Nick Enright

Nicholas Paul Enright AM (22 December 1950 – 30 March 2003) was an Australian dramatist, playwright and theatre director.

Enright was born on 22 December 1950 to a prosperous professional Catholic family in East Maitland, New South Wales.

He was drama captain of St Ignatius' College, Riverview in Sydney in 1964, where, like Gerard Windsor and Justin Fleming, he was taught by Melvyn Morrow.

At that school, he won the 1sts Debating Premiership in both 1966 and 1967.

During 1971 and 1972 Enright was a member of Sydney's Genesian Theatre, performing in A Doll's House and Uncle Vanya, and directing London Assurance.

Enright earned a BA from Sydney University in 1972.

He worked as a gofer for Sydney's Nimrod Theatre before being appointed a trainee director at the Melbourne Theatre Company.

He won an Australia Council Fellowship to study directing at New York University, graduating in 1977.

On his return to Australia, he joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia as actor and director, later becoming associate director.

He was Head of Acting at the NIDA in 1983 and 1984.

He was encouraged to write plays while at NYU by one of his teachers, the playwright Israel Horovitz.

His many plays include: Good Works, Blackrock, Daylight Saving, Mongrels (about the relation between Australian playwrights Jim McNeil and Peter Kenna, the latter a friend), The Female Factory, A Man with Five Children, On the Wallaby, and A Poor Student, many of them published by Currency Press.

His plays – which include French and Italian translations and adaptations – have been performed by all major Australian theatre companies, including Sydney Theatre Company, Company B, the Australian Opera (as it then was), Melbourne Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, the Ensemble Theatre, Playbox, La Boite Theatre, and the Australian Theatre for Young People.

He wrote the book and lyrics to a number of musical works: three musicals with Terence Clarke – The Venetian Twins; Variations (Winner, NSW Premier's Literary Play Award, 1983); and Summer Rain (commissioned for a graduating class at NIDA) -, and others with Alan John (Orlando Rourke), David King (The Betrothed, The Voyage of Mary Bryant, The Good Fight), and Max Lambert (Miracle City); and an opera with Graham Dudley (The Snow Queen).

Enright wrote the book of the stage musical version of The Boy from Oz, based on the biography of the same name written by Stephen MacLean, which was produced by Ben Gannon with great success around Australia, and, after his death, in New York.

His adaptation, with Justin Monjo, of Tim Winton's Cloudstreet enjoyed huge critical and box-office success at the Sydney and Perth Festivals (whose co-production it was), on tour of Australia, at the Festival of Dublin, and in London.

Received the inaugural Play Award at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards in 1983 with composer Terence Clarke for the musical Variations.

This award is now named the Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting.

He wrote for ABC Radio, including Watching over Israel (1990 AWGIE winner, Best Radio Play).

His non-dramatic work includes a book for children, The Maitland and Morpeth String Quartet (illustrated by Victoria Roberts), a set of verses for The Carnival of the Animals, and occasional verse.

He edited Holding the Man, a memoir by his former NIDA student, Timothy Conigrave, and, following Conigrave's death, saw it to publication by Penguin Books.

Although he was openly gay, he never found his longed-for committed relationship.

Received the Major AWGIE Award from the Australian Writers Guild four times: for the play Daylight Saving (1990); the play A Property of the Clan (1993); the screenplay Blackrock (1997); and the stage adaptation of Cloudstreet (1999, with Justin Monjo).

Enright also wrote a number of screenplays; he was nominated for an Academy Award (along with director/co-writer George Miller) for his screenplay of Lorenzo's Oil (1992).

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Lorenzo's Oil (1992), co-written with its director George Miller.

His one-act theatre-in-education play A Property of the Clan was developed into the full-length play, and later film, Blackrock (1997).

Many other awards include those from the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards (1998 Individual Winner) and the Green Room Awards.

Enright had been appointed an adjunct professor in the School of Drama at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts; after his death, one of his former WAAPA students, Eddie Perfect, wrote an elegiac song about him ('Someone Like That').

Won a Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work in 2001 for the musical The Boy from Oz, and was nominated in the same category the following year for A Man with Five Children.

In June 2004 his appointment as a Member of the Order of Australia was posthumously announced, although it was deemed effective from 14 November 2002.

The citation read: 'For service to the performing arts, particularly as a playwright, teacher, actor, director, and as a mentor of emerging talent'.

After 15 years in remission, melanoma recurred; he died of cancer on 30 March 2003, at age 52.

Three years after his death, Happy Feet was dedicated to his memory.