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John Misto
John Misto
John Misto
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John Misto (born 13 October 1952) is an Australian writer for film, television, stage, and fiction.[1][2][3][4] His works have won "many awards including the Queensland Premier's Literary Award, three Australian Film Institute Awards, three Australian Writers' Guild Awards and a Gold Plaque at the Chicago Television Awards".[5][6][7]

Key Information

Early life and education

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John Misto began writing at the age of twelve and did his first television interview at ABC Television two years later. Much of his writing has been influenced by his strict Catholic family upbringing and a similar education at a Catholic secondary school in Sydney.

After graduating in Arts and Law from the University of New South Wales, he worked in the state public service as a Research Officer for the Privacy Committee. His experiences there laid the foundations for his television series, The Damnation of Harvey McHugh.[8] He left the public service to concentrate on working as a theatre and television writer.

Television writing

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Misto completed a Diploma in Scriptwriting at the Australian Film and Television School in 1980.[9] He then joined the Grundy Organisation and worked as a scriptwriter on the popular Australian television series, The Young Doctors. Two years later he wrote his first telemovie, Natural Causes, a black comedy about ageing hippies and murder, for ABC Television. That work won an Australian Film Institute Award for the Best Telemovie Script and the Australian Writers' Guild Award for Best Original Telemovie.[4]

Further works for ABC Television included G.P., Dancing Daze, Palace of Dreams,[4] The Cut, a six-hour series about a corrupt sports agent, The Damnation of Harvey McHugh and the telemovie Sisters of War.[10]

Misto has written extensively for children’s television. He penned several episodes of the children’s television series Dusty and Butterfly Island as well as the telemovie of Butterfly Island.[11] He also wrote the award-winning telemovie Peter and Pompey for the Australian Children's Television Foundation.[11]

He has written scripts for popular television shows such as the telemovie Heroes’ Mountain: The Rescue of Stuart Diver for Network Ten,[12] The Day of the Roses: The True Granville Story,[13] Mary MacKillop and Gordon Bennett[14] for Mike Willesee’s Australians,[15] A Country Practice, Dirt Water Dynasty and White Collar Blue. He also co-wrote the miniseries The Last Frontier, starring Linda Evans and Jack Thompson, which was screened on the CBS television network in the United States.[16]

Stage plays

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Over the years John Misto has written extensively for the theatre. His first play, Sky, was a monologue and was staged at the Ensemble Theatre in Kirribilli, Sydney.[17] It was nominated for the Sydney Critics’ Award for Best New Play of the Year and also received a commendation from the Australian Human Rights Commission.[7]

That was followed by the play, The Shoe-Horn Sonata (1996) which premiered at the same theatre, and was subsequently performed dozens of times around Australia,[18][19] in London, and in Prague (in Czech translation), followed by three years of national tours around Australia and further seasons at the Ensemble and at the NIDA Theatre, Kensington, Sydney. The play was awarded the AWGIE Television Mini-Series Original Award,[4] the NSW Premier's Literary Award and the Australia Remembers National Play Competition.[20] The play was listed for twenty years as a study text for the New South Wales Higher School Certificate.[21] As at 2025 it is still being studied in Australian schools.

Misto’s next plays included Gossamer, which was based on the Cottingley fairy hoax of 1917 and which was played at the Ensemble and at the Fortune Theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand;[17] Dark Voyager ("about the turbulent relationship between Joan Crawford and Marilyn Monroe"[2]); and Harp on the Willow.[22]

In 2008 Misto branched out into musical theatre biography when he co-wrote Peace Train: The Cat Stevens Story which had several national tours around Australia,[23] a sold-out performance at the Sydney Opera House and a national tour of the United Kingdom in 2017.[24]

In 2017 Misto wrote Lip Service about the life of American make-up millionairess, Helena Rubinstein and her war with Elizabeth Arden and Revlon's Charles Revson. Lip Service was staged in Sydney at the Ensemble Theatre and in Melbourne.

In the same year, Lip Service, with a new title, Madame Rubinstein, had a sold-out season at The Park Theatre in London’s West End[25] starring Miriam Margolyes and Frances Barber. Madame Rubinstein had two seasons and a national tour in the Czech Republic[26] and was staged in other Eastern European countries: Lithuania,[27] Belarus, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Latvia, Ukraine and Russia (in the cities of Ekaterinburg and Norilsk), as well as in Israel.[28]

In 2022 Madame Rubinstein premiered at the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow[29] starring Russia’s leading actress, Vera Alentova, on which occasion Misto became the first Australian playwright to have a play staged at a commercial theatre in Moscow. As at 2025 the play remains in the theatre’s repertoire.[30]

Works

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Television

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Theatre

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  • The Last Time I Saw Paris (1980)
  • Room for Dreamers (1980)
  • The Dying of Angel Dunleavy (1980)
  • Sky (1992)
  • The Shoe-Horn Sonata (1995)[31][32]
  • Gossamer (1997)[33][34]
  • Harp on the Willow (2007)[35]
  • Peace Train: The Cat Stevens Story (2008)
  • Dark Voyager (2014)[36]
  • Madame Rubinstein (2017)[37] [produced in Sydney as Lip Service][38][39]

Works in printed form

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Plays

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  • The Shoe-Horn Sonata, Sydney: Currency Press, 1996[40]
  • Madame Rubinstein, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017[41]
  • Lip Service (Madame Rubinstein), Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018
  • Gossamer, Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018
  • Dark Voyager, Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018
  • Harp on the Willow, Sydney: Origin Theatrical, 2018

Novels

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  • Peter and Pompey, Fitzroy, Victoria: Penguin/McPhee Gribble with the Australian Children's Television Foundation, 1988 (Touch the Sun series)[42]
  • The Devil’s Companions, Sydney: Hodder Headline Australia, 2005[43]

Articles

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Awards

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  • 1986: Australian Film Institute Award (AACTA): Best Screenplay – Telefeature for Natural Causes[2]
  • 1986: Australian Writers’ Guild Award (AWGIE): Best Telemovie Script for Natural Causes[2]
  • 1986: Australian Writers’ Guild Award (AWGIE): Best Script, Series Episode for Palace of Dreams Episode 10[2]
  • 1994: Australian Film Institute Award (AACTA): Best Screenplay Television Drama for The Damnation of Harvey McHugh[2]
  • 1995: Australia Remembers National Play Competition for The Shoe-Horn Sonata[44][45][2] ($20,000 prize donated to the Nurses’ National Memorial Fund)[46][47]
  • 1996: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Best Play for The Shoe-Horn Sonata[48][2]
  • 1998: Television Society of Australia Award: Scriptwriting One-Off Drama or Mini-Series for Peter & Pompey[49]
  • 1999: Australian Film Institute Award (AACTA): Best Television Drama Script for The Day of the Roses[2]
  • 1999: Australian Writers’ Guild Award (AWGIE): Best Script Mini-Series for The Day of the Roses[50][2]
  • 2002: Seaborn Broughton & Walford Foundation Playwright’s Award (Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award for Best Play) for Harp on the Willow[44][2][51]
  • 2003: Gold Plaque for Best Telemovie: Chicago International Television Awards for Heroes’ Mountain[2]
  • 2010: Queensland Premier’s Literary Award: Best Television Script for Sisters of War[52][2]

References

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Further reading

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

John Misto

View on Grokipedia
from Grokipedia
John Misto is an Australian playwright and screenwriter known for dramatizing true stories of historical heroism, forgotten figures, and significant events, particularly those related to war, disaster, and personal triumph. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has created acclaimed works for stage, television, and film, often drawing on extensive research to bring overlooked narratives to life. His most notable stage play, The Shoe-Horn Sonata, examines the experiences of Australian women imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II and has become one of his most awarded and studied works. Other prominent plays include Harp on the Willow, Madame Rubinstein, and Dark Voyager. In television, Misto has written miniseries and telemovies such as The Day of the Roses, which recounts the Granville train disaster; Heroes' Mountain, depicting a real-life rescue; Sisters of War, a companion piece to The Shoe-Horn Sonata; and The Cut. His work has earned multiple prestigious awards, including three Australian Film Institute Awards, three Australian Writers' Guild Awards, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award, the Rodney Seaborn Playwright’s Award for Best New Play, and a Silver Logie for Best Miniseries. Misto has also published fiction, including the thriller novel The Devil’s Companions and the children’s book Peter & Pompey.

Early life and education

Childhood and early influences

John Misto was born on 13 October 1952 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Education and entry into professional writing

He worked as a Research Officer for the Privacy Committee in the New South Wales public service, where he served as a young solicitor dealing with privacy-related matters in government.

Theatre career

Early plays and development

John Misto began his playwriting career in the early 1990s, developing a distinctive style centered on dramatizing true stories that explore mystery, historical truth, and human intrigue. His first notable play, Sky, premiered at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney in 1992. The work is based on a true unsolved aviation mystery. In 1997, Misto's Gossamer also premiered at the Ensemble Theatre. The play draws from the true story of the fairy photographs and the investigation involving Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle. These early productions established Misto's commitment to truth-seeking narratives drawn from real events, laying the groundwork for his subsequent development as a playwright.

Major works and breakthroughs

John Misto achieved his major theatrical breakthrough with The Shoe-Horn Sonata, which premiered at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney in 1995. The two-hander play dramatises the wartime experiences and postwar reunion of two Australian women who endured captivity in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps during World War II, drawing directly from true accounts provided by survivors. It won the Australia Remembers National Play Competition in 1995 and the Play Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. The published script sold 60,000 copies and remained a prescribed text on the NSW Higher School Certificate syllabus for two decades. Misto wrote the work partly to support lobbying for greater recognition of Australian service nurses, donating his $20,000 prize money from the national competition to the memorial fund; audiences circulated petitions that gathered 20,000 signatures, contributing to public pressure that helped secure the unveiling of the Australian Service Nurses Memorial on Anzac Parade in 1999. Misto consolidated his reputation with Harp on the Willow, which premiered at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney in October 2003. The play portrays the real-life story of Irish singer and harpist Mary O'Hara, who achieved international fame as a teenager, became widowed at twenty, and withdrew from public life to enter a cloistered convent before later departing to resume her musical career. It was awarded the Rodney Seaborn Playwrights' Award.

Later plays and international productions

In 2014, Misto's play Dark Voyager received a successful production at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre from July to August. Set in Hollywood in 1962, the work depicts a tense supper gathering involving fading stars Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, complicated by the chaotic arrival of Marilyn Monroe, and explores conflicts between old and new Hollywood. Misto's later plays maintain his characteristic emphasis on dramatizing real historical figures and their personal struggles, a thread evident in earlier works such as The Shoe-Horn Sonata. His subsequent major stage work, Madame Rubinstein, premiered internationally at London's Park Theatre with a sold-out season opening on 2 May 2017 and closing 27 May 2017. Directed by Jez Bond, the comedy stars Miriam Margolyes as Helena Rubinstein and Frances Barber as Elizabeth Arden, focusing on the fierce rivalry between the cosmetics pioneers amid Rubinstein's rise from Polish-Jewish immigrant to one of the world's wealthiest women. The play achieved extensive international reach, with productions in the Czech Republic (including a premiere at Prague's Studio DVA divadlo on 8 November 2018), Russia (notably a staging in Ekaterinburg as the first Australian play performed in Russian translation), Minsk, Prague, and Israel, among other locations. In 2022, it was staged at Moscow's Pushkin Drama Theatre, directed by Yevgeny Pisarev and starring Vera Alentova in the title role, marking the first time an Australian playwright's work appeared at a commercial theatre in Moscow.

Screenwriting career

Early television contributions

John Misto began his television career in the early 1980s as a storyliner on the long-running soap opera The Young Doctors, contributing to four episodes between 1982 and 1983. This role provided his initial experience in scripted television drama with the Grundy Organisation. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Misto wrote episodes for several notable Australian series. He scripted two episodes of the rural medical drama A Country Practice in 1990–1991, four episodes of the medical series G.P. from 1989–1991, an episode of Dusty in 1988, and two episodes of the anthology mini-series Australians in 1988. Misto also contributed to early telemovies and mini-series. He wrote the 1985 ABC telemovie Natural Causes, a comedy-drama about former housemates reuniting amid a shared secret. In the same year, he scripted two episodes of the mini-series Palace of Dreams. These foundational credits established his versatility in Australian television writing across episodic and long-form formats.

Notable mini-series and telemovies

John Misto has written and created several notable mini-series and telemovies, many of which draw upon real historical events to dramatize human experiences of tragedy, survival, and resilience. His works in this format often focus on Australian stories, blending factual detail with compelling narrative. In 1994, Misto created and wrote the 13-episode mini-series The Damnation of Harvey McHugh, a dramatic series featuring elements of black humor centered on a public service clerk navigating bureaucratic and personal challenges. In 1998, he wrote the two-part mini-series The Day of the Roses, which dramatizes the true story of the 1977 Granville train disaster in Sydney, where a derailment caused a bridge to collapse onto passenger carriages, killing 83 people, and depicts the ensuing rescue efforts and coronial inquiry across alternating timelines. The series received strong viewer appreciation for its accurate and emotional portrayal of the event. Misto wrote the 2002 telemovie Heroes' Mountain, based on the true story of Stuart Diver, the sole survivor of the 1997 Thredbo landslide in the Snowy Mountains, who endured a prolonged entrapment beneath rubble, mud, concrete, and icy water while rescue teams worked to free him. In 2009, he created and wrote the six-episode mini-series The Cut, a comedic drama examining the underbelly of professional sports through the perspective of a small family-owned sports management business. He then provided the screenplay for the 2010 telemovie Sisters of War, inspired by the true experiences of Australian army nurse Lorna Whyte and Catholic nun Sister Berenice Twohill, who were captured and interned as prisoners of war by Japanese forces in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, during World War II following the 1942 invasion, and who formed a lasting friendship through their shared ordeal.

Prose fiction

Children's books and novels

John Misto has published prose fiction in addition to his work for stage and screen. His debut prose work was the children's book Peter & Pompey, published in 1988 by McPhee Gribble (Penguin). The book, concerning a group of exiled Romans who land in Australia in 45 BC, was adapted by the author from his own television script for the telemovie Touch the Sun: Peter & Pompey the same year. Misto's only adult novel to date is the noir thriller The Devil’s Companions, published in 2005 by Hodder Headline Australia (now part of Hachette). The novel concerns an order of nuns accused of child abuse.

Awards and recognition

Key awards in theatre and screenwriting

John Misto has been honored with several prestigious awards in both theatre and screenwriting, reflecting his impact on Australian drama and historical storytelling across stage and screen. In 1986, Misto won the Australian Writers' Guild (AWGIE) Award for Best Telemovie Original for Natural Causes. His play The Shoe-Horn Sonata earned the Australia Remembers National Play Competition award in 1995 and the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Best Play in 1996. Misto received the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Screenplay in a Television Drama for the mini-series The Day of the Roses in 1999. He also won the Silver Logie for Best Miniseries for The Day of the Roses in 1999. In 2002, Harp on the Willow was awarded the Rodney Seaborn Playwright's Award for Best New Australian Play. His telemovie Heroes’ Mountain won the Gold Plaque for Best Telemovie at the Chicago International Television Festival in 2003. In 2010, Sisters of War received the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Television Script.

Legacy and impact

Influence on Australian drama and historical storytelling

John Misto's works have contributed to Australian drama by dramatizing suppressed historical narratives and bringing attention to forgotten heroes who exhibited courage in adversity. His play The Shoe-Horn Sonata has been a prescribed text on the NSW HSC English syllabus for the past twenty years, ensuring that generations of students engage with the overlooked experiences of Australian women imprisoned during World War II and the institutional neglect they faced upon return. The play's influence extends to direct commemoration efforts, as Misto donated the entire $20,000 prize from the Australia Remembers National Play Competition to the fund for the Army Nurses Memorial on Anzac Parade, supporting recognition of these wartime figures. Throughout his career, Misto has specialized in researching and telling true stories that expose institutional failings, historical injustices, and individual resilience against adversity. This focus has achieved international reach with his play Madame Rubinstein (also performed as Lip Service), which has been staged in Russia—including at Ekaterinburg as the first Australian play performed there in Russian translation, and at the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre—as well as in European cities such as Prague and Minsk, and with seasons planned in Israel.

References

  1. https://www.smithandmacdonald.com.au/creatives/john-misto
  2. https://www.laterallearning.com/authors/misto.html
  3. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0592968/
  4. http://www.selwaanthony.com.au/authors/john-misto/
  5. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/misto-john-1952
  6. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/archived/mediareport-1999/hack-writing-for-tv/3362724
  7. https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/contributor/226246
  8. https://origintheatrical.com.au/titles/sky
  9. https://origintheatrical.com.au/titles/gossamer
  10. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8589609/the-shoe-horn-sonata-honours-australian-world-war-ii-nurses/
  11. https://www.currency.com.au/books/political-social-themes/the-shoe-horn-sonata/
  12. https://canberradaily.com.au/the-shoe-horn-sonata-one-of-australian-historys-darkest-tales/
  13. https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/harp-on-the-willow-20031010-gdhk43.html
  14. https://apt.org.au/product/harp-on-the-willow-2/
  15. https://www.maryohara-travelswithmyharp.co.uk/news.html
  16. https://payments.origintheatrical.com.au/product/dark-voyager-script/
  17. https://officiallondontheatre.com/show/madame-rubinstein-381732/
  18. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/may/04/madame-rubinstein-review-park-london-miriam-margolyes-frances-barber-helena-rubinstein-elizabeth-arden
  19. https://www.studiodva.cz/repertoar/madame-rubinstein/
  20. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW-Review-John-Mistos-Play-MADAME-RUBINSTEIN-is-Staged-in-Moscow-by-Yevgeny-Pisarev-at-The-Moscow-Pushkin-Drama-Theatre-20220222
  21. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10284630/
  22. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/natural-causes-1985/2338/
  23. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287867/fullcredits/
  24. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176365/
  25. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0294617/
  26. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1324040/
  27. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1633245/
  28. https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/awgau/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/30125508/Past-AWGIE-Award-Winners-1968-2014.pdf
  29. https://oztheatrical.com/john-misto.html
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