Christopher has directed many of Australia’s finest actors of stage and screen, including Rebel Wilson, AFI Award winners Nicholas Eadie, Victoria Longley and Fiona Press, Tony Award nominee Tony Sheldon, Helpmann Award winners Kate Mulvany OAM and Guy Simon, and nominees Deborah Kennedy and Cameron Goodall, AFCA and Green Room nominee Gillian Jones, Drew Forsythe, Andrew McFarlane, Melanie Vallejo and many others.
Dr Christopher Hurrell is a stage director, dramaturg and teacher who has worked nationally and internationally over a twenty-year career in the areas of new writing, Shakespeare, actor-training and musical theatre.
Kate Mulvany in Mr Bailey’s Minder by Debra Oswald
Rebel Wilson and Beejan Land in What the Umbrella Did Next by Nic Velisaris
He has directed and trained acting students in Australia at NIDA, the Actors Centre, James Cook University and the Australian Theatre for Young People, in the United Kingdom at Rose Bruford College, Arts Educational Schools and Anglia Ruskin University, and in Singapore at La Salle College of the Arts.
One of the freshest and most compelling productions seen in Sydney in some years.
VARIETY
Christopher has collaborated with leading Australian playwrights as director, dramaturg and in his former role as Literary Manager of Sydney’s Griffin Theatre company, on the creation of numerous award-winning new works of Australian theatre. His collaborators include writers such as Debra Oswald (creator of Offspring), Stephen Sewell, Justin Fleming, Glace Chase and Caleb Lewis.
At Griffin his productions of Stephen Sewell’s Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi German and Contemporary America, starring Nicholas Eadie and Debra Oswald’s Mr Bailey’s Minder starring Kate Mulvany played to standing-room only houses, and broke the company’s box office records.
Nicholas Eadie and Melanie Vallejo in Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America by Stephen Sewell.
Gerrard McArthur in Hear My Soul Speak.
Based on The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
He has recently returned from the United Kingdom, where his PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London investigated archival records of the acting of Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Company, The National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe, and his original practice-based research developed new techniques for actors working on late Shakespeare. His research was conducted in collaboration with the British actor Gerrard McArthur (Artistic Associate of Howard Barker’s The Wrestling School).
While in London, Christopher continued to champion Australian theatre on the world stage. With Wayne Harrison AM, he brought Alan Seymour’s classic Australian play The One Day of the Year back to the London stage for the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign in 2015, in a production starring iconic Australian actor Mark Little and in 2020 transformed the production into a live-streaming event for the Australian High Commission’s ANZAC Day commemorations co-starring Kerry Fox and Daniel Monks. In 2017, he directed the West End premiere presentation of Adelaide singer-songwriter Amity Dry’s The (M)other Life at the historic Wyndham’s Theatre. The work continues in development and is slated for an Australian tour in 2022.
Paul Haley, Kerry Fox, Daniel Monks and Mark Little in The One Day of the Year by Alan Seymour
Margot Fenley in Macbeth by William Shakespeare.
A graduate of the Flinders University Drama Centre in directing, he continued his apprenticeship with leading Australian directors Neil Armfield, Jim Sharman and Gale Edwards, and went on to work with numerous major Australian performing arts companies including Griffin, Belvoir Street Theatre, the Bell Shakespeare Company, Ensemble Theatre, Opera Australia, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Company (Australia), Essgee Entertainment, Shanahan Management, the Australian National Playwrights Centre and the State Theatre Company of South Australia.