C R E A T I V E
Writer
[stage + screen]
An original member of the legendary Pram Factory in Melbourne, Tony Taylor helped create and perform in The Hills Family Show with Max Gillies; How Grey was My Nurse; and Back to Bourke St. Following his move to Sydney, he was commissioned by John Bell to co-write You and the Night and the Housewine and There’s a Ghost on Clark Island for the Nimrod Theatre. He wrote the script and lyrics for Jingle Belrose at Glen St Theatre and co-wrote the scripts for The Popular Mechanicals and Pop Mex 2, both directed by Geoffrey Rush at Belvoir Street Theatre. The Popular Mechanicals has been performed Australia-wide and in London. It is now published by Methuen.
He has written a beautifully eclectic range of plays suitable for both main-stage theatre and Theatre in Education. In the last few years he has written Out of Time, Arabian Nights, Gone Bush and The Last Post: The Great War Through Small Eyes, premiering in Sydney. With Nancy Cato he has written Bea OK, a one-woman show about a widow pressured into selling her home.
His Jack the Ripper melodrama, What A Shock’N’Shame, premiered at the New Theatre in Sydney in 2009. The Cardboard Box, a play for children, was presented in 2008. He co-wrote I Get the Music in You with Queenie van de Zandt, which she has performed throughout Australia. He and Tony Sheldon wrote Beyond Our Control, the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf Revue in 2000. He also co-wrote Horrortorio for Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre.
He has written and directed cabaret material for Garry Scale, Anita Plateris, Rick Lau, and Lyn Shakespeare. He wrote Cream Of Dinosaur Soup for the Australian Museum. He has co-written and directed many shows at the Tilbury Hotel including Elegance: The Lost Jane Austen Novel, U Bewdy and the Beast, Gnome Tremble, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.