"For the first time I realised that scripted plays were something that could be made locally and could be made about the world around you," says Murphy.

"That sounds like a really obvious thing but most of the time when you're studying in school plays are things in books from overseas, from another time, that someone else has written and here was a play written in Queanbeyan."

The play Murphy was helping with was written by documentary filmmaker Gunnar Isaacson who had retired to Queanbeyan and turned his hand to theatre.

"Gunnar had written that play and I wanted to emulate him, I wanted my stories to be told."

Murphy, now 37, has done just that. Best known for his adaptations, for stage and film, of Holding the Man, which has just finished a run in London, and Strangers in Between, which was running in London at the same time, as well as the miniseries Devil's Playground, he still believes that local stories can work globally.

And that's exactly where his latest production, Mark Colvin's Kidney, has come from.

"The Belvoir Theatre Company asked me to find a play was global and local," Murphy says.

"I was already interested in journalism … there are interesting forces of change on your profession at the moment, whether that's the way that revenue is made, or the way people consume the news, but also globally, the way a foreign correspondent might not be afforded the same protections they once were.

"In the beginning when I was looking at this idea I think Peter Greste was still in prison, or he was just being released, and I thought in terms of finding that global story that was local journalism would offer that."

He had a good story lined up, a young Australian journalist was arrested in the US, and he began following the story, thinking he had his idea.

"But he got himself a good lawyer and got released and I thought there goes my second act, good for him, but there goes my play."

This journalist put him in touch with Mark Colvin and as soon as Murphy met the veteran broadcaster and journalist he knew he had his play.

"I'd read about the life-saving kidney donation, the connection with the phone hacking scandal, it's a remarkable story, and there was already such interesting dramatic shapes to these true events."

For as much as Murphy is telling these global stories, he remains strongly connected to his local roots. He regularly visits his mother in Queanbeyan, has a brother living in Bungendore. He's happy to talk about memories of play readings in rickety old halls at the Queanbeyan Showgrounds, school productions he was a part of as a student at St Gregory's Primary School and St Edmunds College.

He thinks it's vital that the dramatic arts play a part in the school curriculum.

"Not only to give people an opportunity to pursue theatre or screen vocationally, but it's also because we know that including the dramatic arts as part of education helps people with their self expression, it helps them articulate their place in the world, and that impacts broadly on someone's education, and I think whatever profession they choose they will call on those skills."

Has his career helped him articulate his place in the world?

"Yes, I think it has, and I don't mean that in a self important way. I don't mean that like here's my vision.

"I hope that theatre writing is more generous than that, that it's not self centred. Writing plays is about articulating a response to the world and that should be really specific.

"When we're writing about our corner of the world, our little street, we're also articulating something global and that seems to be the trick of it. The more specific you are the more universal you will be as well."

Mark Colvin's Kidney runs from February 25 to April 2 at Belvoir, Sydney, $37-$72.