Nick Enright OAM 1950-2003

Enright returned to NIDA in 2002 to develop Country Music for the opening of the Institute’s
splendid new Parade Theatre in Kensington. The show was designed to involve as many students as possible, and to demonstrate the theatre’s exciting technical possibilities. Five intersecting storylines encapsulated the cultural, political and spiritual life of Australia from a young person’s viewpoint, and included a strong indictment of our treatment of Aborigines and refugees. Enright also contributed a witty prologue for the theatre’s gala opening on 23 April.In 2000 Enright, Julian Louis and Jessica Machin had founded State of Play, a unique company with a strong commitment to the creation of accessible physical theatre work through performer collaboration. The company’s Five Stories High was a highlight of the 2003 Sydney Festival. The Daily Telegraph called it ‘Theatre at its romping, hollering, poignant best.’ It was a fitting curtain for Nick Enright.

Enright’s friend David Marr said of him: ‘There is a streak of melodrama in his work. If he’d created a character who was, say, a playwright in his early 50s, never more certain of his talent, with a great career ahead of him, he’d be sure to throw in some disaster to build the drama, say, an aggressive cancer. He killed off lots of his characters with cancer, not least a playwright in Mongrels and the heroine of A Man with Five Children. That’s how it turned out in life.’ A Man with Five Children, Enright’s last play, opened the Sydney Theatre Company’s 2002 season.

Enright died of cancer in Sydney on 30 March 2003. He was 52. At the time of his death Robyn Nevin was preparing a new Sydney Theatre Company production of Summer Rain, his loving depiction of the Australian travelling shows of the 1930s and 1940s. Through his all-too-short but gloriously productive career he had received numerous awards, among them Awgies, Logies, Green Rooms, Helpmanns, the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award in 1998 and, posthumously, a special New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award and membership of the Order of Australia. His extensive papers are preserved in the Australian Defence Academy Collection and the State Library of New South Wales.

Frank Van Straten, 2007