He worked as a gofer for Sydney's
Nimrod Theatre before being appointed a trainee director at the
Melbourne Theatre Company. He won an
Australia Council Fellowship to study directing at
New York University, graduating in 1977. On his return to Australia, he joined the
State Theatre Company of South Australia as actor and director, later becoming associate director. He was Head of Acting at the
NIDA in 1983 and 1984. He was encouraged to write plays while at NYU by one of his teachers, the playwright
Israel Horovitz. His many plays include:
Good Works,
Blackrock,
Daylight Saving,
Mongrels (about the relation between Australian playwrights
Jim McNeil and
Peter Kenna, the latter a friend),
The Female Factory,
A Man with Five Children,
On the Wallaby, and
A Poor Student, many of them published by
Currency Press. His plays – which include French and Italian translations and adaptations – have been performed by all major Australian theatre companies, including
Sydney Theatre Company,
Company B, the
Australian Opera (as it then was),
Melbourne Theatre Company,
Queensland Theatre Company,
State Theatre Company of South Australia, the
Ensemble Theatre,
Playbox,
La Boite Theatre, and the
Australian Theatre for Young People. His one-act theatre-in-education play
A Property of the Clan was developed into the full-length play, and later film,
Blackrock (1997). Enright also wrote a number of screenplays; he was nominated for an
Academy Award (along with director/co-writer
George Miller) for his screenplay of ''
Lorenzo's Oil'' (1992). He wrote the book and lyrics to a number of musical works: three musicals with
Terence Clarke –
The Venetian Twins;
Variations (Winner,
NSW Premier's Literary Play Award, 1983); and
Summer Rain (commissioned for a graduating class at NIDA) -, and others with
Alan John (
Orlando Rourke),
David King (
The Betrothed,
The Voyage of Mary Bryant,
The Good Fight), and
Max Lambert (
Miracle City); and an opera with
Graham Dudley (
The Snow Queen). Enright wrote the book of the
stage musical version of
The Boy from Oz, based on the biography of the same name written by
Stephen MacLean, which was produced by
Ben Gannon with great success around Australia, and, after his death, in New York. His adaptation, with
Justin Monjo, of
Tim Winton's
Cloudstreet enjoyed huge critical and box-office success at the
Sydney and
Perth Festivals (whose co-production it was), on tour of Australia, at the Festival of Dublin, and in London. He wrote for ABC Radio, including
Watching over Israel (1990
AWGIE winner, Best Radio Play). His non-dramatic work includes a book for children,
The Maitland and Morpeth String Quartet (illustrated by
Victoria Roberts), a set of verses for
The Carnival of the Animals, and occasional verse. He edited
Holding the Man, a memoir by his former
NIDA student,
Timothy Conigrave, and, following Conigrave's death, saw it to publication by
Penguin Books. ==Personal life==