Post by New Ecopia on Jun 17, 2014 20:27:57 GMT -5
John Misto
John Misto was born in Australia in 1952 and grew up in Sydney. He attended De La Salle Collage at Ashfield and the University of New South Wales, where he completed an Arts/Law degree. He is a qualified solicitor and has worked in the Attorney-General's Department. He also completed a writer's course at the Film School and has being a writer since 1981. He has written extensively for television, which he acknowledges as a fine training ground for scriptwriting. It was during these early experiences, writing for ‘A Country Practice’ and ‘GP’, that he learnt the power of emotion and not being frightened to make the audience cry.
He achieved critical acclaim for his play ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ which won the 1996 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Best Play after its season at the Ensemble Theatre and the play also won the Australia Remembers National Play Competition in 1995. Before writing the play he read and was inspired by the book ‘White Coolies’ by Betty Jeffery in which she had been a member of the Australian Army Nursing Service and had survived captivity as a prisoner of war in Sumatra and Malaya now known as Malaysia. As John Misto himself said in the play’s author’s note, ‘I do not have the power to build a memorial so I wrote a play instead.’
Misto’s most recent work for television was the miniseries ‘Day of the Roses’ based on the Granville train disaster of 1977. His other credits for television writing include two episodes of ‘Palace of Dreams’, which won the 1986 AWGI Award for the Best Script in a series. In 1994 ‘The d**nation of Harvey McHugh’ won the AFI Award for Best Screenplay in the TV Drama category. He has also written two telemovies for the ABC TV Drama ‘Natural Causes’ and ‘Peter & Pompey’, both of which won awards.
John Misto was born in Australia in 1952 and grew up in Sydney. He attended De La Salle Collage at Ashfield and the University of New South Wales, where he completed an Arts/Law degree. He is a qualified solicitor and has worked in the Attorney-General's Department. He also completed a writer's course at the Film School and has being a writer since 1981. He has written extensively for television, which he acknowledges as a fine training ground for scriptwriting. It was during these early experiences, writing for ‘A Country Practice’ and ‘GP’, that he learnt the power of emotion and not being frightened to make the audience cry.
He achieved critical acclaim for his play ‘The Shoe-Horn Sonata’ which won the 1996 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Best Play after its season at the Ensemble Theatre and the play also won the Australia Remembers National Play Competition in 1995. Before writing the play he read and was inspired by the book ‘White Coolies’ by Betty Jeffery in which she had been a member of the Australian Army Nursing Service and had survived captivity as a prisoner of war in Sumatra and Malaya now known as Malaysia. As John Misto himself said in the play’s author’s note, ‘I do not have the power to build a memorial so I wrote a play instead.’
Misto’s most recent work for television was the miniseries ‘Day of the Roses’ based on the Granville train disaster of 1977. His other credits for television writing include two episodes of ‘Palace of Dreams’, which won the 1986 AWGI Award for the Best Script in a series. In 1994 ‘The d**nation of Harvey McHugh’ won the AFI Award for Best Screenplay in the TV Drama category. He has also written two telemovies for the ABC TV Drama ‘Natural Causes’ and ‘Peter & Pompey’, both of which won awards.
