The Playwrights Database

• Home

• Playwrights

• Plays
• Characters
• Literary Agents
• Play Publishers
• Theatres
• Gay/Lesbian
• Useful Links
• About Doollee
• Submit Info to Doollee

web doollee.com

PHIL MOTHERWELL

  (1946 - 2014)
Nationality:    Australian
email:    n/a     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Phil Motherwell (December 30, 1946  November 9, 2014)
The last time I met Phil Motherwell was just the other day in a tram shelter in Lygon Street, Carlton. It was the perfect spot for two elephants of the theatre to reminisce. He was brilliant at everything, I have to say. Plays and acting at The Pram Factory in Drummond Street and over the road at La Mama, where those organ-stopper eyes of his made the audiences gulp. No mean feat that. He was not so much tall as perpetually high and not so much wound up as historical, his acting style was passionate and slightly intimidating. He eyeballed the crowd in this challenging way as though they may like the opportunity to front him outside. His language came straight off the street with just a hint of gutter. His play-themes were intricate as overdoses; I acted in one of Phi's plays and had to somehow portray a morphine-distributing General Practitioner called Doc Holiday. I'd never even seen morphine. Having laughed and wept through his plays and read his manuscripts for novels over the decades we were friends, the lump is in my throat as I write this because he was inimitable and beautiful and droll. He certainly suffered and he certainly triumphed with his poetics presented to grateful full-houses. In 1980 he appeared on a charge of heroin possession at the old Collingwood Court and I went to be a character witness with some of my Carlton intellectual mates. Motherwell was standing in the open in the remand cell and I heard him say to himself 'Oh, not them!' (meaning how could the drunkards assist him). But he had Robert Richter appear for him, who informed the magistrate that he had a very sick client indeed and that heroin was simply a sickness. Phil got off. I know that once he attempted to stick up the old TAB shop in Moore Street, Fitzroy with a clothespeg. That shop had already been robbed that day and the cops just chucked Phil in the back of the van and he did a week. Something fabulous has died with him that is completely unteachable; it is the fantastical and uncanny dramatic ear of the true romantic poet who can use an alchemy to translate the street into Theatre with a capital T for Talent. He was not really the underdog that he tried to play. In reality, he was an historian and a rememberer who could mimic characters from the past  out of the mud and the woodwork, out of the prisons  and place them centre stage where they belong. He was too good for Poor Theatre and it is an everlasting disgrace that the wealthy theatre companies wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole. One of my best memories of Phil was one night in the mid 1970s in Carlton. I popped into The Albion Hotel for a few pots with my girlfriend Rhondda Johnson and Motherwell was dining on grilled snags and salad with my father Len and his mum Gert who had just turned 90. She really liked Phil and shouted him a jug. It was just so incongruous to see my dad and nan with such a rebel, but he was always a toff and he truly relaxed with my mob. I wasn't his best friend by a long mark, but over 45 years we put on a lot of plays together, and he always had time for me and time for his friends of Carlton and Fitzroy and Collingwood. When I sat with him a few days ago he was labouring with his breathing in that depressing tram shelter and told me he had to take it slow. He wrote down his home phone number again for me, as I had lost it in my wallet because it's got so many holes through it; like my heart now he's gone, I dare say - BARRY DICKINS

Research:    http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/contributor/314

Buy Plays with Doollee

Each page of doollee.com has links to play/book outlets, either directly to the Publisher, through Stageplays.com and Amazon to the second hand and 1st editions of AbeBooks. These links will automatically take you to the relevant area obviating the need for further search.
AbeBooks.co.uk   AbeBooks.com   Stageplays.com   amazon.com   amazon.co.uk   amazon.ca

---

whether you are a Playwright who wishes to make their entry definitive, an unlisted Playwright or a User with a tale to tell - we want to hear from you.
download WORD submission template

below is a list of Phil Motherwell's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

        Beatnik and the Dead Dog, The         Bodgie Tree, The         Dreamer Of the Absolute         Fitzroy Crossing         Fitzroy Yank, The         Held In Camera         Island, The         Laughing Bantam, The         Native Rose, The         Pecking Orders         Steal Away Home         Steal Away Home         Surgeon's Arms, The         Weight, The         Year of Lacertis, The         Yellow Girl, The