Sally McKenzie

Sally May McKenzie was born on 8 February 1955^[4] in Lindfield a suburb of Sydney. McKenzie grew up in South Australia. From the age of 11 she took drama classes run by Morna Jones^[5] who established the Patch Theatre. During her teenage years McKenzie performed with the Pioneer Players, the Arts Theatre, Theatre 62 and the Bunyip Children's Theatre. She began an arts degree at Flinders University but only completed 2 years before moving to Sydney to study acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).^[6]

McKenzie graduated from NIDA in 1977.^[7] In 1978 McKenzie performed under the direction of Peter Schumann with the Bread & Puppet Theater at the Adelaide Festival and understudied all the female roles for the Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) touring production of King Lear in which Warren Mitchell played Lear and Geoffrey Rush played the Fool.^[8] In 1979 she was part of the Early Childhood Drama Project^[9] the professional arm at La Boite Theatre Company where she performed in numerous productions including The Hills Family Show.^[10]

In 1980 McKenzie was a member of the TN! Theatre Company inaugural ensemble performing Jenny Diver in The Threepenny Opera under the baton of Georg Tintner.^[11] In 1981 she played Lavinia Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra for QTC^[12] a role she reprised for the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) directed by Michael Blakemore.^[13]

Several productions with MTC followed including the title role in The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht^[14] and the role of Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling under the direction of John Sumner.^[15] She performed in the Australian premiere of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill with the Nimrod Theatre Company in Sydney.^[16] During this time under the direction of Bud Tingwell, McKenzie played Lynn in a 2-hour 500th special episode of Cop Shop for which she won a 1983 Penguin Award for Best Single Performance by an Actress in a Serial.^[6]

In 1985 McKenzie played the role of Lady Macbeth for the QTC.^[17] She appeared in 20 productions for this company including several premiere productions of plays by David Williamson under the direction of Aubrey Mellor. McKenzie returned to study in 1995 and was awarded a Master of Fine Arts in 1996.^[6]

As a playwright McKenzie's plays include Scattered Lives, Martha's War on War, i dot luv dot u☺ and WAY.^[18] A review of WAY in Stage Whispers said: "Sally McKenzie grips the audience's attention for a complex seventy-five minutes with an astonishing sustained theatre performance. If you love theatre, see this".^[19]

As a screenwriter and director works include documentary Actingclassof1977.com which looks at actor training in Australia in the late 1970s.^[20] The film features Steve Bisley, Mel Gibson and Debra Lawrance and first aired on the ABC in June 2008.^[21] McKenzie won an Australian Writers' Guild AWGIE Award for Best Documentary Public Broadcast in 2014.^[22]

In 2018 McKenzie was awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trusts Fellowship Medal for her research and subsequent paper 'Developing Australian Playwrights and their Plays'.^[23] For this paper she interviewed writers for both screen and stage living in the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom. The interviewees included Tony Kushner, Christopher Hampton, David Henry Hwang, Mike Leigh, Robert Lepage, David Lindsay-Abaire, Hannah Moscovitch, Judith Thompson and Enda Walsh.^[24]