This award-winning playwright likes the concept of a creative work trinity - be it operatic libretto, film direction, or developing a character's arc.

Ever bold in all her artistic endeavours, Colleen Murphy could be called High Priestess of Hardcore Culture.

She has directed film for 20 years, having worked with Canadian actors Randy Hughson, Alberta Watson, Graham Greene, Emily Hampshire, and is now in the process of completing her latest cinematic work, a black-and-white short called Out in the Cold with Gordon Tootoosis, Errol Kiniskino and Mathew Strongeagle.

She is also writing the libretto with composer Aaron Gervais for the heartwrenching epic opera The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G., a play about a wounded Afghan soldier that is “chewing in her ear,” in addition to another larger scale play, Deliver Me, about a 17-year familial clash set in Ancient Rome. In this final interview segment, Colleen Murphy discusses her three addictions.

What do you like best? In addition to writing opera libretto and several plays, you have also written directed many provocative films including Putty Worm, The Shoemaker, Desire, and Termini Station with the late Colleen Dewhurst and Megan Follows.

"They are all so different. It’s like having three different addictions. The addiction degree is the same. Sometimes you need a fix of this; sometimes you need a fix of that, and then you need a fix of this. They are so totally different. Nobody can tell me that film is the same as plays, or that plays are the same as opera."

When you are writing a play do you sometimes see it in filmic terms?

"No. I don’t see it at all. I usually get an image at the beginning and that’s it. Everything I hear. It’s all about hearing. Film is the opposite. Sometimes I get an image and I can only see everything in the images. Opera is.. I can’t see or hear because I can read the music and everything but I can’t hear music. What’s exciting about opera is the huge epic structure driven by characters. The challenge then becomes for opera, how do you create a character and how do you move them through time in the form of a plot in an organic way? That is really your job as a librettist because the composer does everything else. The composer does the emotional life of the opera, and the librettist, the character and structure."

You also have another play in the works about a wounded soldier in Afghanistan…

"Yeah, yeah … you’ve got to wonder where those war plays are coming from."

Well you did go Auschwitz (inspiration for the film Putty Worm) so I imagine that image is likely engrained in your mind.

"Yes.... This play about the Afghan soldier is … chewing in my ear. But I am actually in the middle of writing another big play set in Rome."

You mean Deliver Me….

"Yes, and that’s going to take me a while because it’s a three part play so it will probably run five acts, perhaps more."

What’s this play about?

"The clash. It’s manifested in one family over 17 years. There is a clash between the Roman-based cults and Christianity. It completely tears the family apart. It’s also set in the time between 227 and 250 AD, because at that time – the Carthaginians were basically Romans – the empire was falling apart. They were starting to fight wars on more than one front. They were killing their emperors and the military was becoming very powerful. It was a really difficult time, the beginning of the end."

Could be 2008….

"Ahhhh, yeah, I think every generation has the “beginning of the end” and only in history in the long view can we actually see where it began."

Where the “end” started…

"Yeah (she laughs) - where the “end” began."

Who is your favourite playwright?

"I would say at this point, because you asked me today… Euripides."

***Colleen Murphy has a guilty pleasure. She likes old country, especially Hank Williams – Men with Broken Hearts.***

The December Man (L'homme décembre) continues at Canadian Stage Company's Berkeley Street Theatre to May 17 and will also be of the 2008 / 2009 season for Vancouver's Green Thumb Theatre.