Henry Acting
So happy to receive this Best Actor award. I played Old Feller in 'The Darkness Between Dreams' by Jonathan Samarro in the One House Productions’ Ten Minute Play Festival.
Here is the video of the play and my acceptance speech:
The Darkness Between Dreams
Henry Graham Murray acceptance speech
I have been having a blast acting my Zoom socks off over the last four years, most often live streaming on Facebook or You Tube.
I asked Stephen Olson write a short comedy play for Rachel Brownhill and I and he came up with this brilliant script. We worked with Stephen to develop the first version into something uniquely our own by adding the Shakespeare strand of the story.
Here is a very funny short zoom play which just won writer Stephen Olson Best Play and Best Director and Reyna Calvo Best Actress awards at the Wheaton 10-Minute Play Festival in Maryland run by AmazingTheatre.org. Enjoy!
As a member of more than 10 wonderful online actors’ groups I have performed in well over 1,000 Zoom plays long and short, old and new, particularly loving playing Lear (three times), Richard III, Iago, Prospero, Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch, Margaret (Richard III), Dogberry, Hamlet, Polonius, Gertrude, Claudius, Scrooge (twice plus Muppet version), Henry in 'The Lion in Winter', Mary Ann in 'Constellations', Estragon in ‘Waiting for Godot’ & Old Feller in a new play festival for which I won Best Actor.
In my teens and early 20s I was a member of the National Youth Theatre in the UK and I acted and directed with the Oxford University Dramatic Society. Between them I played in many stage runs in the UK and tours of Europe, including playing Agamemnon at the ancient Greek Theatre in Delphi to audiences of 3,000 each performance.
I chose the offer of a producer/director traineeship at the BBC as a career choice over the offer of joining a repertory theatre as actor. I am a BAFTA nominated director for a British TV comedy series 'Rory Bremner - Who Else?'. From 2013 I ran a Play Reading and Performance group in Los Angeles, where I have been living for the past 30 years, and, come the pandemic, launched into that acting career I put on hold last century.
Comments from actors:
Thank You for carrying the torch for Laurence Olivier - For me, you are him - Congratulations on your wonderful acting successes - J.B. - Los Angeles.
I so appreciate your compelling commitment to Lear's descent into madness. It's easy to play with such a generous actor as you! - R.B. - Nashville.
Thank you, Henry! I so enjoyed your Richard today. You are delving so deeply now into that character I don't think I can ever again think of Richard III without thinking of you. - P.U. - S. California.
Thank you so much for everything last night. Such amazing grounded work that we can all learn from.- R.M. - NYC
You always bring something unique to every role you play. G.L. - UK
Exceptional work tonight, as always. K.M. - Nashville.
Can I just say, I think you're an amazing actor. S.E.F. - Houston.
Some thoughts on acting
A random snippet about acting Shakespeare shot by my friend Eliot Brusman
I have had such a mystical nearly 3 years acting online. I have been trying to figure where the characters I play come from. Well out of the writing of course but when I prepare I just start reading the role out loud and the character most often just pops in with a voice and an attitude. Then as I read through more times it becomes emotionally deeper and more real, even with the funny guys. It is such a joy to experience this and to be able to convey who this character is, what makes them tick, by, in effect, channeling their Being.
Recently I was cast just a couple of days before a reading, as Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2. I started to read it through and I just couldn't get a sense of who this was at all.
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It was all just empty words. I hated it. Then the reading was pushed on a day when I was already committed to rehearsing something else. What a relief. So I could let it go. But it turns out some others couldn't do the new date also. It was pushed on a further 10 days.
I left further preparation for quite a few days. Then I looked at some good actors playing the role. Their interpretations were all sound but I realised that they didn't resonate with what I was feeling about Falstaff. I saw that I had a somewhat pre-conceived idea of who this Falstaff was from having seen him played, but when I read him out loud, a different entity was trying to make his way through. I let go my preconceptions, stuffed a pillow up my shirt and let him in.
I so enjoyed bringing this Falstaff to the party. It feels so real to me. I hope you enjoy it too. (The reading was with a private group of wonderful actors that doesn't put the recording out publicly so we can have fun and try things out with no pressure. So I just have the three monologues in the video that I can show you).
Here are some recent virtual performances
