Chris Dockrill, Creator of The Island of Doctor Moron

Chris Dockrill’s published plays include – Angry People, Next Station, The Interrogation, Scalpel, Divisions, Flatmates, Cage, The Joker, Old Girls and Benchmarks. His works have appeared in Power Plays(Methuen), Modern Moralities(Nelson), Superscripts (Longman),Dynamic Dramatics (Cambridge University Press) and Enter the Players (Nelson). Works awaiting publication include award winning Barbed Wire Canoes, Middle Class Fantasies, Precious Metaland the collected work – A Corrugated Collection. His latest writing projects include a two-act play – Flame Trees and the film script, Due Deliberation. . Chris has worked as film script adviser to TAFE – ACT, has been a commissioned playwright to the ACT government and has written Frankenstein – A Born Again Legend for Curriculum Resources – NSW DET. Chris has written and had published, over a 30 year period, numerous papers, articles, lesson units and programs for the teaching of English and Drama in secondary schools. These have appeared in many publications including the NSW English Teachers Association publications (Metaphor etc) and HSC Online. Chris has been an English and Drama teacher for over 30 years.  He has also been actively involved community and environmental issues, having served on committees for the Kempsey Shire Council in the formation of their Local Environmental Plan for the Goolawah area and for the NSW Government as a member of the Community Advisory Committee for the Goolawah State Park and National Parks and Wildlife Service for the Goolawah Regional and National Parks. He is the recipient of an Australia Day Award for his contribution to local cultural events and initiatives in the Kempsey Shire. Chris was also the founder of “The Sanctuary Players” – a theatrical society based in Turramurra and has been an active leader in the field of Drama in secondary schools for over 25 years. In the last decade, he has organised and produced The Hastings Drama Festival and the Mid North Coast Drama Camp which employs professional stage and screen actors to pass on their skills to secondary Drama students. In September, 2010, Chris created and produced the inaugural Curtain Call, a two-day drama festival at the Starcourt Theatre in Lismore featuring public schools from the far north coast area ranging from Lismore to Ballina and north to the Queensland border.   Chris still produces this festival every year.  He has produced, written, co-written and directed many diverse productions including Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker and Albee’s, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  In 2008, Chris wrote Big Soooze, a musical drama set in Kings Cross in the 1920s after initial developmental workshops with other colleagues. He has also produced a CD of his original songs for the show.   More recently, Chris wrote Nightgrooves, a musical drama in two acts with fourteen original songs about escaped convict, Robbie Taggard and his attempts to clear his name and regain the love of his girl, Bella.  Chris has also written produced and directed other rock musicals including Beef, Chill and The Island of Doctor Moron for which he also wrote the original songs the music for which was composed by his wife, Lyn. Chris has produced two  double CDs of the same name. Chris lives with his family, Lyn and three children, on their property at Delicate Nobby, near Crescent Head on the mid-north coast of NSW. He can be contacted at dockrills@bigpond.com.  Chris is now the Director of Island Grunt Pty Ltd, a company that is solely focussed on the production and international promotion of The Island of Doctor Moron™. The production premiered in Paddington, Sydney, Australia in November, 2014 in a theatre that Chris and his company built from the ruins of the long-deserted Palace Academy Twin Cinema.  They called their venue, The New Olympia Theatre in deference to the building's original 1908 name, 'Wests Olympia Theatre'.  The show was opened by Brad Hazzard, the NSW Attorney General. The live show and the film of the show are endorsed by many celebrities including Australia's most famous actor, Jack Thompson AM and Australia's biggest selling and international best seller author, Matthew Reilly.  The live show went from an 'unknown' in its first week to playing to sell-out audiences by its third week. The live show was filmed extensively. The producers then spent ten months in the editing suite in 2015 to produce a unique cinematic film of the live show.  It is the first and only film of its type to have been produced in Australia to date. The film, like the live show show, has received many accolades and is now part of the collection of the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia.  The film has screened to thousands of viewers across Australia, opening to a screening that was sold out two weeks in advance at the Dendy Opera Quays, 200 metres from the Sydney Opera House.  It has screened in some of the most prestigious cinemas in Australia, including the National Library of Australia where it was opened by Luke Hartsuyker, the Minister Assisting the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. It has also been selected by 18 international film festivals, in eleven countries, including the England, Canada, Australia,  France, New Zealand, Spain (where it was reopresented by the Australian Ambassador), Scotland, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and five times in the USA.

Three of Chris' plays, Barbed Wire Canoes, Middle Class Fantasies, Precious Metal,  recently have been translated into German and Swiss German and marketed across the EU by Swiss Theatrical publisher TVE Teaterverlag Elgg.

A reworking of Benchmarks was produced and performed along the Mid North Coast of NSW and for a week-long season at The Adelaide Fringe Festival in 2019.

Flame Trees premiered at The Bandbox Theatre in Kempsey in February, 2020. It ran for nine performances over three weeks, seven of which played to capacity houses.  Chris then produced a film of Flame Trees which premiered at the Majestic cinemas Kempsey on February 7th 2021.  Chris aims to enter the film on theinternational circuit.

Chris’s latest play, “More” was inspired by Kate McClymont’s book, “He Who Must Be Obeid” which reveals the nefarious activities of Eddie Obeid. Although the central charater, T.J Curruthers, is nothing like Obeid, he does share one attribute - no matter how much wealth and power he has, he always wants “more”. The play is due to premire at The Bandbox Theatre in June 2022.

Chris is currently working on a new book titled “Take Two” which is a collection of duologues: Jacko, Joy Ride, Mansirimon Manor, Post Card, Reunion, The Hoist, The Script, The truth about Billy, Toddy, Whatever it Takes, and Tampa Dialogue.

Chris and his wife, Lyn, recently received a 2022 Australia Day Life-time Achievement Award for their on-gong contributions to the cultural life of the Macleay Valley on the Mid-North coast of NSW.

Chris can be contacted at cdockrill@theislandofdoctormoron.com.