Sally McKenzie

Sally May McKenzie was born on 8 February 1955 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[3] who went on to establish 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 of it[4] before moving to Sydney to study acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) graduating in 1977[5] with a Diploma of Acting, which she later converted to a Bachelor of Dramatic Arts - Acting.

McKenzie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1977.[6] In 1978 McKenzie performed under the direction of Peter Schumann with the Bread & Puppet Theater at the Adelaide Festival. That year in Sydney she understudied all the female roles for the Queensland Theatre Company touring production of King Lear in which Warren Mitchell played Lear and Geoffrey Rush played the Fool. In 1979 she was part of the Early Childhood Drama Project[7] then professional arm of the La Boite Theatre Company. During this year she also performed for La Boite in their productions of Visions, playing Madame Lynch, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? playing Gloria Beatty and Alexandra Hills in The Hills Family Show.[8]

In 1980 McKenzie was a member of the TN! Theatre Company inaugural ensemble. That year she performed in The Importance of Being Earnest, Alex, Summit Conference and The Threepenny Opera, in which she played Jenny Diver under the baton of Georg Tintner. The following year she played Lavinia Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra for the Queensland Theatre Company then returned to Sydney to play Sister Lilian Holliday in Happy End at the Q Theatre Penrith. McKenzie auditioned for the role of Lavinia Mannon and was to play this role again, this time for the Melbourne Theatre Company directed by Michael Blakemore.

Several productions with the Melbourne Theatre Company followed, including performing the title role in The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht and Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling under the direction of John Sumner. A role came up with the Sydney Theatre Company and McKenzie moved to back to Sydney where she performed in a range of productions including the Australian premiere of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill with the Nimrod Theatre Company. During this time under the direction of Bud Tingwell McKenzie played the central role of Gail 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.[9]

McKenzie successfully auditioned for the role of Lady Macbeth for the Queensland Theatre Company. For this company she appeared in 20 productions, including performing Ruth Carson in Night and Day, Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet. For the Queensland Theatre Company she also played many characters in plays by playwright David Williamson including Jane Fredericks in Top Silk, Barbara Milson in A Conversation and Vicki Calabresi in the premiere production of Money and Friends directed by Aubrey Mellor, which toured nationally in 1992. McKenzie turned down several theatre roles to pursue a Master Degree in Fine Arts, which she completed in 1996.

As a theatre actor McKenzie has appeared in leading and ensemble roles for theatre companies across Australia. These include Belvoir St Theatre, Griffin Theatre Company, La Boite Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, Nimrod Theatre Company, Playbox Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company, The Stables, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Sydney Theatre Company, Q Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre and the TN! Theatre Company.

For TV, McKenzie played recurring role Mystic Marg in the TV Series Mortified. Other TV appearances include Roo Morgan in Prisoner, Esme in Carson’s Law, Ms Cunningham in The Wayne Manifesto, Patsy Goldfisch in The Flying Doctors, Grace in A Country Practice, Mary Schippan in The Schippan Mystery and Del in Fires. Feature film performances include Gail in With Love From The Person Next To Me, Carrie in We of the Never Never, Carol in Storage, Roz in Jucy and Warden Zelda in Redheads with Claudia Karvan and Catherine McClements.

As a playwright McKenzie’s plays include Scattered Lives, Martha’s War on War, i dot luv dot u☺ and WAY, which was praised in Stage Whispers for its theatricality: "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”.[10]

As a screenwriter and director works include documentary Acting Class of 1977 AKA actingclassof1977.com, which looks at actor training in Australia in the late 1970s.[11]The film features Steve Bisley, Mel Gibson and Debra Lawrance and first viewed on the ABC in June 2008.[12] McKenzie won the highest writing accolade awarded in Australia for performance writing, an Australian Writers' Guild AWGIE Award for Best Documentary Public Broadcast in 2014.[13]

In 2019 McKenzie was awarded a Winston Churchill Memorial Trusts Fellowship Medal for her research and subsequent paper Developing Australian Playwrights and their Plays. For this paper she interviewed writers who write for both screen and stage living in the United States of America, Canada and the United Kingdom. Writers and theatre-makers McKenzie interviewed included Bekah Brunstetter, Liz Flahive, Tony Kushner, Christopher Hampton, David Henry Hwang, Terry Johnson, Mike Leigh, Robert Lepage, David Lindsay-Abaire, Kenneth Lonergan, Hannah Moscovitch, Adam Rapp, Theresa Rebeck, Judith Thompson and Enda Walsh.[14]

For her Churchill Report, McKenzie also interviewed a range of representatives from educational institutions that teach performance writing as well as representatives from companies that develop plays. These included interviews with representatives from Atlantic Theater Company, Columbia University, Donmar Warehouse, Factory Theatre, The Juilliard School, National Theatre School of Canada, New Dramatists, New York University Tisch School of the Arts, New York Theatre Workshop, Paines Plough, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, Royal Court Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and Stratford Festival.

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• Sally McKenzie at IMDb
• Sally McKenzie Austage