Annie Murtagh-Monks
Annie Murtagh-Monks graduated from the 3 year Acting course at NIDA in 1983 and completed post graduate study at RADA in London in 1985. She worked professionally as an actor over 15 years forming her own theatre company, performing two one woman shoes and presenting a daytime television program in Western Australia amongst other things. Since 1995 Annie has been employed as a casting director for film and television and continues to lecture in film and television performance.

Acting Coach/Dramaturg
Since 1999 Annie has been employed on a sessional basis at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts WAAPA.  Annie devised a course in “Acting for Camera” which she taught each year to the third year degree students. She produced and directed the Music Theatre degree students’ end of year show reels for the past five years. Annie is now employed as a guest lecturer teaching Project Weeks to student in the Acting course. She has been employed 5 times to lecture an intensive short course for 3rd year directing students in ‘Directing Actors for the Camera’ at Edith Cowan University and is regularly employed as guest lecture in screen performance at the other uni campuses in Perth. She is an Adjunct Lecturer of the WA Screen Academy at ECU university in Perth.

Annie has worked as Acting Coach on numerous major television & film productions. In addition to casting, she trained all the young lead actors for:

Film Description Informnation To Hell and Back Feature Film Indigenous comedy Day of the Dog Feature Film

Television Description Director/Producer Street Smartz 1 & 2 Children's drama series 2 x 13 episodes Parallax 26 episodes Nine Network, BBC, ABC Recently the highest rating ABC children's TV show in Australia The Shark Net Mini series ABC TV Adaption of the Robert Drewe novel Minty Children's drama series AFI nominated "Best Children's Drama" Southern Cross Telemovie Logie naminated "Best Children's Telemovie" Wild Kat 13 episodes Mark deFriest/Barron Entertainment Fast Tracks 26 episodes The Gift 26 episodes Ship to Shore 1 & 3 2 x 26 episodes Nominated twice for best "Australian Children's TV Series"

Annie co-founded, organises and runs - under the auspices of Perth Actors Collective advanced workshops - PAC Screen Workshops.  Unique in the world when initially started in 1992, these bring together professional actors, directors and screenwriters into the one workshop where they are given a practical understanding of how to create memorable screen drama together.

In 2004 /2005 Annie has devised a new technique V.T.L. (Visual Thought Learning) which enables actors to learn lines extremely quickly and assists in their screen performance. She has been utilising VTL with the lead cast of the TV series ‘Streetsmartz’ which has enabled them each week to film a 26 minute episode in one day instead of the usual 5. They have been using this VTL each week for both series 1 and 2 of this show. Research into the effectiveness of this new technique VTL will form the basis of her doctorate study which Annie is undertaking at Murdoch University.

In 2005, Annie founded and co-ordinates PAC Script Lab monthly rehearsed readings of feature film scripts by West Australian writers. These are sponsored by ScreenWest and Paddy Maguire’s Hotel. In 2008 Annie co-founded and is MD of the newly formed not-for-profit Association of Screen Professionals (ASP) for members of the film and TV industry.

For further information phone Annie on

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