BIO

Thomas Murray is an ethnodramatist, director, and teacher. He is the founding executive director of Waltzing Mechanics, a documentary performance ensemble based in Chicago with members nationwide. He also co-directs Storycatchers Theatre’s ensemble at the Illinois Youth Center at Warrenville, where he collaborates with incarcerated youth to transform their life stories into works of musical theatre. Recent credits with Waltzing Mechanics include teleplay adaptations of Dwandra Nickole Lampkin's The Conviction of Lady Lorraine and Dee Dee Batteast's No AIDS, No Maids: Stories I Can't F*ckin' Hear No More. Thomas is a core member of The Midwives and a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. He has been honored with fellowships by Ping Chong + Company and the National Academy of Sciences, an artistic apprenticeship with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award from Ball State University. 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. documurray.com

INSPIRED BY

city lights
takeoff rolls
Anna Deavere Smith
The Art of Gathering
The Great Lakes
Dwight Conquergood
public transportation
Danielle Pinnock
verbatim text
Tiny Beautiful Things
choral music
my husband

EXPLORING:

Before the pandemic, I made documentary plays. These were always live events because I believe the presence of the live voice in space is integral to the magic of non-fiction performance to an audience. COVID put the brakes on that obviously. But shortly after coming out of lockdown, I was commissioned to adapt two autoethnographic performances into teleplays. I said yes in spite of my doubts.
(e.g., "I never went to film school!! What do I know about PBS?!?")

The process challenged me to translate the intimacy of live docudrama into a different medium. As my theatre company imagines a future where filmed performances will continue to be a part of our making, I'm eager to lean more into new media. What would a teleplay version of The Right of Way, my most recent documentary play, look like? Are there short doc projects that can help me flex new muscles in my socially distanced making?

INSPIRATION FOR PROJECT:

PBS teleplays of Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman docudramas
the HBO adaptation of "The Laramie Project"
my collaborators at Waltzing Mechanics