David Williamson Biography
David Williamson’s first full-length play, The Coming of Stork, premiered at the La Mama Theatre, Carlton, in 1970 and later became the film Stork, directed by Tim Burstall.
The Removalists and Don’s Party followed in 1971, then Jugglers Three (1972), What If You Died Tomorrow? (1973), The Department (1975), A Handful of Friends (1976), The Club (1977) and Travelling North (1979).
In 1972 The Removalists won the Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Award for best stage play and the best script in any medium and the British production saw Williamson nominated most promising playwright by the London Evening Standard, and the play was a co winner of the coveted George Devine Award, the first time it had been given to a non U.K. writer.
The 1980s saw his success continue with Celluloid Heroes (1980), The Perfectionist (1982), Sons of Cain (1985), Emerald City (1987) and Top Silk (1989); whilst the 1990s produced Siren (1990), Money and Friends (1991), Brilliant Lies (1993), Sanctuary (1994), Dead White Males (1995), Heretic (1996), Third World Blues (an adaptation of Jugglers Three) and After the Ball (both in 1997), and Corporate Vibes and Face to Face (both in 1999).
The Great Man (2000), Up for Grabs, A Conversation, Charitable Intent (all in 2001), Soulmates (2002), Birthrights (2003), Amigos (2004), Operator (2005) Influence (2006), Scarlett O’Hara at the Crimson Parrot, (2008), Let the Sunshine(2009), Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica (2010), Don Parties On, (2011), At Any Cost (Co written with Mohamed Kahdra, 2011) and Nothing Personal (2011), When Dad Married Fury (2012) and Managing Carmen (2012), and Happiness and Rupert (2013).
In 2014 Williamson had a record of eight plays professionally produced in Sydney alone. They included the sellout season of Cruise Control at the Ensemble Theatre, the successful revival of Travelling North at the Sydney Theatre Company, his Jack Manning Trilogy at the Concourse theatre, Rupert, at the Theatre Royal, and the revival of Emerald City at the Stables Theatre.
The Ensemble premiered his plays Dream Home, 2015, Jack of Hearts 2016, Odd Man Out 2017, Sorting out Rachel 2019 and The Big Time, 2019, all of them sell out seasons and in 2019 premiered his latest play Crunch Time which almost sold out before it opened.
In October 2018 his play Nearer The Gods opened the newly refurbished Bille Brown Theatre for the Queensland Theatre company to record box office and critical acclaim. The Australian wrote of the play “For Queensland Theatre this landmark event represents the dawn of an exciting new era. And as for the play itself, chalk it up alongside Brecht’s Life of Galileo as one of the greatest in the science play genre. It’s that good.”
Griffin Theatre company in Sydney premiered his play Family Values in 2020 and also in 2020 Melbourne Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre mounted a joint revival of his 1987 hit Emerald City to mark his fiftieth year as a playwright.
In January 2023 the Queensland Theatre Company opened its season with Family Values and extended the season due to demand, and in March 2023 Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre staged a sellout revival of his 2012 hit Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica. In October 2023, one of the leading theatre companies in China, The Beijing People’s Art Theatre, mounted a very successful update of it’s 2002 hit, the classic Williamson comedy The Club. In March 2024 the Ensemble stages his new play The Great Divide while in September 2024 the State Theatre Company of South Australia opens with another of his new plays The Puzzle, starring Erik Thomson in the Don Dunstan Playhouse in Adelaide.
Williamson is widely recognised as Australia’s most successful playwright and over the last thirty years his plays have been performed throughout Australia and produced in Britain, United States, Canada and many European and Asian countries.
His play Travelling North had a successful production in Vietnam and The Club ran for a year in Beijing, where its depiction of back room committee politicking obviously struck a chord with the locals.
A number of his stage works have been adapted for the screen, including The Removalists, Don’s Party, The Club. Travelling North. Emerald City, Sanctuary and Brilliant Lies, and six of them have been made into quality Telemovies in Poland.
David Williamson has won the Australian Film Institute film script award five times, for Petersen (1974), Don’s Party (1976), Gallipoli (1981) Travelling North ( 1987) and Balibo (2009) and has won twelve Australian Writers’ Guild AWGIE Awards. He also wrote the screenplay for Pharlap (1981) , The Year of Living Dangerously, (1983) receiving a nomination for best screenplay from the Writer’s Guild of America.
He wrote the screenplay for Showtime’s On the Beach which won the Australian AFI award for best miniseries and was nominated for the Golden Globe awards in the U.S. He also wrote the screenplay for the HBO miniseries A Dangerous Life, about the fall of the Marcos regime in the Philippines which made the critics top ten list of the year in both New York and Los Angeles. In 2015 he was awarded the Special NSW Premier’s Literary Award for lifetime achievement.
Altogether he has written twelve screenplays and five miniseries, including The Four Minute Mile for the BBC and The Last Bastion about General McArthur’s arrival in Australia in WW 11, which was sold all over the world. He lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast with his writer wife, Kristin Williamson.