Professor Peter Fitzpatrick

Research Interests

Peter's reputation as a critic and scholar is founded largely on work in the field of Australian theatre.

His current research is concerned primarily with Musical Theatre, both as a historical phenomenon in Australia and as a cross-cultural form which requires its own forms of conceptualisation and methodology.

It's an area in which he has recently published several influential articles, and which also reflects his current major interests in theatre practice.

His current research project is a dual biography of the Australian actor Frank Thring {1926-94} and his father, the theatre entrepreneur and film-maker Frank Thring (1882-1936). Peter was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant for this project.

Creative work

He has directed twenty public productions, including the first Melbourne performance of Louis Nowra's Inner Voices, and plays by Brecht, Caryl Churchill, Alex Buzo, Edward Bond, and Michael Gow. He directs large-cast musical theatre, including three works by Stephen Sondheim (Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods, and the Australian premiere of Pacific Overtures), the bicentennial extravaganza Manning Clark's 'History of Australia' - the Musical, the cabaret show Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Melvyn Bragg and Howard Goodall's The Hired Man, the world premiere of Darryl Emmerson's Martin and Gina, Stephen Schwartz's Children of Eden, and Craig Christie and Harry Allen's The White Rose. With Stella Entertainment, he co-directed with Michael Coe a production of the Jon English/David Mackay musical Paris, in its World Premiere Season.

Community service

Peter is a former member of the Board and Artistic Advisory Committee of Playbox Theatre, a founding member of the Council for Public Education, and has given many public talks and interviews on the subjects of theatre, biography and other matters cultural.

Selected Publications

He is the author of several books on Australian drama (including the critical survey After 'The Doll', and individual studies of David Williamson and Stephen Sewell) and more than sixty articles in that field. He is also a published biographer (his dual biography Pioneer Players: The Lives of Louis and Hilda Esson was shortlisted for the Premier's Literary Award, Vance Palmer prize and for three other national awards), novelist (the crime novel Death in the Back Pocket appeared in 1993 and the historical-metaphysical-crime-fable Promontory in November 2001), and cinema screenplay writer (Brilliant Lies and Hotel Sorrento ). He won the 1996 AFI Best Screenplay Award for Hotel Sorrento.