BARRY HUMPHRIES (Deviser
and Writer) is not only a successful character actor in Europe
and Australia, but one of Australia’s best-loved landscape painters. His pictures
are in private and public collections both in his homeland and abroad. He was
educated at the University of Melbourne where he studied law, philosophy and
fine arts. It was at the University of Melbourne where he held his first Dada
exhibitions – exercises in anarchy and visual satire that have become a
part of Australian folklore. After writing and performing songs and sketches in
university revues, Humphries toured in Shakespeare with Zoe Caldwell and joined
the newly formed Melbourne Theatre Company. In 1955, he created Mrs. Norm
Everage, a Melbourne housewife who subsequently became internationally
celebrated and evolved into the hugely popular and universally adored Dame
Edna. In Sydney, in the late ’50s, Humphries joined the Philip Street Revue
Theatre, Australia’s first home for intimate revue and satirical comedy. After
a long season in which he developed his newly invented characters, Humphries
appeared as Estragon in Waiting for Godot. This production marked Australia’s first-ever production of a Samuel
Beckett play. In 1959, he and his wife sailed to Venice. During the ’60s in
London, he appeared in numerous West End productions. Most notable were the
musicals Oliver! and Maggie
May by Lionel Bart, and stage/radio
productions by his friend, Spike Milligan, in particular The Bed Sitting
Room. He also worked in productions
with Joan Littlewood at Stratford East, and played Long John Silver at the
Mermaid Theatre. In 1967 he starred as Fagin in the Piccadilly Theatre’s
revival of Oliver! Phil Collins
played the Artful Dodger in this production. Between West End engagements, he
regularly returned to Australia with a new one-man offering, presenting a wide
range of characters, always including Edna, whose popularity was fast
developing. In the early 1970s, with his friend Bruce Beresford (Breaker
Morant, Driving Miss Daisy), Humphries brought to the cinema the character
Barry Mackenzie, a personage he had invented in the ’60s in a cult comic strip
he wrote for Peter Cook’s satirical magazine Private Eye. By the mid-’70s, Humphries was not only playing
character roles in British films, plays and television shows, but starring in
his own one-man show at the Apollo Theatre in London. Housewife Superstar! took London by storm, dominated by Dame Edna, Les
Patterson and his favorite theatrical invention, the suburban ghost Alexander
(Sandy) Stone. He has presented his own shows in the West End ever since,
culminating in Edna, The Spectacle at
the historic Theatre Royal Haymarket. In 1979, Humphries won the Society of
West End Theatres Award for A Night With Dame Edna at the Piccadilly Theatre. Since then, he has
collected innumerable honors for stage and television work, including the Rose
d’Orde Montreux in 1991 for his television show, "A Night on Mount Edna," and a
Sir Peter Ustinov Endowment for his life work as an entertainer at the Banff
Television Festival in 1997. In 2000, he received a Special Tony Award for his
Broadway show and a Special Achievement Award from the Outer Critics Circle. He
has toured in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and in the Far and Middle
East, and recorded Dame Edna television specials for the BBC, London Weekend
TV, NBC and Fox networks. Dr. Humphries is the author of innumerable novels,
autobiographies, poetry and plays. His autobiography, More Please, won the J.R. Ackerley prize for biography in 1993,
and he is the subject of two critical and biographical studies: The Real
Barry Humphries by Peter Coleman and
Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization by John Lahr. His second volume of autobiography, My
Life as Me, won popular and critical
acclaim in Australia and the UK. He received the Order of Australia in 1982, an
Honorary Doctorate of Griffith University (Australia) in 1994 and a Doctorate
of Law at his alma mater, Melbourne University, in 2003. He is married to
Lizzie Spender, the daughter of British poet Sir Stephen Spender, and has two
sons and two daughters, none of whom he particularly wishes to thank in public.