John Burls Background

JOHN BURLS has been writer in residence at The Independent Theatre at Eumundi since its inception in 1994.

He is a former Sydney and Melbourne TV/radio personality and journalist.

He started his writing career in the days when radio was king and wrote and produced musicals-variety programmes and documentaries.

He later produced TV variety shows at ATN Channel 7, Sydney.

Over recent years he has worked as "an advertising man", media feature writer for newspapers and presently divides his time between writing for the stage, writing weekly theatre columns, reviewing for Stage Whispers magazine, 3 weekly radio theatre shows on FM104.9 (Sunshine Coast) and writing feature articles for The Australian Senior Newspaper.

His first professionally produced stage comedy was The Giant Lemon commissioned for the 1985 Gosford City Festival of the Waters.

More recently John has maintained a prodigious output with a large number of one-act plays which have won many drama festivals, including the Sunshine Coast Theatre Festival 3 years running.

As well, he has penned many full-length plays in both light comedy and black comedy categories.

Each year for The Indee he writes the Comedy and Consomme series of 3 funny plays, the end of year topical revue, a festival play (or two), and usually a full-length play.

John was one of 14 in Queensland chosen to participate in a Masterclass conducted by the Queensland Theatre Company. During this time he developed the play Parliamentary Privilege.