Our Australian Theatre In The 1990s

AUSTRALIAN THEATRE in the 1990s is a vigorous enterprise displaying the energies and contradictions of a multicultural society. This collection of essays by leading scholars of Australian theatre and drama surveys the emergence and directions of the new theatrical energies which have challenged or redefined the Australian 'mainstream': Aboriginal, multicultural, Asian-Australian, women's, gay and lesbian, community and young people's theatre; and charts the exciting growth of physical theatre. The contributors assess the impact of evolving funding and industrial priorities, and examine the theoretical and cultural debates surrounding Australian playwriting and theatre-making from the 1970s Vietnam dramas to the postmodern present.

AUSTRALIAN THEATRE in the 1990s is a vigorous enterprise displaying the energies and contradictions of a multicultural society. This collection of essays by leading scholars of Australian theatre and drama surveys the emergence and directions of the new theatrical energies which have challenged or redefined the Australian 'mainstream': Aboriginal, multicultural, Asian-Australian, women's, gay and lesbian, community and young people's theatre; and charts the exciting growth of physical theatre. The contributors assess the impact of evolving funding and industrial priorities, and examine the theoretical and cultural debates surrounding Australian playwriting and theatre-making from the 1970s Vietnam dramas to the postmodern present.

Playing Australia explores the insights and challenges that Australian theatre can offer the international theatre community. Collectively, the essays in this book ask what Australian drama is, has been, and might be, both to Australians and non-Australians, when it is performed in national and international arenas. Playing Australia ranges widely in its discussions and includes analysis of Australian practitioners playing away from home; playing with Australian stereotypes; and the relationship between play, culture, politics and national identity. Topics addressed in this diverse collection include: whiteness, otherness and negotiations of Aboriginal and Asian identities; Australian school and college drama; the discourse of Australian professional theatre magazines: Aboriginal Shakespeare; Australian drama and Australian cricket; the marketing of Australianness in Germany; the international successes of Tap Dogs and Cloudstreet. New histories of Australian theatre are offered and practitioners whose careers are reconsidered in detail include high wire-walker Ella Zuila, playwright May Holt, suffrage worker and playwright Inez Bensusan, classicist Gilbert Murray, and commercial playwright Haddon Chambers. With contributions from authors as diverse as Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington and leading post-colonial critic Helen Gilbert, and interview discussion with Cate Blanchett and Tap Dogs producer Wayne Harrison, Playing Australia seeks to pay tribute to the complexities of Australian theatre experiences, to reassess Australian theatre as a significant force in the international arena and to challenge traditional thinking on what Australian theatre can be.

Whether catching Australian theatre during the 2000s or catching up now, this volume provides the reader with an overview of the decade. It reveals how Australian theatre continues to reflect the major political and social concerns of our time. Each contribution explores an important area of Australian performance so that the volume provides crucial background and insightful analysis for current theatre practice. The contributions cover political theatre, Indigenous theatre, playwrights concerned with cultural identity, key Shakespearean productions, the impact of funding and arts policy on theatre, dramaturgy and innovative projects, leading directors on rehearsal processes, theatre for young people, regional theatre including the Northern Territory, and physical theatre and Circus Oz. The book confirms the consolidation of previous artistic achievement over the decade and identifies the emergence of new trends and creative practices.

Theatre Australia (Un)limited tells a truly national story of the structures of post-war Australian theatre: its artists, companies, financial and policy underpinnings. It gives an inclusive analysis of three ‘waves’ of Australian theatrical activity after 1953, and the types of organisations which grew up to support and maintain them. Subsidy, repertoire patterns, finances and administration, theatre buildings, companies, festivals and notable productions of the commercial, mainstream and alternative Australian theatre are examined state by state, and changes to governmental policy analysed. Theatrical forms comprise not only spoken-word drama, but also music theatre, comedy, theatre-restaurant, circus, puppetry, community theatre in several forms and new mixed-media genres: physical theatre, circus, visual theatre and contemporary performance. Theatre Australia (Un)limited is the first comprehensive overview of the fortunes of Australian theatre as a national enterprise, providing the industrial analysis of the ‘three waves’ essential for the understanding of the New Wave and of contemporary drama.

divExplores the political, social, and historical implications of staged language /DIV

This book offers the first major discussion of metatheatre in Australian drama of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It highlights metatheatre’s capacity to illuminate the wider social, cultural, and artistic contexts in which plays have been produced. Drawing from existing scholarly arguments about the value of considering metatheatre holistically, this book deploys a range of critical approaches, combining textual and production analysis, archival research, interviews, and reflections gained from observing rehearsals. Focusing on four plays and their Australian productions, the book uses these examples to showcase how metatheatre has been utilised to generate powerful elements of critique, particularly of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations. It highlights metatheatre’s vital place in Australian dramatic and theatrical history and connects this Australian tradition to wider concepts in the development of contemporary theatre. This illuminating text will be of interest to students and scholars of Australian theatre (historic and contemporary) as well as those researching and studying drama and theatre studies more broadly.

Contemporary Australian Playwriting provides a thorough and accessible overview of the diverse and exciting new directions that Australian Playwriting is taking in the twenty-first century. In 2007, the most produced playwright on the Australian mainstage was William Shakespeare. In 2019, the most produced playwright on the Australian mainstage was Nakkiah Lui, a Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman. This book explores what has happened both on stage and off to generate this remarkable change. As writers of colour, queer writers, and gender diverse writers are produced on the mainstage in larger numbers, they bring new critical directions to the twenty-first century Australian stage. At a politically turbulent time when national identity is fractured, this book examines the ways in which Australia’s leading playwrights have interrogated, problematised, and tried to make sense of the nation. Tracing contemporary trends, the book takes a thematic approach to the re-evaluation of the nation that is dramatized in key Australian plays. Each chapter is accompanied by a duologue between two of the playwrights whose work has been analysed, to provide a dual perspective of theory and practice.