Roman Murphy

**Roman Murphy** was the director of the Starwork Dramatic Theatre, who changed the organisation's ethos into something particularly more violent than it used to be.

## Biography

As an inspiring young comedy artist, Murphy won one of the Starwork Dramatic Theatre's major competitions - winning the grand prize of becoming an officially licensed performer for the Theatre. Over the years, Murphy grew rapidly in popularity as he rose through the ranks from Junior Entertainer with a fifteen minute segment allocated before the Theatre's headline dance acts to Arena Full Star Showrunner with a two hour comedy event with his own Junior Entertainers assigned before his show. The audience loved him, the critics adored him and the Theatre were beyond pleased about how much money he brought them with his shows that would often sell out all the seats.

But yet, Murphy wanted more. When director of the Theatre - Alexandra Hetrlo - died suddenly under mysterious circumstances; Murphy put his name down to replace them and was voted in with almost 79% of the staff vote. At first, Murphy seemed to be uncharacteristically bland and straightforward in his leadership, which many brushed off as him just settling into the position. However, Murphy was merely biding his time and was secretly organising contracts and agreements behind everyone's backs - gearing up for the massive change he wished to implement.

A health scare and near death experience with pneumonia brought forward his plans by four months, and he rapidly changed the Theatre in quick succession. Tickets became a lot more expensive and exclusive, with performers being selected less often and competitions almost completely withdrawn. The official reasoning was to save money and quickly draw up cash - but the true objective was a lot darker. In reality, the audience were rich and bored aristocrats who had a taste for blood and the performers were naive and inexperienced people, eager to please.

The performances were set up in such a way that any fluff note or wrong dance move from a performer was met with death via vaporisation - and this was exactly what the new audience were here for. Murphy had a dark and twisted mind, which could've been gauged from his extremely dark sense of humour - and chose to cater to this new audience.

The Theatre operated this way for many years, with staff being brainwashed, bullied and harassed into keeping quiet or replaced with people who merely did not care. Performers who survived had their memories altered to forget the deaths before they were forced back into performing, trapped in a cycle until they were finally killed and missing persons cases were "solved" with holograms - although their success rate was never 100% and typically aroused suspicion after some time. This didn't tend to be the case, however, as Murphy tended to pick those who were desperate and unlikely to be missed.

Nevertheless, Murphy's reign of terror would come to an end with the Sixteenth Doctor, alongside companion sibling duo; Alec and Constance O'Conor's arrival. Unaware of the changes that Murphy had brought about, the Doctor was about to lead the two into the audience when Constance was whisked away after introducing herself to the receptionist - mistaken for another Constance who ultimately never showed up.

Still not suspecting anything, the Doctor and Alec were ushered into the audience and witnessed the first death after a dancer accidentally tripped during their routine. Realising the terrible danger Constance was in, they used the intermission to locate her and warn her. Luckily, the time for Constance to perform was extremely far away, so during another intermission, the Doctor and Alec went to confront Murphy, who laughed in their faces - stating that they should've known what the Theatre did.

As Constance convinced her fellow performers not to go on stage, the audience grew restless at the lack of action and Murphy was forced to deal with the growing situation. He dragged Constance on stage and made her sing, hoping to distract her with enough theatrics so that she would falter which would warrant vaporisation and please the audience. Despite his best efforts, Constance persevered and escaped with her life.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Alec had been working on freeing the performers and when no one came on stage after Constance left, the audience began to heckle. Murphy tried to calm the situation but was vaporised by a vengeful performer who activated the machine, an action met with scold from the Doctor who believed he should've met justice at the hands of the authorities. (TV: *The Unearthly Dramatics of the Theatre*)