Mercy'' (2009)
* ''Test Pilot'' (2010)
Poetry
* ''Four Poems'' (1982)
Television
* ''WTF – With Tim Ferguson'' (2010)
Film
* ''
Emmett Stone
''Emmett Stone'' is a 1985 Australian film based on a play by Michael Gurr.''Emmett Sont'' at AusStageDeparture'' (1986) – an adaptation of his radio play ''A Pair of Claws'' (1983)IMDB – Departure (1986) /ref>
AusStage
AusStage: The Australian Live Performance Database is an online database which records information about live performances in Australia, providing records of productions from the first recorded performance in Australia (1789, by convicts) up unt ...