Frank Hatherley is a Sydney writer/director who has spent most of his working life in Britain. Brisbane born (in 1941), Mosman raised, North Sydney High School educated, his multi-media career in England covered radio journalism, theatre directing, television drama producing with the BBC and Thames TV, and a university senior lectureship in television production and screen writing.

He won a coveted ABC Trainee Director Scholarship in 1967 which took him to the excellent Sheffield Playhouse where he staged many plays, modern and classic, later becoming Associate Director.

Joining BBC Television as a Script Editor in 1971, he was soon a Producer in the Plays Department at the height of its 70s fame and prestige, producing many one-off dramas and serials, including the BBC/ABC series co-production THE EMIGRANTS, about an English family settling in Sydney. In 1978 he moved to Thames Television to produce a thrice-weekly serial ROOMS.

In 1979 he accepted a short-term Senior Lectureship with the Polytechnic of Central London to run television courses on its renowned Media Studies course. The Polytechnic became the University of Westminster and the ‘fill-in job’ lasted 18 years.

But it’s to playwriting that he has always returned. His theatre credits include the musicals THE BLITZ SHOW (1976), THE RIPPER SHOW AND HOW THEY WROTE IT (1977) and NED KELLY’S SISTER’S TRAVELLING CIRCUS (1979) which was commissioned by The Pram Factory, Melbourne, and played the 1980 Sydney Festival in a Hyde Park tent. Music for these three musicals is by Jeremy Barlow. Frank's adaptation of Dickens’ HARD TIMES (1972) was commissioned by the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, his drama WILD COLONIAL BOY (1969) by the Sheffield University, and a musical (co-written with Christopher Wilkinson and Jeremy Barlow) TEASDALE’S FOLLIES (1970) by the Sheffield Playhouse. He staged his racy musical version of Alfred Jarry’s ‘Ubu’ plays, disgustingly entitled SHITHOT!, in London in 1996.

Since returning to Sydney in 1997 after an absence of 34 years, he has written a new Australianised libretto for the world’s most famous operetta (THE MERRY WIDOW FROM BLUEGUM CREEK) which has had several Australian productions and, recently, a couple in the UK. His Sydney farce OPEN FOR INSPECTION was staged successfully by the Peninsula Theatre Company, Northern Beaches, in 2000. He wrote and directed his 3-actor drama MY HENRY LAWSON for the same company in 2002: The Actors’ Forum company revived it for a 2004 showing at Waverley Library, Bondi Junction.

In 2003 his political farce MANLY MATES, a confronting portrait of NSW premier Bob Askin, caused enough waves on Sydney's northern peninsula to attract a November 2005 production by the New Theatre, Newtown. A new and revised production by the Peninsula Theatre Company played at the Star of the Sea, Manly in May/June 2007. Throughout August 2005 his new musical ROSIE, music by Peter Stannard, starring Geraldine Turner, played at the Independent Theatre, North Sydney in a fully professional production directed by himself (see special ROSIE page).

Frank is a member of the Film Critics' Circle of Australia, writing regular reviews of new Australian and New Zealand movies for the influential London based weekly Screen International. Some recent reviews can be read on the FILM REVIEWS page.