Erin Murray
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Femme Futurist
Jeff Henkel Photography
Erin Murray (she/her) is passionate about multi-generational stories with a delicious femme center. Based in Seattle and Chicago, her work has been seen across the Northern Hemisphere.
Erin directed the Irish Premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in 2005 which won Best Production at the Speigeltent and was later remounted at Project Arts Centre. From 2005 - 2008, Erin was the staff director for Opera Theatre Company in Dublin, Ireland, where she toured five fully staged operas on European tours. In 2012, she was the executive producer on the world premiere of Ariel Zetina's Pink Milk: A Magical Tragedy Loosely Based on the Life of Alan Turing at New York International Fringe Festival and Chicago Fringe. Additional directing credits include Anne Washburn's The Internationalist (Steppenwolf Garage), the world premiere of Scott Kaiser's Shakespeare's Other Women (Island Shakespeare Festival), the Chicago premiere of Suzanne Heathcote's I Saw My Neighbor on the Train and I Didn't Even Smile (Redtwist, Jeff Nomination for Best Supporting Actress), and the Seattle premiere of Annie Baker's John (ArtsWest); Erin assisted Tony Award winner Anna D. Shapiro on the world premiere productions of Tracy Letts' Three
Sisters and Mary Page Marlowe for Steppenwolf Theatre. Erin directed her Kilroy’s List Awarded adaptation of Edmund Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac featuring a trans/non-binary actor in the titular role for the 2021 Island Shakespeare Festival.
In February 2020, Erin began her collabortion with Will Wilhelm on a solo work title, Gender Play, or What You Will. Over the next three years, they wrote a seance with Shakespeare that took the audience on a gender-imaginative romp through seven of Shakespeare’s iconic characters, and featured a live tarot reading and surprise dance party. Will and Erin created a video podcast series, Teacakes & Tarot: Conversations with Queer Futurists, to create community and gather feedback during their new script development. The show featured interviews with emerging and established queer artists with a relationship to Shakespeare theater. Guests included Bill Rauch, Robert O' Hara, MJ Kaufman, and Lisa Wolpe. About Face Theater in Chicago graciously offered the produce the world premiere of Gender Play in May 2023. The production was later nominated for three 2023 Equity Joseph Jefferson nominations - “Best New Work,” "Best Solo Performance," and "Best Lighting Design."
She earned her MFA in Theatre Directing from Northwestern University, and BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin. Erin is an Associate Member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society.