BIO
Thomas Murray is a Chicago-based ethnodramatist, stage director, and teacher. He co-directs Storycatchers Theatre’s ensemble at the Illinois Youth Center-Warrenville, where he collaborates with incarcerated youth to transform their life stories into works of musical theatre. He is also the executive director of documentary theatre ensemble Waltzing Mechanics, where his original interview-based productions include EL Stories, Over My Dead Body, and The Right of Way. Thomas is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, a Sackler Fellow with the National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from Ball State University. He studied intensively with Ping Chong + Company, Free Street Theater, Elevator Repair Service, and Sojourn Theatre. He holds a B.A. in Theatre Production from Ball State University and an M.F.A. in Directing and Public Dialogue from Virginia Tech.
INSPIRED BY
city lights / takeoff rolls / thoughtful gatherings / verbatim text / Anna Deavere Smith
EXPLORING
For six years in my late 20s, my "day job" was working for American Airlines at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. I started as a gate agent and left the company as a manager in the operations tower. The environment of a major airport with its people and machines in constant motion continues to allure me. I worked day and night with passengers, pilots, baggage handlers, dispatchers, and mechanics. While the technician in me recognizes there is science and precision to enable a 300-ton widebody aircraft to seemingly effortlessly defy gravity, the poet in me never tires of the beauty of that mechanical dance. For years since leaving the airline, I've longed to craft something artistic from my time dispatching aircraft and flying standby all over the world. This year is about documenting that bygone career in writing and media that also embraces my enduring aviation geekdom.