2024 Stephen Murray-Smith Memorial Lecture: Joanna Murray-Smith

You’re Right, I’m Wrong: The Artist's Role in a Shifting World 

Join internationally acclaimed playwright, screenwriter and novelist Joanna Murray-Smith in examining the personal act of creation for the final Stephen Murray-Smith Memorial Lecture.

Off the back of a sold-out run of her play Julia, Joanna will tackle what it means to be an artist in today’s political and social climate. How does an artist engage with discourse amidst changing mores? Is evolution necessary or does this mean the death of art?

Honouring her father’s legacy and drawing on Joanna’s own experiences in the arts and literary world, this lecture is one you don’t want to miss.

Selected papers from the Stephen Murray-Smith Manuscript Collection will be on display throughout the evening.

A cash bar will be available on the night.

Book your tickets now.

Please note: closed captioning will be available for livestream attendees.

About Joanna Murray-Smith

Joanna Murray-Smith is an award-winning playwright and novelist. Her work has been translated in over two dozen languages and been produced all over the world, including on the West End, Broadway and at the Royal National Theatre in London.

The Melbourne Theatre Company has produced many of her plays including Berlin, Switzerland, Three Little Words, True Minds, Pennsylvania Avenue, Songs for Nobodies, The Gift, Rockabye, The Female of the Species, Ninety, Bombshells, and Honour.

Other plays include Dark River for the National Theatre of Portugal, L’Apartement, American Song, Day One – A Hotel – Evening, Fury, Rapture, Nightfall, Redemption, Flame, Love Child, Atlanta and Angry Young Penguins.

She has also adapted Hedda Gabler (State Theatre Company South Australia), Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage for Sir Trevor Nunn (Coventry/London) and A Doll’s House and Uncle Vanya (Ensemble Theatre). Most recently, her play about Julia Gillard, Julia, continues to tour Australia. The film of Switzerland, for which she did the adaptation, will be shot in Europe in 2025.