Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 82 | April 2023

able of Contents

1. Issue 082 (Full Issue PDF)

2. Contents

3. Editorial

4. Provocation #1: Why I Make Theatre: For Now – A Theatre of the Everyday Raimondo Cortese      

Theatre continues to thrive because at its essence, with its focus on presence and the ephemeral nature live performance, there is a malleability and fluidity that is conditioned to adapt to its present circumstances. In many cases, theatre has moved out of purpose-built venues and into the everyday environment to the extent that it often that blurs the boundaries between the fictive and the real. The work of local contemporary practitioners, Ros Oades, Ranters and Back to Back, as well as overseas artists such as Mariano Pensotti, Christiane Jitahy and Philippe Quesne, is analysed in relation to the various ways they construct new relationships with audience to optimise the liveness of the performance exchange.The audience is placed at the heart of narrative and story construction in a way that cannot be replicated by other digitalised mediums.

Key words
Theatre of the Everyday, Everydayness, Dramaturgy,  Liveness, Wandering, Contemporary theatre companies and artists, Ranters, Philippe Quesne, Mariano Pensotti, Christiane Jitahy, PME-Art, Back to Back, Ros Oades, Creative VaQi.

5. Performance Improvisation: No Former Performer Has Performed This Performance Before and the Aesthetics of Play Rea Dennis, Penny Baron, Carolyn Hanna

No Former Performer Has Performed This Performance Before (NFP) is a unique improvisational form that emerges at the intersection of the practices of Melbourne based artists Penny Baron, Carolyn Hanna and Michael Havir. Penny and Carolyn have a long history of co-performance through their body of work as Born in a Taxi. This article unfolds their work through a process of reflective practice and in conversation with performance scholar, Dr Rea Dennis. It discusses the long-term nature of the NFP project and the process of improvisation they execute over a 50-minute live performance. It considers the role of studio practice in establishing their approach to improvisation and documents their shared performance language. The article introduces the seven key principles that inform their ensemble practice and discusses how these afford a framework to sustain durational performance improvisation in the live theatre.

Keywords
Born in a Taxi, Performance Improvisation, Contemporary Performance, Australian Theatre, Live Performance, Performance Practice

6. ‘Brave Space’: Investigating Consent and Boundaries as a Framework for Culturally Safe Collaborative Arts Practice Sarah Austin, Isabella Vadiveloo
This essay aims to extend the understanding of cultural safety in the arts beyond its role as an ethical framework and provide an understanding of the features of culturally safe collaborative practice for artist practitioners, specifically those who work with young people, students, new graduates and emerging artists on creative projects. Bringing together approaches from social justice facilitation, consent and intimacy training and inclusive arts practice, the authors propose the emergence of a ‘brave space’ creative practice, designed to foreground cultural safety and consent in the ethical and mindful creation of a rehearsal room or collaborative project culture. Using case studies of the author’s own creative practice, including Austin’s facilitation of the Lets Take Over program at Northcote Town Hall in Melbourne’s inner north, and Vadiveloo’s work as an intimacy choreographer and director in main stage contexts at Melbourne Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre, we draw on an interdisciplinary body of research literature that documents understandings of cultural safety and its impact.  This supports an examination of the possible features of a culturally safe creative practice, and we consider how this might affect and transform the way we work in creative collaborations.

7. The 1948 Old Vic Tour: Viv and Larry Down Under Chris Hay
This article pairs published accounts of the legendary 1948 Old Vic Tour of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, led by Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, with new insights revealed by their personal archives, Olivier’s tour diary, and subsequent biographies of Leigh. Adding this additional context highlights the pivotal role the 1948 Old Vic Tour played in the institutionalisation of theatre down under, by drawing a direct line from Olivier and Leigh’s interventions in support of an Australian national theatre, through Tyrone Guthrie’s subsequent 1949 tour, to the early activities of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust.

8. A Workshop in Process: The Playwrights Workshop in Aotearoa Murray Edmond
This essay examines the introduction and adoption of the Playwrights Conference model of play development from the USA into Aotearoa, subsequent to its uptake in Australia. In tracing the transformation, questioning and abandonment of the Conference/Workshop model in Aotearoa, the essay draws on published sources, recent PhD theses and email interviews, as well as the author’s own involvement in the Workshops (observer 1982; actor 1984; director 1986; dramaturge and organizing committee 1990, 1992, 1994). The model’s relevance to the overall development of playwriting in Aotearoa, including Māori drama, is highlighted.

Keywords
Playwrights Conference/Workshop, O’Neill Center play development model USA, Australia, Aotearoa,  Lloyd Richards; Robert Lord,  Playmarket; Aotearoa Playwrights’ Workshops, Māori playwriting, Age of Process; Neoliberal Arts Funding

9. The 25th Anniversary Tour of Krishnan’s Dairy: Touring Aotearoa New Zealand during the COVID-19 Pandemic James Wenley .
In 2022 Indian Ink Theatre Company embarked on a 25^th anniversary Aotearoa New Zealand tour of Krishnan’s Dairy, written and performed by Jacob Rajan and directed by Justin Lewis. Estimated to have been performed over 400 times by Jacob Rajan, Krishnan’s Dairy is a celebrated New Zealand play. This tour was historically significant as it took place during the changing contexts of New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic experience, and because of Rajan’s vow that this would mark his final performance of the play. This article offers a close observation of Krishnan’s Dairy’s final tour and investigates how Indian Ink navigated the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic environment.

Keywords
Aotearoa New Zealand Theatre; Touring; Indian Ink Theatre Company; Krishnan’s Dairy; Covid-19; Embedded research

10. Navigating the Staging of Richard Brome’s ‘Comic Therapy’ in The Sparagus Garden Kim Durban
The first full-length Australian production of The Sparagus Garden by Caroline dramatist Richard Brome was performed in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia in September 2021. The plot puts a lens on both emotional and physical health, swinging between family discord and the aspirations of youth. This paper argues that Brome uses the device of “comic therapy” and examines the given circumstances of bringing a forgotten play to the stage. Beyond high jinks and nonsense that are reminiscent of the worst excesses of the “wellness” industry, Brome’s therapeutic comedy focuses on love and reconciliation as keys to health. Directed during the COVID-19 crisis, Brome’s play was received by its undergraduate cast and strictly-masked audiences as highly comic yet heartfelt, with striking relevance to the present.

Keywords
actor training  A Jovial Crew   asparagus Ballarat Richard Brome  Richard Brome Online Caroline  comic therapy COVID-19 lockdown   Daylesford  Family  The Antipodes  The City Wit The Northern Lass. The Sparagus Garden


11. Our Own Time and Space: Locating Autistic Poetics in Theatre Sarah Wilson
In her book Autistic Disturbances, neuroqueer literature scholar Julia Miele Rodas proposes five autistic poetics — ricochet, apostrophe, ejaculation, discretion, and invention — to recontextualize pathologized autistic communication traits and reject the overwhelming cultural perceptions of autistic silence. This article employs a synthesis of Rodas’s poetics and neuroqueer rhetorical analysis (drawn from Remi Yergeau) to examine autistic language aesthetic in two playtexts: Simon Stephen’s adaptation of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and Tim Sharp and Dead Puppet Society’s Laser Beak Man. In doing so, it locates just some of the autism already present in theatre canon.

Keywords
autism, neuroqueer, autistic poetics, autistic dramaturgy.

12. A Playwright in Exile: Mammad Aidani Russell Fewster
The playwright/director Mammad Aidani’s experience of being exiled for forty years in Australia from his homeland in Iran is explored via contextual review, play excerpt and interview. For Aidani the continuing existence of the Iranian Government where freedom of expression is denied is a form of ongoing torture. His response has been to fight back through words via books and plays that detail the trauma of displacement.

Keywords 
Exile, Asylum Seekers, Refugees, Trauma, Alienation

13. Provocation #2 Brisbane Festival’s Hyperlocal Hope: The Dramaturgical Feat of Live and In-Person Programming During COVID-19 Hannah-Leigh Mason
Ubiquitous cancellations and online pivots affected many festivals at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some festivals, though, persisted with in-person programming. Brisbane Festival was one such organisation, suspending its international programming to promote a hyperlocal approach. In this paper, I explore the strengths and limitations of the Festival’s hyperlocal format to ascertain its viability for what is typically an international organisation. I assess Brisbane Festival’s 2020 program and how it signalled many dramaturgical changes for the organisation during the initial stages of the pandemic. The efficacy of transitioning to a hyperlocal format is a primary concern, prompting my investigation of whether such a transition has offered a viable roadmap for future editions of the Festival. For an organisation known to attract large crowds from international, national, and local regions, how did hyperlocal programming affect the organisational aims of the Festival? In answering this question, I offer a two-pronged argument. On the one hand, I argue that hyperlocal programming was a necessary pivot for Brisbane Festival to sustain its operations in the early stages of the pandemic. On the other hand, I assert that a return to international programming is necessary for the Festival to maintain its institutional dramaturgy. Developing a program that carefully balances between the two categories is, therefore, paramount for the Festival to support its vision sustainably.

Keywords
Festivals, dramaturgy, programming, hyperlocal, pandemic

14. Reviews

15. Contributors

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 81 | October 2022

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 081 (Full Issue PDF)


2. Contents


3. Editorial: Queer Performance Jonathan Bollen , Alyson Campbelland, Liza-Mare Syron


4. Koori Gras: A radical celebration of sparkling defiance – Liza-Mare Syron
   
   What is a queer black drag aesthetic? Who are the architects of this work? How do you go about producing or curating an event that celebrates queer black drag culture? These are questions that emerged when, quite by accident independent producer Harley Stumm (Intimate Spectacle) approached me as a then Co-Artistic Director of Moogahlin Performing Arts inviting the company to curate an event for the Near and Now Festival at 107 projects in Redfern. After extensive consultation with members of the Moogahlin artistic leadership, and with various black LGBTQI+ community members it became clear that there was a need for and interest in initiating a queer black arts program in Redfern on Gadigal land, an area that historically has been known as a gathering space for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from across the country. It was never my intention to view the project as research. However, this special issue has provided the opportunity to reflect on the process of creating and producing a queer black event, and subsequent events, to contribute to the discourse on Indigenous queer performance in Australia, and to document the key creative personnel and performers who contributed to the overall success of the many programs that Koori Gras platformed.
   
   Keywords: Indigenous queer performance, Queer black drag, First Nations queer curation


5. An HIV love story: Jacob Boehme’s Blood on the Dance Floor’s queer and Indigenous revolt – Jacob Boehme, Alyson Campbell and Jonathan Graffam
   
   This article examines the making processes and uniquely queer-Indigenous dramaturgies of Blood on the Dance Floor (Melbourne and Sydney 2016; Australia and Canada tour 2019). In this production, performer-creator Jacob Boehme draws on personal experience and his identity—as Blak, gay and poz—to inform its content and material. We frame our discussion around the dramaturgical strategies used in staging culture and identity at the intersection of queerness, HIV and Indigeneity.
   
   As co-writers (maker and spectators) we use a hybrid methodology that incorporates autoethnography and performance analysis, drawing particularly on the queer theorising of Sara Ahmed, Kath Weston, Elizabeth Freeman and Jack Halberstam. In doing so, we situate Boehme’s individual experiences and insights against a wider context of queer performance, histories of HIV theatre/performance and Indigenous representations onstage. This leads us to argue that the production serves as an important moment of queer performance in Australasia by emphasising its uniqueness and vitality in staging queer-Indigenous sex, sexuality, kinship, and, above all, love.
   
   
   Keywords: First Nations performance; queer and Indigenous dramaturgies; HIV and AIDS performance.


6. Tracing Transitions – Stace Callaghan and Leah Mercer
   
   Tracing Transitions is part interview, part recollection-reflection with trans-masculine, non-binary queer theatre maker, Stace Callaghan and their long-term collaborator, director and creative practice researcher Leah Mercer.
   
   Since 1994 Callaghan has specialised in writing/performing solo shows that reflect their personal, political, spiritual and creative explorations of gender and sexual diversity. Structured as a conversation about creative practice, queer politics and performance strategies, Callaghan and Mercer will chart a rigorous theoretical arc through Callaghan’s creative practice research: an oeuvre that engages with what Adrienne Rich calls the “psychic disequilibrium” of living in a culture and never seeing one’s self reflected in its literature, film, or art.
   
   Documenting, gathering and contextualising Callaghan’s eclectic body of work within this publication aims to not only celebrate their unique, life-affirming, performative positivity within wider politically and socially oppressive systems, but also harness scholarly attention to affirm Callaghan’s extensive contribution to LGBQTI+ theatre and performance in Australia.
   
   Incorporating production photographs and video footage to provide an additional visual record of Callaghan’s performance history, Tracing Transitions will reflect on Callaghan’s four original solo works: starting with the Philip Parsons Prize winning still raw (1994/5); when i was a boy (2000/1); between heaven & earth (2002/3/6); and Queer as Flux (2021); as well as performances with companies as diverse as Party Line, La Boite Theatre and school touring productions.
   
   Playing multiple characters including autobiographical versions of their queer self at different ages, pre-pubescent boys, trail-blazing queer ancestors and politically savvy drag queens, Callaghan has theatrically transformed their way through identity politics, intersectionality, liminality, otherness, and belonging, often inviting audiences to become Boal’s ‘spect-actors’ through direct interaction and intervention. Tracing Transitions will track Callaghan’s shape-shifting identities and the critical and audience responses to their constantly evolving trans/non-binary body within the changing landscape of Australian theatre.
   
   
   Keywords: Transitioning, Queer Performance, LGBQTI+, Intersectionality, Identity Politics, Trans-masculine, Physical Theatre, Solo Theatre, One-person show, Queer History, Gender, Sexuality, Homophobia, Transphobia, Autobiography, Autoethnography.


7. A Queer Performance New Wave in Sydney: Inside Club Bent 1995-1998–exploring hybridity and community – Catherine Fargher
   
   Taking a documentary approach in this essay, I explore a defining moment in 1990s LGBQTI+ performance: the four years during the infamous cLUB bENT. cLUB bENT played a vital part of the Sydney Contemporary Performance scene from 1995 to 1998, taking place at the Performance Space, Redfern, over four consecutive Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG) festivals. cLUB bENT represented a ‘queer performance new wave’ of defining LGBTQIA+ performances, exploring identity, new and old performance forms, gender diversity, abject sexuality, and sex positivism. Presented by performance artists from a range of fields including strippers, drag queens and drag kings, contemporary performance artists, as well as emerging and established cabaret artists. cLUB bENT and its tours to Its Queer Up North in Warwickshire, London, Glasgow and Manchester, became sites where performance ‘forms’ and ‘elements’ were hybridised over time and new reference points for style and form were created amongst a broad community of performers and activists. This hybridisation occurred within a vital social community of artists and activists during the 1990s AIDS crisis, of which SGLMG was a central driver. I create current day recollections in the form of first-person accounts, as well as reflections on my experiences as an emerging queer performance writer/ maker and activist, occasional thick descriptions, short histories of social contexts and images of events. I bring the time into focus via short case studies of my solo cLUB bENT performances – The Love Addict (1995) and Sugar Sugar (1997). These are accompanied by analysis and reflection on the ‘hybridisation of elements and form’ within my own works, and a short reflection on influence of community based social capital in the context of the 1990s LGBQTIA+ communities.
   
   Keywords: Queer Performance, Sex positivism, Gender Identities, Hybridisation. Performance. Cabaret. Documentary Essay approach. Community, Social Capital


8. The Future is Now: Queer Utopian Longing and the Utopian Performative in Today x Future in Metro Manila – Ian Rafael Ramirez
   
   This essay analyses how one nightclub in Metro Manila, Philippines becomes a space for performing queer futurity. It focuses on Today x Future, the defunct nightclub in Cubao, Quezon City, where some members of the Filipino queer community in Metro Manila used to gather. Drawing from queer archives — bodily experiences and feelings of former Future residents (an identifier I use for the club’s patrons) — I map the formation of an embodied queer community within the space as an alternative way of being-with one another. I do so by engaging the task of collectively remembering the queer choreographies on and off the dance floor and the affective dimensions of being in the space with other Future residents. The essay asks: How does the utopian performative manifest in the queer performance in Today x Future?
   Keywords: Utopian Performative, Memory as Archive, Queer Nightlife, Queer Philippines


9. “Show me how you do it down under”: Realness at The West Ball II and the translation of vogue ballroom in Australia – Billy Kanafani
   This article seeks to understand the ways in which vogue ballroom has been translated by young, queer people of colour in West and South-West Sydney. Through an ethnographic analysis of the realness category at The West Ball II, hosted in Liverpool, Sydney in March 2021, I analyse the varied approaches and performances of walkers to identify the narratives that frame the construction of realness for this ball. The analysis draws together my live audience experience, archival footage, and social media content from the wider eventsphere to provide insight into this emerging queer performance community in Australia.
   
   Vogue ballroom has expanded globally and ballroom communities have been formed across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Through their analysis of vogue ballroom in new European contexts, queer nightlife theorist madison moore argues that there is power in the translation of vogue ballroom for the communities who participate. moore’s analysis provides a model for understanding the impact of what, using Jose Esteban Muñoz’s terms, I describe as worldmaking performances that project a utopia for these marginalised communities. Using Gayatri Gopinath’s theory of queer regions as a framework, I understand how regionally specific experiences of queerness might be drawn.
   
   Viewing the realness performances through Gopinath’s framework reveals elements that make up the experience of being queer and BIPOC in Western Sydney. I argue that these worldmaking performances provide a glimpse of a utopia that connects the queer participants to their regional and diasporic cultures and community, and allows them to celebrate themselves in those cultures. Simultaneously, these utopian performances actively disassociate the participants’ identity and experience from dominant homo- and metro-normative experiences of queerness in Sydney.
   
   Keywords: vogue, ballroom, Western Sydney, South-West Sydney, queer performance, queer diaspora, queer regions, realness, West Ball, the area, Liverpool


10. Theatre as a Space of Resistance and Protest: Queer Politics and Colour of Trans 2.0 – Neethu Das. K and Vellikkeel Raghavan
    
    This article discusses the Indian play Colour of Trans 2.0 (2014) by Panmai theatre which exhibits certain testimonial, documentary and postdramatic features, as a contemporary example of queer activism on Indian stage. The play was performed by three transgender activists, Living Smile Vidya, Angel Glady and Gee Imaan Semmalar, who are very active in Indian public sphere. Panmai, which identifies themselves as “a space for excluded” is the first trans theatre group in India. All three of them are professionally trained performers who have significant roles in the history of queer movements in India. The performance text of the play got developed after a series of discussions among the performers and was further improvised after each performance. The play effectively narrates the lives of transgender community in India through their testimonies and by making use of documentary techniques like screening film clippings and newspaper cuttings. The narrative of the play primarily focuses on the episodes of gender identity, heteronormative society’s expectations on body, gender affirmation surgery, social ostracization and abuse faced by the transgender community. The play also posits the body of the transgender performer as a cultural site which embodies the resistances against the pressures put forth by the heteronormative society. The traditional idea of body as the cisgendered perfect female/male body by the heteronormative spectator is subverted in the play by presenting the performativity of the trans body. Some of the key aspects of the play which conveyed the momentum of queer activism on theatre include the conversational style implied in the monologue of the performers, the techniques of postdramatic theatre used in the structure and the deliberate exhibition of the nude trans body. The play elevates the space of theatre as a platform of politics through its postdramatic framework and the politics of corporeality it presents.
    
    Keywords: Queer, Trans body, Indian Queer theatre, postdramatic theatre, resistance


11. “We’ll meet you underground”: transcultural performance practices in queer space and time – Jeremy Neideck, Nathan Stoneham, Younghee Park, and M’ck McKeague
    
    For almost three decades a creative community has flourished between Australia and South Korea, initiated by the work of the late theatre maker Roger Rynd (1960-2010). Although the work of the artists continuing this international activity after Roger’s passing has always been difficult to define, what binds their disparate practices together is a focus on friendship as methodology. In recent years, the co-authors of this paper have consolidated their creative practice as a collective under the name Company Bad. One of this collective’s most successful projects is a work of bilingual music theatre, Jiha Underground (2011).
    
    With Jiha Underground, Company Bad strives toward the transcultural ideal of modelling new and collaborative social realitiesthrough the methods of art production, while working in bravely queer spaces. With the look and feel of a cramped dive bar that you might stumble upon during a wild night out in Seoul, Jiha Underground is a refuge for those who are unwelcome in heteronormative spaces and its spatiotemporality supports a queer dramaturgy where performers present and re-present themselves in multiple, fluid realities. The work interweaves languages, cultures, and lived experiences in ways that offer a fleeting glimpse towards a utopia – diverse people coming together as friends in queer space and time.
    
    
    Keywords: queer performance, transcultural collaboration, friendship as methodology, trans scenographics


12. Birds of A Feather: On Queerness, Performance, The Coming Back Out Ball, and LGBTIQ+ Elders Dance Club – Peta Murray, Adelaide Rief, Marnie Badham, Tristan Meecham, Bec Reid, Lenine Bourke
    
    Instigated by All The Queens Men (ATQM) and engaging more than three thousand individuals and hundreds of artists, The Coming Back Out Ball was delivered in Melbourne in 2017, 2018, and 2019 to honour the contributions and diversity of older LGBTIQ+ people. ATQM’s independent performance works were initially developed in response to the isolation, stigmatisation, and culturally specific needs of ageing individuals, but have since created a new community including broader networks and allies. They have also given rise to a suite of related projects – in person and online - that have held space for LGBTIQ+ elders through the pandemic and our re-emergence into social life once again.
    
    This co-authored paper playfully mimics the performance aesthetic of The Coming Back Out Ball to consider how meaning and reciprocal value is created between artists, elders and allies. To reflect the multivalent nature of ATQM’s creative outcomes, we deploy queered dialogic, interdisciplinary, and creative methodologies. Core to this theorisation are concepts of ‘communitas’ and ‘the gift’ and through contemporary art and performance theory, alongside queered autoethnography, reportage and rich media, we layer diverse voices of community, artists, and scholars to articulate its significance. These gestures speak to a need for intergenerational, intersectional and intercultural opportunities; to the value of performance as a tool for care through building social connections and addressing loneliness; and to the potential for national and international replication of such life-affirming, ageing-positive projects.
    
    Keywords: Queer performance, LGBTIQ+ elders, communitas, socially engaged art


13. A Rainbow in the Age of Covid: Contemporary Queer Theatre in Aotearoa – James Wenley and Nathan Joe
    
    Despite the significant constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic environment, contemporary queer theatre and performance has asserted itself with an explosion of energy on Aotearoa New Zealand’s stages, reflecting a wide spectrum of the Rainbow community.
    
    This article focuses on three queer dramas performed in 2021: Over My Dead Body: UNINVITED by Jason Te Mete and Everything After by Shane Bosher ask us to attend to Aotearoa’s queer history, by bringing visibility to the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on Aotearoa’s rainbow community;Yang/Young/杨 by Sherry Zhang and Nuanzhi Zheng foregrounds the space of high school and the Chinese family, using the domestic landscape to explore intersectional politics through a narrative of triumph and pride that challenges the limitations of Western notions of ‘coming-out’. Embracing an out and proud identity, queerness is named and made explicit in these works, in contrast to previous generations of queer New Zealand playwriting where queerness was primarily located subtextually.
    
    Though larger mainstream organisations have begun to support queer theatre, the surge in queer performance ultimately comes from the independent practitioners themselves. In an attempt to repair what Shane Bosher terms “the fractured history” of our queer theatre, we aim to document the developments that have led to this explosion of rainbow performance during the pandemic and examine how we might extend these conditions to create a sustainable ecology for queer performance in Aotearoa.
    
    Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand theatre; Queer Theatre; Covid-19; Tuatara Collective; Shane Bosher; Auckland Theatre Company


14. Reviews


15. Contributors

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 80 | April 2022

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 080 (Full Issue PDF)

2. Contents

3. Editorial Yoni Prior

4. Looking Forwards to the 1950s: Utilising the Concept of Hauntology to Investigate Australian Theatre History Julian Meyrick 

Invariably (and naturally) the 1950s are a decade we look back on. This article treats them as years that have yet to happen, returning to the 1930s and 1940s to look forward to an as-yet undisclosed future in Australian theatre. The means proposed to explore the historical record in this way utilize the concept of “hauntology”, in both Jacques Derrida’s original definition as “the spectral traces of the past found in the present”, and of Mark Fisher’s notion of “lost futures”, where longing is felt for possibility states that remain unrealised, “a relation to what is no longer or not yet”. The second half of the article demonstrates a number of practical, hauntologically-inflected methods for examining Australian theatre, asking what impact the activities of the 1930s and 1940s might have had on those in the 1950s as we receive this framing today. Hauntologically-inflected methods not only provide fresh insight into the contingency of Australian theatre’s development, they also de-reify the present moment.

5.Before Neo-Burlesque, There Was Queer Cabaret: Revisiting Queer Performances from Melbourne in the 1990s Maude Davey

In Melbourne in the 1990s, a burgeoning ‘queer cabaret’ scene and Dockland parties produced by the ALSO Foundation provided regular performances for LGBTQI+ audiences. Queer club nights incorporated performances including dance, spoken word, music and drag performance. These performances articulated developing ideas about lesbian and queer identities, feminist and female subjectivities, and the ‘body’ – the status and state of corporeality in the increasingly mediated and corporatized environment. This article takes an autoethnographic approach, drawing upon primary sources including performance texts, journal entries (autoethnographic record) and interviews with performers and event producers. In examining specific performances, their context and reception, I tease out the ways in which queer women in Melbourne were reworking lesbian and feminist identity positions as ‘desiring subjects’, specifically enabled through the development of a sophisticated queer audience with an appetite for performance which did more than trot out unifying slogans for them to applaud. This queer audience released the performers from the heteronormative gaze, and thereby from the transformation of female subjects to fetishized objects

KEY WORDS: Queer, Cabaret, Melbourne, Feminism

6.Shadows of the Australian Performing Arts Ecology Görkem Acaroğlu

This article provides a perspective from the margins of the Australian performing arts, investigating intersecting power relations, as Patricia Collins and Sirma Bilge (2016) define intersectionality. Extending on that work, Museum UNDONE, a 2021 production by Metanoia Theatre’s Artistic Director Görkem Acaroğlu, is put forward as an example offering possibilities to audiences and artists with experiences and perspectives diverse from the mainstream. Museum UNDONE is an immersive, site-specific work, that playfully interrogates the region’s colonial history and its gaps by engaging with the museum’s collection, which focuses on colonial life in regional Victoria in the 1800s. Museum UNDONE focuses on de-centring and decolonising narratives of Australian identity, undertaking research through practice, critiquing normative conceptions of Anglo-Australian identity by facilitating the voices of non-Anglo artists from various creative disciplines. The article then moves to draw on Acaroğlu’s experience working as a diversity mentor and trainer with multiple arts organisations, to explore racism in the Australian Theatre sector broadly.

7.‘Time’s Up, Motherf*%ker’: Emasculation and Restaging Justice for Women in Aotearoa New Zealand Nicola Hyland

Responding to the call for unity amongst female-identifying theatre-makers by the global ‘Time’s Up’ movement, the counter-discursive theatre production Te Puna Hipi (2019) confronted stories of sexual violence from Aotearoa New Zealand. Working with student collaborators from Victoria University of Wellington, Te Puna Hipi retold Lope De Vega’s Fuenteovejuna as a Feminist “Pacific Western”, altering the original play’s narrative to play on, and speak to, the misogyny of so many canonical texts. This discussion explores the representation of literal emasculation in this production as a specific and localised form of justice, utu, as a means to restore balance. The project sought not only to liberate women’s characters in the play, but to empower the actors tasked with reimagining them for an emancipatory, #timesup, world.

8.The Use of Irony in Pākehā Performance Adriann Smith

Ironical performance can be a powerful expression of cultural identity. Using performance analysis, this article considers how the everyday irony of Andrew London’s songs, Gary Henderson’s play Home Land, and the dramatic irony of Stuart Hoar and Chris Blake’s opera Bitter Calm represents Pākehā cultural identity on the stage. Considering its Greek origins of ‘simulated ignorance’, the discussion of irony draws on the work of Joana Garmendia (2019), and Deirdre Wilson (2013). The discussion of irony in Pākehā performance, draws on the premise that their short history and residual sense of ‘belonging’ somewhere else, means Pākehā have to devise cultural strategies to deal with a sense of strangeness in Aotearoa. An ironic approach provides for an examination of personal and cultural identity, and enables an audience to consider how Pakeha are navigating their relationship with Aotearoa.

9.Director/Mother/Outlaw Katy Maudlin

Director/Mother/Outlaw extends on mothering scholarship and the term “mother outlaw”, which was first coined by Adrienne Rich in 1976. Through interviews with two contemporary Australian directors, Kate Davis and Sarah Giles, this paper highlights how acts of empowered mothering — acts that push against the ideological institution of motherhood — are disrupting predominantly male-centric and neoliberal theatre environments. By analysing mothering counter-narratives and how they intersect with the participants’ professional trajectories and craft, this paper examines how the directors have facilitated change in their industries, including creating environments of “maternal allyship”: a concept developed in this research. This field is uncharted, making the research distinct in both its contribution to motherhood studies and directing. The women in this study are mother outlaws. They have done this by pursuing careers in creative leadership roles while concurrently living embodied experiences of childbearing and rearing. By investigating how pregnancy and mothering interact with the theatre artist’s creativity and leadership through qualitative data, these findings can be utilised by policymakers and arts organisations.

10.Traversing the Proscenium: Audience Enworlding in Musical Theatre Stuart Grant, Narelle Yeo and Melissa Fenton

Everyday musical theatre cultures consist in conversation, singing, dance, acting, revoicing and re-narrating beyond the proscenium, eclipsing other forms in reach and impact. This regeneration of performative materials through various platforms, leads to emergent communities, identities, worlds, and belongings, pouring out from the theatre onto the street, and onto social media. In this article we illuminate the workings of this phenomenon through Victor Turner's concepts of communitas, the liminal and the liminoid, and the phenomenological concept of enworlding. We use these terms to examine the intensifying feedback loops between musical theatre productions and their fans, and the worlds they create in spaces beyond the theatre. Through three case studies, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen and Love Never Dies, we demonstrate how unique fan cultures enworld in particular ways to re-engage and re-voice the shows from which they originate. The study specifically analyses the role of changing social media platforms in the unique import of fan culture back into the productions themselves.

11.‘What Do You Mean We Aren’t Performing Shakespeare?’: A Contemporary, Devised Performance Curriculum at a Regional Australian University Gillian Arrighi, Clare Irvine, Brian Joyce and Carine

Challandes Written by four teaching academics at the University of Newcastle, this article critically appraises both the pedagogy and creative outcomes of four undergraduate courses focussed on making performance from the vectors of site, place, and historical research. In each course it was research concerning the history/ies, social uses, and architecture of one chosen building in Newcastle City that anchored the site-specific projects of first-year students (in 2011 and in 2012) and third year students (in 2019 and in 2020). The teaching practice and practical outcomes examined in this article span ten years and illustrate a contemporary devised performance curriculum that has been the focus of the Creative and Performing Arts Major at the University of Newcastle for over a decade. This longitudinal study of teaching strategies for making performance events that respond to place and site in the city underpins the authors’ assessment of the potential value of this pedagogy for students in the contemporary HE environment.

12.Between Freedom and Control: A Chorus-Centred Bakkhai for Community Ensemble Vahri McKenzie

In addition to capturing the heart of the mythological story, the tension between freedom and control explored so vividly in Euripides’ ‘Bakkhai’ can resonate in the creative process. This article focuses on the creative development of Bakkhai (2018) to illustrate the value of employing a process that fosters collaboration and improvisational freedom in a community theatre context. Without eliminating the text of Euripides’ play, as director I employed a creative methodology in which an original translation was deliberately introduced late in the creative development process. Rather, the work sought to communicate the power and experience of ancient tragedy through extensive use of choral song and dance. Building on the work of Dunbar and Harrop (2018), I argue that reducing the influence of the text in creative development restrains individualist and psychologising approaches to Greek tragedy, and that such restraint creates the opportunity for greater embodied and affective performer engagement.

KEY WORDS: Euripides’ Bakkhai; choral strategies; community ensemble; Greek theatre in Australian context

13.Driving “Transformational change”: using ecodramaturgy to develop a more sustainable theatre ecosystem Dr Saffron Benner

Ecodramaturgy expands dramaturgical practice to include all aspects of ecology – biological and ideological. Ecodramaturgy believes that theatre has the unique capacity to rethink and reframe our understanding of and approaches to climate change and climate action. However, ecodramaturgy has been largely applied to issues of performance practice and theory and is underutilised in examining the theatre as a production ecosystem. Conversely, theatre companies have been slow to adopt comprehensive policies, strategies and actions to address climate change, despite having been directly impacted. This essay uses ecodramaturgy as a critical lens to investigate how theatre can become a more sustainable ecosystem, using examples from Queensland theatre, as well as wider Australian, contexts.

KEY WORDS: Ecodramaturgy, sustainability, ecosystems, Queensland theatre

14.Oppression and allyship in Australia’s Deaf Arts. Racheal Missingham and Bree Hadley

In this article, we investigate the history of Deaf theatre in Australia, through the lens of oppression and allyship. Through a review of the to date limited academic, industry, and media literature, in conjunction with survey and interview research with Deaf theatre practitioners, this research sheds light on Deaf theatre makers’ perceptions of the ways in which ally support can operate to create both social benefits and barriers, and how this has impacted on the non-linear development and recent decline in Deaf theatre companies in Australia. It finds that, in developing a framework to scaffold stronger allyship relationships with d/Deaf and hard of hearing artists, it is critical to consider the accessibility and cultural requirements not just in relation to theatre methodologies, but in relation to arts management practices, which support continuing company production, too. Challenges in creating strong, successful, respectful, and sustainable relationships between Deaf and non-Deaf artists are arising, this research finds, from lack of understanding of the dynamics of audism in play in theatre training, theatre making, theatre management, and the industry at large for d/Deaf artists.

KEY WORDS: D/deaf arts, d/Deaf theatre, d/Deaf theatre in Australia, oppression, allyship, audism

15.Reviews

16. Contributors
 

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 79 | December 2021

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 079 (Full Issue PDF)

2. Contents

3. Editorial Pia Johnson and Miles O’Neil



4. A Conversation Between Performance Photographers Brett Boardman and Jeff Busby, with Notes by Heidrun Lohr Pia Johnson

Photography and theatre have strong connections. The two artforms speak to authenticity, fiction, and craft, and in coming together create an engaging dialogue of visual references. The premise of this conversation was to question and explore the dynamic role performance photography has within the world of theatre and live performance. This conversation between professional practitioners aims to open further inquiry into the field and speak to the intersection of performance photography and theatre within Australia’s contemporary performance landscape from the photographers’ point of view.

5. The Intimate and the Epic in Plunge: A Writer-Director’s Approach to Heterarchical Composition Kate Shearer

The recent rise in sonic-led dramaturgical analysis has contested previously perceived hierarchies of sound and vision in the theatre. This paper seeks to move away from a binary approach and offers a heterarchical approach to directing the relationship between sound and vision. Carole Crumley defines heterarchy as “the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked,” so that the power is “counterpoised” (1995, p.3), and this paper applies this concept to the process of creating a multi-sensory, site-specific interdisciplinary work, Plunge (2017). 

Drawing on the spectacle of elite sport, Plungeexperimented modes of viewing: up close, through glass, up a 10m dive-tower, through illuminated water and at vast distances from an open-air stadium, as audiences promenaded across the aquatic centre viewing small and large-scale videos projected onto the body, buildings and pools. heterarchical approach to composition facilitated the ambiguity of ownership between verbatim techniques and fiction to deliberately blur the ‘truth’ claims of the form and broaden public perceptions of elite athletes. Through a de-hierarchical approach to artforms and interplay between sound and vision, Plungesought to create a highly sensate, large-scale spectacle that still felt deeply intimate, personal and political.

6. A Performative Investigation of the Agency of Sound: Mapping the Sound/ Soundscape Portrait Angela Viora

 In this article, I discuss Mapping the Sound/Soundscape Portrait (206, 2018), an audience-participatory, synaesthetic sound/drawing live performance. I perform my synaesthesia: sitting on a large piece of paper, I draw the sounds that I hear as I “see” them with the eyes of my mind, and I move accordingly— if sound is a place (soundscape), what does it look like? Conceiving sound as a performative element with agency, Mapping invites those involved to pay attention to the liveness of the soundscape in which they are immersed and their relationship with it. This work questions the sight-hegemonic and purpose-oriented human experience of place by centralising the presence and presentness of sound as the key-element of narrative-making and knowledge production. The agency of the audience and of sound in the performance de-centralises the artist, who ceases to be the protagonist of the work and becomes a vehicle for its process to unfold. The performance offers a new sensorial perspective on the surrounding environment to those involved, contributing to the scholarship studying the role of live art and embodied practices as tools in investigating the world.

7. ‘Where’s the AV Guy?’: A Conversation with Rhian Hinkley, Margie Medlin and Nick Roux Yoni Prior

Three prominent Australian artists who work with projection discuss the ways in which they collaborate within creative processes and creative teams, forging new visual dramaturgies of performance-making in a rapidly expanding practice.

8. Seed Value: Collaboration and Creative Development in Composed Theatre David Megarrity

This practice-led research opens the heart of collaboration in Composed Theatre, capturing the dynamics of the earliest stages of creative development from the inside, through the eyes of artists who specialise in music, theatre and the territory in between. 
This paper uses text, image and sound to tune in to productive tensions in creative development of SOX , a work of non-verbal Composed Theatre led by live looped music within which artists may locate and concentrate the inventiveness necessitated by an intermedial approach to making performance. This note from the field examines themes of experimentation and collaboration, and identifies oscillations between form and indeterminacy, spontaneity and plasticity in creative development where music is allowed to lead.

9. Siren Song: Strengthening Community through Sonic Insurgency Miles O’Neil

Siren Song premiered at the 2017 Dark Mofo Festival, in Hobart, Australia. Twice daily for the duration of the festival, at dawn and dusk, 450 speakers, mounted on the roofs of 6 buildings across the Hobart waterfront as well as the speaker set from a tsunami warning system mounted onto a retired defence helicopter, blasted choral soundscape of female voices through the streets of Hobart and out across the Derwent River. I argue that Siren Song forms part of a wider sound-led shift in contemporary Australian festival programming which rejects English theatre hierarchies of text and vocal clarity, instead drawing on sounds ability to engulf, to rupture and to claim air space in contemporary performance. In this paper, I analyse the ways that Siren Song deployed politics of sound, how it claimed volume, took up vibrational space and asserted echo and how these vibrations and volumes possessed landscape and airspace. Drawing together theorists from sound studies, performance studies and gothic studies, I argue that the sonic innovations driving Siren Song are substantial and offer new approaches for the confrontation of cultural anxieties through a decentralising of text and an immersion in states of sonic extremity.

10. Towards a Post-Pandemics of Sound in Performance Chris Wenn

The radical disruption of live performance that began in 2020 and continues in 2021 raises a fundamental question regarding the presence of the present in the time of performance.
In this essay, I examine my own sound design and the evolution of a pandemic-restricted solo practice as a site in which a ‘post-pandemics’ of performance might become possible. If 2020 in its upheaval and chaos showed the all-too-narrow limits of our care for others, what is the role of performance design in the recovery of that care? I engage a poetics of care and consent in performance design through notions of Pirate Care, xenofeminist action, and the relation to Other proposed by Jean-Luc Nancy. I reflect on and dissect my own response to pandemic time and space, and the shapes that vulnerability, fear, and uncertainty build in our performed worlds. Deploying this knowledge I look to a way forward for performance design and live performance, real-time and asynchronous, physically distant and present, that can engender this ‘post-pandemics’.

11. Liveness in the Digital Age: Performance Case Studies Russell Fewster, Geordie Brookman and Richard Chew

If theatre reflects contemporary society, a director ignores screen cultures at their own peril. Audiences increasingly view and communicate via screens. Television in all its forms (live to air, subscription and on demand services) provide readily accessible content to the public in the comfort of their homes – a viewing pattern exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. Screen cultures that overtook live performance in the 20^th Century as the preferred entertainment medium continue their dominance. However, when theatre did resurface from Australia’s first pandemic lockdown in late 2020, audiences returned in large numbers, suggesting a significant appetite for live performance still exists.  At the same time, screen aesthetics, because of its cultural ubiquity, shape how theatrical mis-en-scène is created. Theatre has been challenged for some time in the way(s) the presence of the live actor is staged in reference to screen technologies. Directors, Russell Fewster and Geordie Brookman, reflect on creating text-based work for the stage in a mediatized age. They refer to examples of their work to illustrate and examine how they create mis-en-scène with a keen awareness of the dominance of media technologies. As a composer and musician, Richard Chew reflects on how the physical presence of playing live music in a theatre context differs from its pre-recorded counterpart.


12. Authenticity within Digital Performance: A New Framework to Understand the Relationship between Audience, Vision Technology and Scenography Tessa Rixon, Gene Moyle, Steph Hutchison and Joslin

The notion of authenticity is experiencing a resurgence within the theatre and performance field. With its myriad of meanings and associations – from ‘the original’, ‘the real’, ‘truthful’, ‘genuine’, ‘believable’, ‘emotionally resonant’, and more – authenticity is a key component in engaging audiences with live performance. Despite an increasing body of research considering the authenticity of performance, performer and audience experience, little conversation has taken place in the field of digital performance and scenography. This article examines the field of authenticity to arrive at a definition within the context of digital performance. Through the identification of the core constructs of truthfulness, believability and emotional engagement, we introduce a new Authenticity Framework to inform future studies on the authenticity of digital performance. Focusing specifically on vision technologies, we demonstrate the application of the framework through first-person reflection on two Australian digital performances - Laser Beak Man by Dead Puppet Society (2019) and Wireless by Lisa Wilson and Paul Charlier (2017) – and argue this Framework can offer new approaches to the creation of authentic digital performances for the benefit of practitioners and audiences alike.

13.A Feminist Lens in the Rehearsal Room: On the Bodily Education of Young Girls Pia Johnson in conversation with Adena Jacobs

Focusing on Fraught Outfit’s On the Bodily Education of Young Girls (2013), photographer Pia Johnson and director Adena Jacobs, reflect upon the unique collaborative relationship that was created for the production. Exploring how having a photographer as a visual dramaturg provided a different perspective on notions of the feminist gaze, the body, young women and the making process.

14. Genealogies of Darkness Paul Jackson

This essay seeks to think through some of the features and meanings of blackouts in contemporary Australian theatre. A blackout is normally understood as a visual and temporal absence, an agreed break, a functional, conventional hiatus, having developed from the use, and subsequent abandonment, of the house curtain. However, a range of contemporary Australian theatre works conceive of the blackout as more: a palpable presence, an affective void, tangible rather than conventional, informing narrative structures, and fundamental to the work’s understanding of image creation and meaning. These visual voids reflect different dramatic and philosophical traditions, drawing on and contributing to genealogies of darkness.

15. A Sound Conversation: Performance-Makers and Sound Practices with Roslyn Oades, Madeleine Flynn and Tamara Saulwick Kate Hunter

Four artists working across performance, music and sound consider the ways in which technological advances and embodied and material approaches to sound practice have shifted their work over time.

16. Reviews
17. Contributors

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 78 | April 2021

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 078 (Full Issue PDF)

2. Contents
3. Editorial Yoni Prior
4. Staging Music in Shakespeare Richard Fotheringham   

An analysis of insights and limitations in using architectural and antiquarian approaches to staging Shakespeare’s plays in performance, then and now, particularly in relation to music, musicians, and the ‘music room’.

5. From Bejewelled Crucifix to Modern Dress: ‘Shakespeare and Stage Costume’ from Wilkie to Bell Rachel Fensham   

Theatre costumes except with rare exceptions are fragile artefacts – often worn out during their lifetime by use and re-use, sometimes used by multiple actors or exchanged between one company and another; and they are often adapted, lost or destroyed when they come to the end of their useful life. Aoife Monk’s ground-breaking book, The Actor in Costume, has invigorated research on the material culture of costumes although there is still much to be accomplished to understand the role of costumes on the Australian stage. They do however offer tantalising glimpses of the embodied life of theatre history and suggest new ways of responding to the role of archives in the interpretation of historical change.

With a focus on an object-oriented analysis of costume, this paper elaborates on a much earlier contribution from Oscar Wilde to debates on the historical authenticity of costumes in his essay, Shakespeare and Stage Costume, and examines its influence on the theatre entrepreneur, Allan Wilkie, and his Shakespeare company in the early part of the twentieth century. By looking at the role of selected objects, relics and costumes in Wilkie’s productions and comparable works from the same period, questions about theatrical aura, colonial transmission and the anxieties of modernity for the reception of Shakespeare in Australia can be explored.

6. Visualising the Story of Theatre in Sydney: Venues, Repertoire and Change, 1920–2020 Jonathan Bollen              

Theatre is sometimes imagined as an art form at risk – from talking pictures in the 1920s and television in the 1950s to the Covid-19 pandemic in the 2020s. But the Wolanski Collection and data from AusStage tell a different story. Theatre companies and venue buildings come and go. Yet, over the last hundred years, theatre in Sydney is a story of growth: more venues, with more seats, presenting more performances in a wider range of genres to more spectators. This essay uses maps of venues in Sydney and visualisations of repertoire patterns to reveal insights into the city’s history of theatre production and cultural change between 1920 and 2020. It demonstrates an approach to research that integrates digital records of theatre production with theatre programs from an archival collection. Maps are arranged in a time-series to reveal what venues to audiences in Sydney. Genre terms drawn from theatre programs trace the evolution of performance, while information on the national origin of artists frame the efforts to produce Australian works. In visualising data on theatre production, the essay reveals longitudinal patterns in repertoire that challenge assumptions about theatre in Sydney and extend the story in new directions.

Keywords: theatre, history, visualisation, database, archive

7. The Guthrie Report and Its Discontents Chris Hay                                                                                                             

In March 1949, as an adjunct to a scoping mission for a return Old Vic theatre tour to Australia, famed director Tyrone Guthrie was invited to prepare a report on the possibility of an Australian national theatre. Government records indicate that he spent six weeks in Australia, before delivering a “Report on Australian Theatre” that was subsequently published in the June 1949 Australian Quarterly. Despite its famously dismissive tone, the Guthrie Report became a lightning rod around which demands for a national theatre and for federal arts subsidy finally began to coalesce.
However, tracing a coherent narrative about the Report is difficult. Sources and later accounts differ on details and these inaccuracies have crept into even the most authoritative accounts of Australian theatre history. In this article, I return to the original records that established Guthrie’s visit to Australia, as well as the government deliberations that his Report provoked, to reveal the Guthrie Report as offering a blueprint for the arts subsidy that developed in Australia during the 1950s. By further contextualising “the notorious Guthrie Report” (Meyrick 27), my work also interrogates the value of aetiological myths to writing and re-writing national theatre histories.

8. Recognising the Face of Australian Theatre: Authentic Diversity and the Case of Metanoia Glenn D’Cruz in interview with Görkem Acaroğlu, Shane Grant and Greg Ulfan                                                                           

Metanoia is a theatre company founded by Görkem Acaroğlu, Greg Ulfan and Shane Grant in 2013.  The group consistently redresses the under representation of non-Anglo writers, performers, directors and other theatre workers on Australian stages — this is especially true of flagship theatre companies (see Kim Ho, Cultural Diversity in Australian Theatre, 2017). Originally located at the Mechanics Institute in Brunswick, Melbourne, the company is now based in regional Victoria and continues to explore how questions of race, ethnicity, gender identity and class play out in a variety of local and international contexts. Metanoia has built a reputation for producing innovative works that span a variety of genres including narrative theatre, digital performance, immersive installations and live art. This paper identifies the company’s major aims and achievements with a focus on its political orientations and dramaturgical strategies by interviewing its principal creatives. Since the word, ‘metanoia’ refers to changes or shifts in perception, thought and action, this paper explores the company’s perspective on the problems associated with attempting to (literally) change the face of Australian theatre culture. This article includes hyperlinks to video recordings of selected Metanoia productions.
Keywords: Diversity; inclusivity; colour blind casting; Australian Theatre; Politics, Race

9. ‘It Caught the Zeitgeist’: Interview with Andrew Bovell Nathan Hastie                                                               

Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling is one of Australia’s most critically and commercially successful plays of the twenty-first century, which tells the story of a family’s search for reconciliation across several generations, before, during and after an apocalyptic environmental event. Since its first performance in 2008 for the Adelaide Festival of Arts, it has become one of Australia’s most produced plays internationally. It is an early work of Australian environmentalist theatre, while also being one of the first plays to draw parallels between the generational inherited trauma of colonialism and environmental damage. For his Honours thesis at the University of Queensland, Nathan Hastie interviewed Andrew Bovell in his investigation of how Bovell’s play was able to find success from the Australian market to both Broadway and the West End. Bovell is one of Australia’s leading playwrights, with other major works staged annually on international stages, such as Speaking in Tongues (later adapted into the film Lantana) and Things I Know To Be True. The following interview provides an insight into Bovell’s creative process and discusses his thoughts concerning identity, nation and the disappearing physical and psychological landscapes, and how all of these elements come together in When the Rain Stops Falling. For Hastie’s thesis, he additionally interviewed the play’s director, Chris Drummond, while also comparing the success of When the Rain Stops Falling, to another successful Australian play, Holding the Man, in which he also interviewed playwright Tommy Murphy and director David Berthold.

10. ‘Sustained Personal Contact’: Recent Australian Productions on Tour in China Anne Pender                                       

In 2012 Australia’s first ambassador to China, Stephen Fitzgerald, argued that Australians need a stretch of the imagination ‘to be able to imagine a different kind of relationship’ with China, one that is not merely transactional and commercial. Fitzgerald encouraged Australians to invest in the relationship in a way that we have with other important nations such as the UK and the US. He stressed the need for an ‘intensity of sustained personal contact’. The making of theatre is one of the ways in which sustained personal contact occurs, and a genuine cultural exchange.

Between 2012 and 2020 at least a dozen Australian theatre companies have taken their work to China. Companies offering opera, ballet, spoken word drama, physical theatre, puppetry and children’s theatre have all toured or appeared at festivals, some of them offering productions over multiple years. This article draws on extensive first-hand accounts by participants interviewed by the author to explore the recent experiences of actors, directors and producers involved in three touring productions and their reception by Chinese audiences, against a backdrop of expanding access to, and increasing interest in Australian performance in the People’s Republic. Using a case study approach, the article examines the development and production of three diverse works and the extent of their adaptation for audiences in China. The case study productions include Saltbush, an immersive children’s theatre production from Insite Arts, Baba Yaga, a children’s play and co-production between Adelaide’s Windmill Theatre and Scotland’s Imaginate, and desert, 6.29pm, a play produced by the Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, who were invited to perform at the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in 2018.

The article considers the spaces of aesthetic transformation and intercultural connection afforded by the productions, the long-term investment in children’s theatre in South Australia that has enabled the international reach of several companies, the finely balanced economics of touring to China, and the sustained personal relationships between the touring companies and the individuals who operate the highly successful Shanghai-based presenting company, A.S.K (Art Space for Kids). It speculates about performance futures and collaborative opportunities between China and Australia at a time of strained relations.

11. What Are The Ties That Hold Us Together? The Smartphone Networks in As If No One Is Watching and Body of Knowledge Abbie Victoria Trott                                                                                                                                           

In this time of ubiquitous digitality, the smartphone has become a central interface of connection. It gathers us together, tying us to people that we know – and people that we don’t – as we participate in what Shuhei Hosokawa described in 1984 as acts of ‘secret theatre.’ Considering two networked performances – Vulcana Women’s Circus and WaW Dance’s As If No-One is Watching (2018, 2019), and Body of Knowledge (2019) by Samara Hersch – I use network theory to examine the ties that assembled the audience members together. Watching a physical abstraction of the private, while listening to personal stories in public, the audience – through their smartphone – interfaced with the performance of As If No One is Watching, enabling them to engage with acts of theatre in secret. In contrast – working together to establish a ‘body’ of ‘knowledge’ – the audience of Body of Knowledge used smartphones to interface with each other and the performers. Situated firmly in the ‘physical,’ as opposed to the ‘virtual,’ these immersive performances were reliant on smartphone facilitated post-digital networks. In this article I explore how the smartphone in performance gathers audience members together over a network.

12. Reviews
13. Contributors

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 77 | January 2021

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 76 | April 2020

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 75 | December 2019

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 74 | April 2019

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 73 | October 2018

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the article Namatjira: Beyond the Script contains an image of a person who has died. ​

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 72 | April 2018

October 2017

Full Issue PDF

 

Contents

Editorial  
Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso

Before The Ham Funeral: ‘The YOUNG MAN Appears’ – John Tasker Returns Home
Laura Ginters

Modernist Drama Decried: Patrick White, Spoiled Identity, and Failure as a ‘Logic of Use’  
Julian Meyrick

Robyn Nevin, Patrick White and the Art of the Modern in Australian Theatre  
Anne Pender

Making Room for Modernism: The 1979 Sydney Theatre Company Production of Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul  
Andrew Fuhrmann

Mayakovsky’s Hammer: Experimental Theatre as Romantic Modernism, Sydney, 1968–1970 
Ian Maxwell

Eleanor Roosevelt: Theatrical Emotion for Political Benefit 
Peta Tait

Recompositions: Images of Patrick White in William Yang’s My Generation 
Edward Scheer and Helena Grehan

From Grotowski to Betty Can Jump  
Kerry Dwyer

Transmitting Embodiment: Grotowski to Body Weather  
Nicola Heywood

Reviews

RINA KIM,
Disability, Public Space Performance and Spectatorship: Unconscious Performers, by Bree Hadley;

ROBERT REID,
The Mill: Experiments in Theatre and Community, by Meredith Rogers;

PETA TAIT,
Performing Neurology: The Dramaturgy of Dr Jean-Martin Charcot, by Jonathan Marshall;

DAVID O’DONNELL,
Stanislavsky in the World: The System and Its Transformations Across Continents, by Jonathan Pitches and Stefan Aquilina;

LISA WARRINGTON,
Talanoa: Four Pacific Plays and Black Faggot and Other Plays, by Victor Rodger;

RAND HAZOU,
Theatre of Real People: Diverse Encounters at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer and Beyond, by Ulrike Garde and Meg Mumford

Contributors

April 2017

Full Issue PDF

Contents

Editorial Note
Meredith Rogers and Julian Meyrick

‘The Elasticity of Her Spirits’: Actresses and Resilience on the Nineteenth- Century Colonial Stage 
Jane Woollard

'Chaos' and 'Convergence' on the Western Australian Goldfields: The Politics of Performance in the 1890s 
William Dunstone and Helena Grehan

Black, White, and Red Faces: Race and Performance at NIDA 
Christopher Hay

'A Rare Opportunity to Fail': STAB's Legacy of Theatrical Experimentation 
Emma Willis

Performing Emotion to Remember a Pakeha Worldview 
Adriann Smith

Hyperrealism and the Everyday: The Plays of Ranters Theatre 
Raimondo Cortese

Dramaturgy of Mobility: Towards Crossover and Fusion in Out of the Ordinary 
Maggie Ivanova and Alex Vickery-Howe

'Mad March' in the Festival City: Place-Making and Cultural Clash at Adelaide’s Festivals 
Sarah Thomasson

Reviews

SALLY RICHARDS,
 Caryl Churchill, by Mary Luckhurst;

MARYROSE CASEY,
 Audienceas Performer:The Changing Role of Theatre Audiences in the Twenty-First Century, by Caroline Heim;

DAVID O'DONNELL,
 Japanese Robot Culture:Performance, Imagination and Modernity, by Yuji Sone;

LISA WARRINGTON,
 Best Playwriting Book Ever, by Roger Hall, plus Shift– three plays, by Alison Quigan, Vivienne Plumb & Lynda Chanwai-Earle, edited by David O'Donnell

October 2016

Full Issue PDF

Contents

Editorial Note
by Meredith Rogers, Mick Douglas and Bree Hadley

Performing Mobilities 
Mick Douglas

Mobilising the Mobilities Paradigm in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies: Potentials, Politics and Pitfalls
Bree Hadley

Moving ‘Misfits’ 
Kate Maguire-Rosier

Ship Inventory: Preparations Across Twelve Months 
Amaara Raheem

Layne Waerea’s Public Laughter 
Christopher Braddock

5 Short Blasts 
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey

Migrant Mobilities: Cruel Optimism and the Case of A.J. D’Cruz 
Glenn D’Cruz

Algorithmic Misfits 
Ben Landau

Unsteady Belongings: Rethinking the Experience of Nation through Movement 
Justine Shih Pearson

14 Thoughts about the Ghan – in the Shape of a Train 
Meredith Rogers

Like Riding a Bicycle: Achieving Balance through Mobility in Site-Specific Performance – A Comparative Study of Railway Wonderland (2015) 
by Northern Rivers Performing

Arts and Sir Don v The Ratpack (2009) 
by Guerrilla Street Theatre Paul Davies

Reviews

SHARON MAZER,
Remaking Pacific Pasts: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Theater from Oceania, by Diane Looser, and Places for Happiness: Community, Self, and Performance in the Philippines by William Peterson;

JONATHAN W. MARSHALL,
I Shudder to Think: Performance as Philosophy, by Margaret Cameron;

NICOLA HYLAND,
Here/Now: 8 Plays by Award-Winning NZ Playwrights, edited by David O’Donnell; LISA WARRINGTON, The FitzGerald Brothers’ Circus: Spectacle, Identity and Nationhood at the Australian Circus,by Gillian Arrighi;

EMMA WILLIS,
Despatch, by Angie Farrow; JANE WOOLLARD, Imagined Landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives, by Jane Stadler, Peta Mitchell and Stephen Carleton

April 2016

Full Issue PDF 
 

Contents

Editorial Note
by Meredith Rogers

Screening Live Performance: Australia’s Major Theatre Companies In The Age Of Digital Transmission 
by Richard Fotheringham

Top Girls ‘Down Under’ 
by Campion Decent

Theatre Animals: Sumner Locke Elliott’s Invisible Circus 
by Anne Pender

The Sacrifice Of Oriel Gray (1920–2003): Australian Playwright 
by Merrilee Moss.

Real Men At Play: Massive Company’s The Brave 
by Rand Hazou

Applied Theatre Techniques For Community Workers – Towards A Performative And Anti-Oppressive Ethical Approach 
by Athena Lathouras, Jo Loth And Dyann Ross

Acting In Verbatim Theatre: An Australian Case Study by Sarah Peters

Reinterpreting Passion: A Study Of Habib Tanvir’s Theatre 
by Prateek

Reviews

Tom Gutteridge,
 What a Body Can Do by Ben Spatz

D B Valentine,
 Blackta by Nathaniel Martello-White

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi,
 Othello: Language and Writing by Laurie Maguire

Josey De Rossi,
 Theatre and Migration by Emma Cox (Foreword by Peter Sellars)

Josey De Rossi,
 Theatre and Time by David Wiles

Rand T Hazou,
 Performing Digital: Multiple Perspectives on a Living Archive, edited by David Carlin and Laurene Vaughan

Kerryn Palmer,
 Children of the Poor by Mervyn Thompson and Stage Adventures and Stage Adventures: Eight Classroom Plays, edited by David O’Donnell

James Wenley, 
The Plays of Bruce Mason: A Survey by John Smythe.

October 2015

Full Issue PDF
 

Contents

Not Just 'Evocative': The Function of Music in Theatre
by Kim Baston

Music, Silence and the Single Note in the Creation of Meaning in Theatre
by Bagryana Popov

The Theatre of Dreams: Hypnotism and the Science of Historical Action
by Andrew Lawrence-King

Music and Sound Design: A Round Table Discussion with Anna Liebzeit, Kelly Ryall and Ian Moorhead with Kim Baston

Jethro Woodward in Interview with Kim Baston

Sound (Image, Text): Audiovisual Relationships in M+M with Daniel Schlusser, Darrin Verhagen and James Paul.

David N. Martin and the Post-War 'Acts and Actors' of Australian Variety
by Veronica Kelly

Reading and Performing Abjection: Staging Joyce, a Professional Reflection by Frances Devlin-Glass

Reviews

NICOLA HYLAND, Remaking Pacific Pasts: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Theater from Oceania, by Diana Looser;

MARGARET HAMILTON, The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Beyond Postcolonialism, edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain;

PRATEEK, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life, by Stephen Parker;

SHARON MAZER, The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, edited by Dassia N. Posner, Claudia Orenstein and John Bell;

ANNA KAMARALLI, Women on the Early Modern Stage, edited by Frances E. Dolan, Lucy Munro, Brian Gibbons and Arthur F. Kinney;

CATHERINE FARGHER, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Simon Stephens;

MERRILEE MOSS, Engine by Janis Balodis and House on Fire, by Debra Oswald

April 2015

Full Issue PDF
 

Contents

Australian Gothic Drama: Mapping a Nation’s Trauma from Convicts to the Stolen Generation 
by Stephen Carleton 

Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling: Theatre in the Age of ‘Hyperobjects’ 
by Mohebat Ahmadi

Patrick White and Aesthetic Modernism in Mid-Century Australia
by Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso

Radical Adaptation: Hypertextuality, Feminism and Motherhood in The Rabble’s Frankenstein (After Mary Shelley)
by Sarah French

The Grotesque and the Gothic in Peter King’s John Gabriel Borkman: A Reflection from the Inside 
by Jim Daly

A Thousand Hills: Responding to the Ethical Nightmare 
by Emma Willis

Performing Cultural Heritage: Authenticity and the Spirit of Rebellion 
by Angela Campbell

Performing Haunting Histories: A Psychogeographical Reading of Two Site-Specific Performance Projects on Rottnest Island
by Hannah Böttcher and Alexandra Ludewig

Community Engagement or Community Conversation?: Boomtown, a Large-Scale Regional, Outdoor Community Theatrical Event
by Danielle Carter and Caroline Heim

The Castanet Club: History, Provenance and Influence
by Terence Crawford

Reviews

JAMES MCKINNON, Theatre’s Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space, by Joanne Tompkins;

KAREN KARTOMI THOMAS, Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan: City, Body, Memory, by Peter Eckersall;

EMMA WILLIS, Visions and Revisions: Performance, Memory, Trauma, edited by Bryoni Trezise and Caroline Wake;

D.B. VALENTINE, Staging Asylum: Contemporary Australian Plays About Refugees, edited by Emma Cox;

NICOLA HYLAND, Theatricality, Dark Tourism and Ethical Spectatorship: Absent Others, by Emma Willis;

SALLY RICHARDS, International Women Stage Directors, edited by Anne Fliotsos and Wendy Vierow;

LINDSAY ANN REID, Women in Shakespeare: A Dictionary, by Alison Findlay;

SARAH PETERS, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah: Soft Revolution, by Alana Valentine;

HILARY HALBA, Don’t Mention Casablanca, by Michelanne Forster;

EMMA WILLIS, Falling and Other Short Plays, by Angie Farrow;

STUART YOUNG, Then It Was Now Again: Selected Critical Writings, by Murray Edmond
 

October 2014

Full Issue PDF

Contents

Introduction
Russell Fewster

Staging David Hicks
Richard Jordan

Digital Alchemy: The Posthuman Drama of Adam J.A. Cass's
I Love You, Bro
Jodie Mcneilly

A Phenomenology of Chunky Move's GLOW: Moves Toward
a Digital Dramaturgy
Lara Stevens

Alienation in the Information Age: Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension
Suzanne Kersten, David Pledger, Julian Rickert, Tamara Saulwick and Hellen Sky with Gorkem Acaroglu and Glenn D'Cruz

Working with Technology/Making Technology Work: a Round Table Discussion
Robert Walton

Bewildering Behaviour: Practice as Research for Audiences and
Other Creators of Immersive Performance
Robin Deacon

White Balance: a History of Video
Yoni Prior

Impossible Triangles: Flat Actors in Telematic Theatre 
Asher Warren

Mixed Actor Network Reality: a Performance in Three Networks
Susan Broadhurst

Theorising Performance and Technology:
Aesthetic and Neuroaesthetic Approaches
Gorkem Acaroglu

Cyborg Presence in Narrative Theatre
Yuji Sone

Imaginary Warriors: Fighting Robots in Japanese Popular Entertainment Performance
Glenn D'Cruz

6 Things I Know About Geminoid F, or What I Think About 
When I Think About Android Theatre
Gorkem Acaroglu

Sayonara Interviews: Android–Human Theatre

Reviews

VERONICA KELLY, Circus and Stage: The Theatrical Adventures of Rose Edouin and G.B.W. Lewis, by Mimi Colligan;

PAUL MONAGHAN, Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, edited by Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll and Steve Giles;

NICOLA HYLAND, Enacting Nature: Ecocritical Perspectives on Indigenous Performance, edited by Birgit Dawes and Marc Maufort;

FIONA GREGORY, Rhythm and Meaning in Shakespeare: A Guide for Readers and Actors, by Peter Groves;

CHRIS HAY, Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe: Learning Versus the System, by Liam E. Semler; and

KATH BICKNELL, The Audience Experience: A Critical Analysis of Audiences in the Performing Arts, edited by Jennifer Radbourne, Hilary Glow and Katya Johanson.

April 2014

Full Issue PDF
 

Contents

Meredith Rogers and Julian Meyrick
Introduction

Helen Thomson
Obituary for GJM

Geoffrey Milne
Australian Theatre in the 1980s: Trends and Movements

Robert Reid
A City This Size Should Have So Many Theatres: The Church Theatre, 1983–1989

Paul Davies
Dramatic Tales Stir the Suburbs: Melbourne's Location Theatre Movement, 1979–1990

Meredith Roger
At Home with The Mill: Democratic Theatre-Making in Geelong, 1978–1984

Jane Mullett
Australian New Circus in the 1980s

Peter Eckersall (Moderator) with Russell Walsh, Suzanne Chaundy, Peter King, Patricia Cornelius, Bob Pavlich, John Ellis
Round Table on Theatre in Melbourne in the 1980s

Julian Meyrick
The Logic of Culture: The Fate of Alternative Theatre in the Post-Whitlam Period

Glenn d'Cruz 
The Man Who Mistook Marat for Sade: 'Living' Memory and the Video Archive

Alison Richards
Your History: Manning Clark's A History of Australia and the End of the New Wave

Gillian Arrighi
Towards a Cultural History of Community Circus in Australia

Rebekah Woodward-Hanna 
A Patchwork of Participation: Wan Smolbag Theatre's 'Big Plays' in Vanuatu

Natalie Lazaroo
We're Off to See the Wizard of Auslan: Translating Deaf Experience Through Community Performance

Jonathan Bollen
From The Silver Lining to The Roaring Days!: Amateur Theatre and Social Class in Broken Hill, 1940s–1960s

Murray Couch
Sex, Gender and the Industrial: Plays Performed by Broken Hill Repertory Society, 1945–1969

Chris Wenn
How I Heard: The 'Phenomenarchaeology' of Performance

Reviews                                                                                                                   

HELENA GREHAN, Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era, by Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall, Chris Hudson and Barbara Hatley;

ANDRÉ BASTIAN, Telling Stories: Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander Performance, by Maryrose Casey, with an Afterword by Liza-Mare Syron;

KIM BASTON, 'We're People Who Do Shows': Back To Back Theatre: Performance Politics Visibility, edited by Helena Grehan and Peter Eckersall;

KAREN KARTOMI THOMAS, Performance, Popular Culture, and Piety in Muslim Southeast Asia, edited by Timothy P. Daniels;

FELIX NOBIS, The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, 3rd edn, edited by Teresa Bradshaw and Noel Witts;

MERRILEE MOSS, Transparency, by Suzie Miller, Kelly, by Matthew Ryan, and Cyberbile and Grounded, by Alana Valentine;

LISA WARRINGTON, Downfall: Three New Zealand History Plays, by Michelanne Forster, and Playmarket 40: 40 Years of Playwriting in New Zealand, edited by Laurie Atkinson, and David O'Donnell:

RAND T. HAZOU, Rebellious Mirrors: Community-Based Theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand, by Paul Maunder;

DAVID O'DONNELL, Me & Robert McKee, by Greg McGee;

EMMA WILLIS, Three Plays: Robert Lord, edited by Philip Mann;

DAVID O'DONNELL, Twenty New Zealand Playwrights, by Michelanne Forster and Vivienne Plumb

October 2013

April 2013

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 61, October 2012

Design, space and performance: Introduction
Image gallery

Inside the black margin: An essay in words and images
Image gallery

Practitioners' round table: Australian theatre design - past, present and futur
Image gallery

Scenography from the inside
Image gallery

Drawn to the light: The freehand drawing from the dramatic text as an illumination of the theatre designer's eye of the mind
Image gallery

The Prague quadrennial: Repositioning design for performance
Image gallery

Re-viewing the PQ: Responses to the 2011 Prague quadrennial of performance design and space
Image gallery

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 60, April 2012

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 59 October 2011

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 58, April 2011

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 57 April 2010

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 56 April 2010

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 55 October 2009

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 54 April 2009

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 53 October 2008

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 52 April 2008

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 51 October 2007

Table of Contents

1. Issue 051 (Full Issue PDF)
2. GEOFFREY MILNE Editorial Note
3. PETER J.WILSON Winds of Change: Seeing Australia into the New Century
4. ANNE FORBES From Animism to Digital Animation: Puppetry in New Zealand/Aotearoa
5. RICHARD BRADSHAW Thiodon's Wonders: A Mechanical Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Australia
6. NICOLE ANAE "Belly-Speaker", Machines and Dummies: Puppetry in the Australian Colonies, 1830's-1850's
7. DAVID TREDINNICK Tintookie Man, the LAst of his Tribe: A Story of Peter Scriven
8. YUJI SONE "Phontom" Puppetry in Stelarc's Work
9. RICHARD HART with JULIA DAVIS Dream Puppets: The Journey of an Independent Puppet Theatre
10. SANDY MCKENDRICK in conversation with GEOFFREY MILNE Puppetry as Cultural Exchange in Indigenous Communities
11. JENNIFER PFEIFFER Globalisation and the UNIMA Asia-Pacific Commission
12. MARGARET WILLIAMS Including the Audience: The Idea of 'the Puppet' and the Real Spectator

 

Reviews

JASNA NOVAKOVIC, Unspoken by Rebecca Clarke;

HILARY HALBA Awhi Tapu by Albert Belz and The Prophet by Hone Kouka;

DAVID O'DONNELL, Baghdad Baby! by Dean Parker;

ALISON RICHARDS About Performance no 6, ed. Gay McAuley;

LISA WARRINGTON, Nola Millar: A Theatrical Life by Sarah Gaitanos; Just Who Does He Think He Is?: A Theatrical Life by George Webby;

MARY ELIZABETH ANDERSON, Anarchic Dance, eds Liz Aggiss and Bill Cowrie with Ian Bramley;

BREE HADLEY, And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World, by Anne Bogart;

MARK SETON, Jacques Copeau, by Mark Evans;

IAN MAXWELL, Encounters with Tadeusz Kantor, by Krzysztof Miklaszewski translated and edited by George Hyde.

Australasian Drama Studies

vol.50 April 2007

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 49 October 2006

Theatre Emotion & Interculturalism
Edited by Peta Tait and Jung-Soon Shim
A special focus issue of Australasian Drama Studies

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 049 (Full Issue PDF)
2. JUNG-SOON SHIM Introduction: Translating Emotions for the Local Audience
3. PETA TAIT Introduction: Reasoning Emotions in Theatre
4. SUE-ELLEN CASE Musical The Last Empress: A Korean Staging of Woman and Nation
5. JUNG-SOON SHIM Performing Emotion Interculturally: The Korean Production of Love Child
6. PETA TAIT Embodying Love: Mother Meets Daughter in Theatre for Cultural Exchange
7. YOON-TAEK LEE Translated by JOHN CHA and JUNG-SOON SHIM Playscript: O Gu: The Ritual of Death
8. JULIE HOLLEDGE O Gu: A Cross-cultural Case Study of Emotional Expression in Contemporary Korean and Australian Theatre

Reviews

HILARY HALBA, Frangipani Perfume and Dianna Fuemana, Mapaki (Wellington: The Play Press, 2004);  Oscar Kightley and Simon Small, Fresh Off the Boat (Wellington: The Play Press, 2005);  Albert Wendt, The Songmaker’s Chair (Wellington: Huia, 2004) by Makerita Urale; 

JERRY C. JAFFE, Noh Business (Berkeley: Atelos, 2005) by Murray Edmond; 

PETA TAIT, The Dolls’ Revolution: Australian Theatre and the Cultural Imagination (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2005) by Rachel Fensham and Denise Varney, with Maryrose Casey and Laura Ginters; 

JULIAN MEYRICK, Not Wrong – Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Theatre (Sydney: Currency Press, 2005) by Katherine Brisbane;  

CAROLYN D’CRUZ, Beneath the Sequined Surface: An Insight into Sydney Drag (Sydney: Currency Press, 2006) by Carol Langley; 

IAN MAXWELL, Electoral Guerilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements (New York and London: Routledge, 2005) by L. M. Bogad; 

RONALDO MORELOS, The Aesthetics of the Oppressed (London and New York: Routledge, 2006) by Augusto Boal; 

IAN GASKELL, A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 2006) eds Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mandy Schutzman; 

SALLY GARDNER, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement (New York and London: Routledge, 2006) by Andre Lepecki; 

IAN MAXWELL, The Path of the Actor (London and New York: Routledge, 2005) by Michael Chekhov, (edited by Andrei Kirillov and Bella Martin).

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 48 April 2006

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 048 (Full Issue PDF)
2. CAROL LANGLEY Borrowed Voice: The Art of Lip-Synching in Sydney Drag
3. LYNDON TERRACINI The Culture of Place: Making Australian Theatre
4. NICOLE ANAE Adventures in Nineteenth-Century Gender-Bending: Lady Emilia Don in Tasmania, 1862 and 1865
5. ANNA BEMROSE The Boy from Mount Gambier: Robert Helpmann’s Early Career in Australia (1917–1932)
6. STEPHEN VAGG Frank Harvey: Australian Screenwriting Pioneer
7. FIONA GREGORY High-Cultural Histrionics: Judith Anderson’s 1955 Australian Tour
8. DAVID A WILLIAMS Political Theatrics in the ‘Fog of War’
9. PAUL DWYER The inner lining of political discourse: presenting the version 1.0 remix of the Senate Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident
10. JOHN McCALLUM CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident): Introduction
11. CMI Performance Script 143
12. RUTH THOMPSON Theatre/s of Peace and Protest: The Continuing Influence of Euripides’ Play The Trojan Women at the Nexus of Social Justice and Theatre Practice
13. RICCI-JANE ADAMS Inheritors of the Dead Heart: Magical Realism in These People and Falling Petals by Ben Ellis
14. ALISON LYSSA Black and White: Australia’s History Onstage in Four Plays of the New Millennium
15. JACK TEIWES Nostalgia, Reconciliation or New National Myth?: The Adaptation of Cloudstreet to the Stage

Reviews

JENNY DE REUCK, Prologues to Shakespeare’s Theatre: Performance and Liminality in Early Modern Drama by Douglas Bruster and Robert Weimann

JOHN JACOBS, Talking to the Audience: Shakespeare, Performance, Self by Bridget Escolme

BREE HADLEY, Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance by Peta Tait

JONATHAN MARSHALL, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York by Midori Yoshimoto

DAVID MOODY, Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames eds Vicky Ann Cremona et al

BARRY O’CONNOR, Trade Secrets: Australian Actors and Their Craft by Terence Crawford

JONATHAN DAWSON, Three Dollars: Screenplay by Robert Connolly and Elliot Perlman

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 47 October 2005

Young People and Performance
Edited by Mary Ann Hunter and Geoffrey Milne
A special focus issue of Australasian Drama Studies

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 047 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Young People and Performance in Australia and New Zealand MARY ANN HUNTER and GEOFFREY MILNE
3. Acknowledging the Past: Youth Performing Arts in the 1970s MARGARET LEASK
4. Melbourne to Manchester: Arena Theatre's Artform Evolution ROSEMARY MYERS
5. Pecking at Your Head: The Flight and Fall of 'Magpie' ROSEMARY NURSEY-BRAY
6. White Crocodile, Black Skirt: Theatre for Young People and Cultural Memory HELEN STRUBE
7. Welcome to Lallyland: Introducing the plays of Lally Katz as Magical Feminism RICCI-JANE ADAMS
8. Shalakazap! - Empowerment in Young People's Theatre, Aotearoa/New Zealand: An Interview with Jenny Wake of Calico Theatre LISA WARRINGTON
9. Universality and Specificity, Making Drama From Personal Myth and Point of View JOHN DAVIES
10. Promoting Agency or 'Stepping-Stones R Us'? Recent Melbourne Youth Theatre GEOFFREY MILNE
11. Of Peacebuilding and Performance: Contact Inc's 'Third Space' of Intercultural Collaboration MARY ANN HUNTER

Reviews

MEREDITH ROGERS, Upstaged: Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last by Michelle Arrow

DAVID WATT, The Space Between: The Art of Puppetry and Visual Theatre in Australia by Peter J. Wilson and Geoffrey Milne

ALISON RICHARDS, Innovation in Australian Arts, Media and Design: Fresh Challenges for the Tertiary Sector ed. Rod Wissler et al

VERONICA KELLY, Writing and rewriting: National Theatre Histories ed. S.E. Wilmer

RACHEL FENSHAM, Virtual Theatres: An Introduction by Gabriella Giannachi

PENNY GAY, The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre ed. Kerry Powell

PETER ECKERSALL, Eugenio Barba by Jane Turner and The Intercultural Performance Handbook by John Martin

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 46 April 2005

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 046 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Remembering masculinities in the theatre of war JONATHAN BOLLEN
3. The misfit male body in Adelaide Theatre, 1959 BRUCE PARR
4. What’s a man to do? Images of rural Australian masculinities in three plays of the 1950s: Reedy River, The Bastard Country and Lola Montez ADRIAN KIERNANDER
5. ‘The play’s the thing’ no longer: non-linear narrative Kate Champion’s Same, same But Different ROSEMARY KLITCH
6. Identity performance in Northern Ireland and Australia: The Belle of the Belfast City and Radiance REBECCA PELAN
7. Experiencing Kane: an affective analysis of Sarah Kane’s ‘experiential’ theatre in performance ALYSON CAMPBELL
8. Brave ‘new world’: Asian voices in the Theatre of Aotearoa LISA WARRINGTON
9. Official amnesias and embodiments of memory in Australia’s Top End LESLEY DELMENICO
10. ‘Here’s a marvelous convenient place for our rehearsal’: Shakespeare in Australian space ROSEMARY GABY

Reviews

RICHARD FOTHERINGHAM, Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China by Li Ruru

BRIDGET MARY AITCHISON, Merely Players? Actors’ Accounts of Performing Shakespeare by Jonathan Holmes and Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company: Creativity and Institution by Colin Chambers;

VICTOR EMELJANOW, Alice May, Gilbert and Sullivan’s First Prima Donna by Adrienne Simpson

HOWARD McNAUGHTON, Oscar Asche, Orientalism, and British Musical Comedy by Brian Singleton

RUSSELL FEWSTER, Konstantin Stanislavsky by Bella Martin and Vsevolod Meyerhold by Jonathon Pitches

ADRIAN KIERNANDER, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance by Maria Shevtsova

MARYROSE CASEY, Theatre Australia (Un)limited: Australian Theatre Since the 1950s by Geoffrey Milne

WILLIAM PETERSON, Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore by Jacqueline Lo

GLEN D’CRUZ, Alternatives: Debating Theatre Culture in the Age of Con-Fusion ed. Peter Eckersall, Uchino Tadashi and Moriyama Naoto

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 45 October 2004

Contemporary Music Theatre in Australia
Edited by Keith Gallasch and Laura Ginters
A special focus issue of Australasian Drama Studies

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 045 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Australian music theatre: continuity and hybridity KEITH GALLASCH and LAURA GINTERS
3. ‘A comfortable society’: the 1950s and opera in Australia MICHAEL HALLIWELL
4. Larry Sitsky’s The Golem: the esoteric opera ANTONY ERNST
5. Matricide and the female divine HELEN RUSAK
6. Operatic tradition and ambivalence in Chamber Made Opera’s Recital JONATHAN MARSHALL
7. A music theatre life: LYNDON TERRACINI interviewed by KEITH GALLASCH
8. Mata Hara and the missionary position: Australian double agents in the seduction of randai DOUG LEONARD, INDIJA MAHJOEDDIN and ADRIAN SHERRIFF
9. Suspension, introspection and contradiction: the songs of The Threepenny Opera in rehearsal MIRANDA HECKENBERG
10. 'Australian-ness’ in musical theatre: a bran nue dae for Australia? PETER WYLLIE JOHNSTON

Reviews

PETER HOLBROOK, William Shakespeare, ‘The Merchant of Venice’ ed. Charles Edelman

LEAH MERCER, Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous ed. Eric Prenowitz

BRIAN SINGLETON, Antonin Artaud: A Critical Reader ed. Edward Scheer

PAUL MAKEHAM, The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader ed. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts

JONATHAN BOLLEN, Performance: Recasting the Political in Theatre and Beyond by Stephen Chinna

SUE RIDER, The Parsons Lectures: The Philip Parsons Memorial Lectures on the Performing Arts 1993-2003 ed. Katharine Brisbane and Don’t Tell Me, Show Me: Directors Talk About Acting by Adam Macaulay

HELENA GREHAN, Playing Australia: Australian Theatre and the International Stage ed. Elizabeth Schafer and Susan Bradley Smith.

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 44 April 2004

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 044 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Outside In: Theatre, Networks and Interdisciplinary Perspectives MARIA SHEVTSOVA
3. 'Hello Wien!' The Eighth Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture BARRIE KOSKY
4. Utopia, Maps and Ecstasy: Configuring Space in Barrie Kosky's 1996 Adelaide Festival MARY ANN HUNTER
5. Making a Mythopoetic Theatre: Jenny Kemp as Director of an Imaginary Future-Past-Present RACHEL FENSHAM
6. The Question of Authenticity in 1960s-1970s Californian Body art: Posing a Challenge to a Concept of Presence ANJA KANNGIESER
7. Reconciling Shakespeare and Indigeneity in Australia: Star-Cross'd communities and Racial Tempests EMMA COX
8. '...So Many Types, How Can All Be In The Same Category':Questioning Racial Boundaries in Mark de Silva's Stories for Amah SUSAN PHILLIP
9. How Gothic is S/He? Three New Zealand Dramas MURRAY EDMOND

Reviews

IAN MAXWELL, Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin: Out of the Natural Order by Jane R Goodall

SIMON DEVEREAUX, The Convict Theatres Early Australia, 1788-1840 by Robert Jordan

MIMI COLLIGAN, The Pollards: A Family and Its Child and Adult Opera Companies in New Zealand and Australia 1880-1910 by Peter Downes

HOWARD McNAUGHTON, Crucible of Cultures: Anglophone Drama at the Dawn of a New Millenium ed. Marc Maufort and Franca Bellarsi

DENISE VARNEY, Popular Theatre: A Sourcebook ed. joel Schechter

ANN WILSON, How Theatre Educates: Convergences & Counterpoints with Artists, Scholars and Advocates ed. Kathleen Gallagher and David Booth

JOANNE TOMPKINS, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, second edition by Keir Elam

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 43 October 2003

Performing Ireland
Edited by Brian Singleton and Anna McMullan
A special focus issue of Australasian Drama Studies
 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 043 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Performing Ireland: New Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre BRIAN SINGLETON and ANNA McMULLAN
3. Renegotiating Landscapes of the Female: Voices, Topographies and Corporealities of Alterity in Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlan MELISSA SIHRA
4. ‘The Souvenir from Foreign Parts’: Foreign Femininity in Deborah Warner’s Medea AOIFE MONKS
5. Shattering Images of Sex Acts and Other Obscene Staged Transgressions in Contemporary Irish Plays by Men STEPHEN DI BENEDETTO
6. ‘There’s Something Queer Here’: Modern Ireland and the Plays of Frank McGuinness DAVID CREGAN
7. Hard Wired/Tender Bodies: Power, Loneliness, the Machine and the Person in the Work of Desperate Optimists CATHY LEENEY
8. The Fantasy of Post-Nationalism in Northern Theatre: Caught Red Handed Transplanting the Planter MARK PHELAN
9. Gendered Media Rivalry: Irish Drama and American Film ROBIN ROBERTS
10. ‘Inside the Immigrant Mind’: Nostalgic Versus Nomadic Subjectivities in Late Twentieth-Century Irish Drama PAUL MURPHY
11. ‘Have you no homes to go to?’ Staging the Diaspora: a Study of Milo’s Wake JULIE-ANN ROBSON
12. Kia ora Begorrah: Performing Irishness in Aotearoa DAVID O’DONNEL

NOTE from Helen Thompson

Reviews

NADIA FLETCHER, The Jack Manning Trilogy by David Williamson

JONATHAN DAWSON, Dirty Deeds: Screenplay by David Caesar, and Rabbit-Proof Fence: Screenplay by Christine Olsen

DAVID CARNEGIE, Ben Jonson and Theatre: Performance, Practice and Theory by Richard Cave, Elizabeth Schafer, & Brian Wooland

CATHERINE NEWEY, Reflecting the Audience, London Theatregoing, 1840-1880 by Jim Davis & Victor Emeljanow

RICHARD FOTHERINGHAM, Dames, Principal Boys … and All That: A History of Pantomime in Australia by Viola Tait

MICHELE PIERSON, Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early Cinema by Rae Beth Gordon

IAN MAXWELL, Re:Direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide ed. Rebecca Schneider & Gabrielle Cody

JULIAN MEYRICK, Nowhere but Broadway by Jill Shearer and In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today by Aleks Sierz

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 42 April 2003

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 042 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Believing two things at once MICHAEL GURR
3. Collaboration and community The Seventh Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture NICK ENRIGHT
4. Introduction to Citizen X CITIZEN X by Sidetrack Performance Group JANE GOODALL
5. Koorero with Jim Moriarty RUTH GLASSEY and ANA WELHAM
6. Guerillas in our midst: contemporary Australian guerilla performance and the poststructural community REBECCA CAINES
7. Roy Rene ‘Mo’: Australian clown or monarch of the mob? KATH LEAHY
8. Black and Tran: a comedy that laughs in the face of racism? HELENA GREHAN
9. Toa Fraser: shifting boundaries in Pacific Island comedy DAVID O’DONNELL and BRONWYN TWEDDLE Women, Collaboration and Intervention
10. Black Chicks Talking: an interview with Leah Purcell LYNNE BRADLEY
11. The desire to affirm and challenge: an interview with Hannie Rayson DENISE VARNEY

Reviews

RONALDO MORELOS, Three Plays by Asian Australians ed. Don Batchelor

JONATHAN DAWSON, Lantana: Original Screenplay by Andrew Bovell

DAVID CARNEGIE, O Brave New World: Two Centuries of Shakespeare on the Australian Stage ed. John Golder & Richard Madelaine

PETER FITZPATRICK, Workers’ Playtime: Theatre and the Labour Movement Since 1970 by Alan Filewod & David Watt

RACHEL FENSHAM, Mapping Cultural Identity in Contemporary Australian Performance by Helena Grehan

VERONICA KELLY, Siting the Other: Re-visions of Marginality in Australian and English-Canadian Drama ed. Marc Maufort & Franca Bellarsi

KOH TAI ANN, Theatre and Politics in Contemporary Singapore by William Peterson

REBECCA SCHNEIDER, Body Show/s: Australian Viewings of Live Performance ed. Peta Tait

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 41 October 2002

Dance and Physical Theatre
Edited by Adrian Kiernander
A special focus issue of Australasian Drama Studies

Table of Contents

1. Issue 041 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Unnatural Bodies from Violent and Queer Acts in Australian Physical Theatre PETA TAIT
3. On Physical Theatre: A Roundtable Discussion from 'Not Yet It's Difficult' with Peter Eckersall, Paul Jackson, David pledger, Greg Ulfan PETER ECKERSALL
4. Into the Wilderness: Gilgul's 'Physical' Theatre 1994 ALISON RICHARDS and YONI PRIOR
5. Spectacle Effects and Performers of the Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony MICHAEL COHEN
6. An Epic of New Circus MARTINE MALEVAL translated by JANE MULLETT
7. Dreaming the Future: The Emergence of Bangarra Dance Theatre STEPHANIE BURRIDGE
8. Story Space in Bangarra's Pride: An Imperative for Reconciliation CELIA WEISS
9. Documents in Australian Postmodern Dance: Two Interviews with Lucy Guerin JONATHAN MARSHALL

Reviews

BEN PAYNE, Blak Inside by John Harding

JONATHAN DAWSON, Blue Murder: The Screenplay by Ian David and Ned Kelly: The Screenplay by John Michael McDonagh

SUSAN LEVER, Grassroots: Series One by Geoffrey Atherton, Katherine Thomson and Michael Brindley

PETER FITZPATRICK, See How It Runs: Nimrod and the New Wave by Julian Meyrick

SIMON WOODS, The Art of Stillness by Paul Allain

BRIDGET MARY AITCHISON, To the Actor on the Technique of Acting by Michael Chekhov and Acting (Re)considered: A Theoretical and Practical Guide ed., Phillip B. Zarrilli

DAVID WATT, Performing Democracy: International Perspectives on Urban Community-Based Performance ed. Susan C. Haedicke and Tobin Nellhaus

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 40 April 2002

Twentieth Anniversary Edition

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 040 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Historiography and rewriting: Performing on/as East Timorese bodies in Death at Balibo and Diablo! LESLEY DELMENICO
3. Reviewing Australia’s first performance: The Recruiting Officer in Sydney 1789 NATHAN GARVEY
4. Political manoeuvring behind the scenes: the development of the national theatre idea in Australia during the 1940s DONALD BATCHELOR
5. The hard road to stardom: the early career of Essie Jenyns JANETTE GORDON-CLARK
6. Young colonists on the Australian stage: adaptations of Paul et Virginie by James Cobb and Marcus Clarke IAN HENDERSON
7. A director in rehearsal: Neil Armfield and the Company B production of The Blind Giant is Dancing by Stephen Sewell RUSSELL FEWSTER

Reviews

WILLIAM PETERSON, The Singapore Trilogy by Robert Yeo

HELENA GREHAN, Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology by Helen Gilbert

PAUL GALLOWAY, Keep Everything You Love by David Brown;

JONATHAN DAWSON, Chopper: The Screenplay by Andrew Dominik

SUSAN LEVER, Top Shelf 1: Reading and Writing the Best in Australian TV Drama by Greg Haddrick; Top Shelf 2: Five Outstanding Television Screenplays by Greg Haddrick

NERIDA NEWBIGIN, Vasari on Theatre by Thomas A. Pallen

DAVID O’DONNELL, Playing Bit Parts in Shakespeare by M. M. Mahood

BRUCE PARR, The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre by Laurence Senelick

MURRAY BRAMWELL, As Many Lives As A Cat: The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild 1938-1998 by Kerrie Round, and The Pram Factory: The Australian Performing Group Recollected by Tim Robertson

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 39 October 2001

Performance Studies in Australia
Edited by Gay McAuley, Glenn D’Cruz and Alison Richards
A special focus issue of Australasian Drama Studies

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 039 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Performance Studies: Definitions, Methodologies, Future Directions GAY McAULEY
3. Performance Studies in Australia Today: a Survey of the Field GLENN D’CRUZ
4. Learning in/Through Crisis IAN MAXWELL
5. Shaking the Frame: Erving Goffman and Performance Studies ALISON RICHARDS
6. Toil and Traffic: Australian Appropriations of the Suzuki Method HELEN GILBERT and JACQUELINE LO
7. The Dialectics of Inter-Cultural Performance: Towards a Historiographic Cross-Cultural Praxis JONATHAN MARSHALL
8. The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same…’? Feminisms and Performance Studies KERRIE SCHAEFER and LAURA GINTERS
9. Performance Studies: a Tour Through the Field JONATHAN BOLLEN
10. Discourses of an ‘International’ Disciplinary F ormation: Australian and International Performance Studies Conference Diaries 1991-2001 RACHAEL FENSHAM
11. Discussing Theory-Practice Relationships in Performance: a Round-Table Discussion with Annette Tesoriero, Tess de Quincey,Deborah Pollard, John Baylis, David Pledger, Josephine Wilson PETER EC
12. Review:HELEN THOMSON, Meat Party by Duong Le Quy
13. Review: BARBARA JOSEPH, Sweet Road by Deborah Oswald
14. Review: GEOFFREY MILNE, Melbourne Stories: Three Plays: Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? by Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela; Polly Blue by

Reviews

TOM BURVILL, The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of the Plays in Performance by Laurence Senelick

REBECCA PELAN, The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel by Nicholas Grene

JACQUELINE LO, The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization by Rustom Bharucha

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 38 April 2001

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 038 (Full Issue PDF)
2. ‘We Want Hope’: the Power of Indigenous Arts in Australia today. The 2000 Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture WESLEY ENOCH
3. Teaching Shakespeare in locked facilities PHILIPPA KELLY
4. Post-feminist Physical Theatre: the Abject and the Split Subject in My Vicious Angel by Christine Evans ADELE CHYNOWETH
5. Sugar, Land and Belonging: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and No Sugar RUSSELL McDOUGALL
6. ‘What Happens to the Spectator of Hysteria’s Realism?’ The Reception of Elizabeth Robins’and Florence Bell’s Alan’s Wife (1893) SUE THOMAS
7. Proscenium Arches and Fashion Columns: Brisbane Theatre and the Role of Women During the Wars DELYSE RYAN
8. Whose Turn to Shout? The Crisis in Australia Musical Theatre PETER FITZPATRICK

Reviews

GEOFFREY MILNE, Crazy Brave by Michael Gurr and A Beautiful Life by Michael Futcher and Helen Howard

DON BACHELOR, Georgia by Jill Shearer

JONATHAN DAWSON, Looking for Alibrandi: The Screenplay by Melina Marchetta

DENISE VARNEY, Feminist Theatre Practice: A Handbook by Elaine Aston

HAROLD LOVE, Visual Ephemera: Theatrical Art in Nineteenth-century Australia by Anita Calloway

IAN MAXWELL, Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas ed. Coco Fusco

BARBARA GARLICK, Defiance: Political Theatre in Brisbane 1930-1962 by Connie Healy

HOWARD McNAUGHTON, The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning: Contemporary Canadian Dramaturgies by Ric Knowles

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Australian Aboriginal Performance

Issue 37, October 2000

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 037 (Full Issue PDF)
2. ANNE MARSHALL Casting about for the scent: Researching Aboriginal performance
3. JARED THOMAS Land of opportunity?
4. JUNE PERKINS 7 valleys of nurturing: Exploring the performing arts philosophy of Wesley Enoch: a profile
5. GEOFFREY MILNE The Festival of the Dreaming: Intimate, contemporary, true
6. JAN PINKERTON Fish out of water
7. KEIRYN BABCOCK Power and performance: Aboriginality and the Academy
8. LYNNE BRADLEY Choosing good ground: a forum interview with Kooemba Jdarra artistic directors Lafe Charleton, Wesley Enoch and Nadine McDonald
9. ADRIAN MARSHALL Writing Truly, Madly, Country
10. GORDON BEATTIE Reflections
11. MARYROSE CASEY From the wings to centre stage: a production chronology of theatre and drama texts by Australian Indigenous writers
12. Review: PETER FITZPATRICK Cloudstreet by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo
13. review: VERONICA KELLY English Stage Comedy 1490 1990 by Alexander Leggatt
14. Review: PHILLIPA KELLY New sites for Shakespeare: Theatre, the Audience and Asia by John Russel Brown
15. Review: RICHARD FOTHERINGHAM, The Cambridge History of American Theatre; Volume 1, ed. Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby
16. Review: HAROLD LOVE The Silent Showman:Sir George Tallis by Michael and Joan Tallis, and Civilising the Colonies: Pioneering Opera in Australia by Alison Gyger
17. Review: BRUCE PARR Lovesic: Modernist Plays of Same-Sex Love, 1894-1925,ed. Laurence Senelick
18. Review: PAUL DWYER Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make Politics by Augusto Boal
19. Review: JULIAN MEYRICK 1956 and All That: The Making of Modern British Theatre by Dan Rebellato
20. Review: JOANNE TOMPKINS The Drama of South Africa by Loren Kruger
21. Review: KERRIE SCHAEFER, Space in Performance: Making Meaning in the Theatre by Gay McAuley

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 36, April 2000

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 036 (Full Issue PDF)
2. NEIL ARMFIELD AND GEOFFREY RUSH The 1999 Rex Cramphorn memorial lecture: Tearing the cat
3. MARYROSE CASEY Nindethana and the National Black Theatre: interrogating the mythology of the New Wave
4. MURRAY EDMOND The 'original' Downstage and the theatre of its history
5. MIKE FOSTER Community/communitas: renegotiating community theatre today. An interview with Graham Pitts
6. PAUL MAKEHAM 'The city's surrounded by fire': Michael Gow's The Kid
7. JULIA MANT The testimonial stage: theatrical presentations of the prisoner of war, 1995
8. BILL DUNSTONE 'Orders of nature': press, gender and performance in colonial Western Australia 1839-1880
9. MARGARET WILLIAMS and HILARY GOLDER Fighting Jack: a brief Australia melodrama
10. Review:MEREDITH ROGERS The woman in the Window by Alma De Groen
11. Review:GEOFFREY MILNE Chilling and Killing my Annabel Lee by Aidan Fennessy and Secret Bridesmaid's Business by Elizabeth Coleman
12. Review: MELISSA WESTERN X-Stacey by Margery Forde
13. Review: JULIAN MEYRICK The Dogs Play and a A Few Roos Loose in the Top Paddock by Tee O'Neill

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 35, October 1999

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 035 (Full Issue PDF)
2. MARK ST LEON Introduction
3. REG BOLTON Circus as education
4. RICHARD WATERHOUSE Travelling shows in rural Australia 1850-1915
5. MIMI COLLIGAN Circus in theatre: Astley's amphitheatre, Melbourne 1854-1857
6. GAVIN ROBBINS The passion and totality of your body, mind and soul: an interview with Nigel Jamieson
7. LYNN EVERETT Thrills and spills: the precarious life of Circus Monoxide
8. JOHN WHITEOAK The development of Australian Circus Music
9. DAVID C S SISSONS Japanese acrobatic troupes touring Australasia 1867-1900
10. CATHY J BARRETT and HEATHER VALLANCE The wild west show: socio-historic spectacle and character as circus
11. PETA TAIT Circus bodies as theatre animals
12. NICOLA BRACKERTZ The battle for colonial circus supremacy: John Bull, Uncle Sam and their 'Chariots of Fire'
13. MARK ST LEON Noms d'arena: the use of pseudonyms in Australian circus
14. MARK ST LEON Noms d'arena: the use of pseudonyms in Australian circus
15. SUE BROADWAY Circus Oz - the first seven years: a memoir
16. Review: MURRAY BRAMWELL The Blind Giant is Dancing the rev. ed by Stephen Sewell
17. Review:JOANNE TOMPKINS Natural Life adapted by Humphrey Bower

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 34, April 1999

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 33 Oct 1998

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 033 (Full Issue PDF)
2. TOM BURVIL and CHRIS WORTHAM Foreward
3. LLOYD DAVIS Why speak to the dead?!! Teaching and researching Renaissance drama
4. FRANCES DEVLIN-GLASS “Teaching the audience with the play’: feminism and Shakespeare at the Melbourne Theatre Company, 1984-93
5. PHILLIPA KELLY ‘Laughing in his face’: Australia’s Shakespeare
6. ADRAIN KIERNANDER ‘Cupid’s bow burn’d; or, difference endangered in John Lily’s Gallathea and Shakespeare’s cross-dress comedies
7. GEOFFREY MILNE Shakespeare under the stars: a new ‘Elizabethan’ tradition
8. ANTHONY MILLER ‘Imperial Caesar’: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar on the Australian stage, 1856-1889
9. LUCY POTTER Hamlet and the scene of pedagogy
10. KAORI KOBAYASHI Shakespeare wallah: George C. Miln’s Shakespearean productions in India
11. MARK MINCHINTON The right and only direction: Rex Cramphorn, Shakepeare, and the Actor’s Development Stream
12. PAUL WASHINGTON ‘Bardbiz’ in colonial Australia: the formation of a cultural institution
13. LLOYD DAVIS Reviewing the Renaissance
14. Review: PAMELA A FOULKES, My Body. My Blood by Margaret Kirby
15. Review: MEREDITH ROGERS, Black Sequin Dress by Jenny Kemp
16. Review: RACHEL FENSHAM, Australian Women's Drama, ed. Peta Tait and Elizabeth Schafer
17. Review: GREG McCART, Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women trans, Jeffrey Henderson
18. Review: ALAN BRISSENDEN, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, d. Penny Gay
19. Review: JOHN DOWNIE. Shakespeare and the moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television, ed. Anthony Davies and Stanley Wells
20. Review: RICHARD MADELAINE, The Texts of 'Othello' and Shakespearian Revision by E.A.J. Honigmann
21. Review: HAROLD LOVE Come to Dazzle: Sarah Bernhardt's Australian Tour by Corille Fraser
22. Review: IAN MAXWELL, Performing Brecht Forty Years of British Performances by Margaret Eddershaw
23. Review: JANE GOODALL, A Sourcebook of Feminist Theatre and Performance: On and Beyond the Stage,ed. Carol Martin
24. Review: TOM BURVILL, The Intercultural Performance Reader, ed. Patrice Pavis
25. Review: TOM BURVILL, The Intercultural Performance Reader, ed. Patrice Pavis

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 32 April 1998

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 032 (Full Issue PDF)
2. RHODA ROBERTS The 1997 Rex Cramphorn memorial lecture: A passion for ideas: Black stage
3. JUDY PIPPEN Ranged between Heaven and Hades: actors’ bodies in cross-cultural theatre forms
4. FRANCES DEVLIN-GLASS ‘Every man who is not Petruchio doth wish he was’: postfeminist anxiety and the resistance in Dead White Males
5. KAORI KOBAYASHI Touring companies in the Empire: the Miln company’s Shakespearean productions in Japan
6. HELEN THOMSON Dymphna Cusack’s plays
7. Playscript: Panaylota by Angela Costi with an introduction by Kim baston
8. JOH HARTOG The computerized gaze and the performing arts
9. RICHARD FORTHERINGHAM Fingers in the text/book: compiling and editing theatre history
10. Review: KATHERINE NEWEY, Modern Drama by Women, 1880s-1930s. An International Anthology, ed. Katherine Kelly.pdf
11. Review: SIMON CHAN, Thieving Boy and Like Stars in My Hands by Tim Conigrave
12. Review: HELEN THOMSON, The Torrents by Oriel Gray and Blackrock by Nick Enright
13. Review: GEOFFREY MILNE Competitive Tenderness by Hannie Rayson and Waking Eve by Robert Hewett
14. Review: PAUL MAKEHAM The Ghosts Trilogy (Too Young For Ghosts; No Going Back; My Father's Father) by Janis Balodis
15. Review: KIM WALKER, Historiography and Ideology in Stuart Drama by Ivo Kanps
16. Review: HAROLD LOVE, Richard Davis, Anna Bishop: the Adventures of an Intrepid Prima Donna by Richard Davis and Florence Austral: One of the Wonder Voices of the World by James Moffat_.pdf
17. Review: HOWARD McNAUGHTON, Companion to Theatre in Australia, gen.ed. Phillip Parson with Victoria Chance
18. Review: DAVID WILLIAMS, Art Into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documents by Nick Kaye
19. Review: SIMON WOODS, At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions by Thomas Richards

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 31 Oct 1997

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 031 (Full Issue PDF)
2. BRUCE PARR, TIM BENZIE and SHANE ROWLANDS Introduction
3. LLOYD DAVIS Queer Criticism on Shakespeare
4. KEIRAN BABCOCK ‘Pleasure, danger and genderfucking’: an interview with Moira Flaucane
5. CHRISTOPHER BECKEY Hom(m)oerotics? Or to queer the male body on stage
6. PETA TAIT Interpreting bodily functions in queer performance
7. PHILIP BILTON-SMITH ‘Because they’re my people’: an interview with Alex Harding and Barry Lowe
8. STUART YOUNG Sleeping with the mainstream: gay drama and theatre in Britain moves in from the margin
9. SHANE ROWLANDS Textualities and Sexualities of Bodies in Motion: an interview with Gail Kelly
10. JONATHAN BOLLEN ‘What a queen’s gotta do’: queer performativity and the rhetoric’s of performance
11. Review: GREG MCCART, Aeschylus: Suppliants and Other Dramas: Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Fragments, Prometheus Bound,ed. Michael Ewans
12. Review: PHILIP BILTON-SMITH: Australian Gay and Lesbian Plays ed. Bruce Parr
13. Review: JONATHAN DAWSON: Blackrock: The Screenplay by Nick Enright and Love Serenade by Shirley Barrett
14. Review: LLOYD DAVIS: The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London 1576-1649,eds. David L.Smith, Richard Strier & David Bevington, and Reading Shakespeare Historically by Lisa J
15. Review: ANDREW MCCANN: Impersonations: the Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England by Stephen Orgel
16. Review: JIM DAVIS: The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth Century France by F.W.J. Hemmings
17. Review: RACHEL FENSHAM: Performance; a critical introduction by Marvin Carlson
18. Review: PETA TAIT: The Explicit Body in Performance by Rebecca Schneider
19. Review: MARGARET HENDERSON: Queer Theory by Annamarie Jagose

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 30 April 1997

 

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 030 (Full Issue PDF)
2. JOHN ROMERIL Ringing heaven: the second Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture
3. FRANCES DEVLIN-GLASS An interview with John Bell
4. MARGARET HAMILTON Open City: a field of linguistic possibilities
5. ALBERT MORAN Try and try again: The Restless Years and nationalizing television drama
6. ANNA BEMROSE E.W.O’Sullivan’s Coo-ee; or Wild Days in the Bush: people’s theatre or political circus?
7. Review: GEOFFREY MILNE ; Sex Diary of an Infidel, Underwear, Perfume and Crash Helmet, and Jerusalem by MichaelGurr, and All Souls by Daniel Keene
8. Review: JOHN DOWNIE. Eugenia by Lorae Parry, and Playlunch:Five Short New Zealand Plays ed. Christine Prentice and Lisa Warrington
9. Review: JONATHAN DAWSON: Spotswood: The Screenplay by Max Dann and Andrew Knight and Cosi: The Screenplay by Louis Nowra
10. Review: JOANNE TOMPKINS ; Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past by Susan Bennett
11. Review: JOANNE TOMPKINS ; Performing Nostalgia: Shifting Shakespeare and the Contemporary Past by Susan Bennett
12. Review: LLOYD DAVIS: Hamlet Theory in Practice Series, ed. Peter J.Smith and Nigel Wood, and Scocial Shakesoeare: Aspects of Renaissance Dramaturgy and Contemporary Society by Peter J.Smith
13. Review: DAVID CARNEGIE Theatre and Government Under the Early Stuarts, ed. j.R. Mulryne Shewring
14. Review:GARETH GRIFFITHS: Post-Colonial Drama:Theory, Practice, Politics by Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins
15. Review: PAUL MAKEHAM: Australian Contemporary Drama (rev.ed.) by Dennis Carroll
16. Review: ALAN FILEWOOD: Challenging the Centre: Two Decades of Political Theatre, ed. Steve Capelinf
17. Review: JOANNE TOMPKINS ; Contemporary Dramatists, 5th ed., K.A.Berney

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Theatre and the Canadian Imaginary

Number 29 October 1996

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 28 April 1996

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Women Making Theatre for Social Change

Number 27 October 1995

 

Table of Contents

1. Issue 027 (Full Issue PDF)
2. PETA TAIT, JULIE HOLLEDGE and TONY MITCHELL Introduction
3. JULIE HOLLEDGE ‘The monster is still there’: an interview with Fe Remotigue
4. MINDANAO CULTURAL WORKERS with JULIE HOLLEDGE ‘To heal our social ills’: community theatre practice in the Philippines
5. MATRA ROBERTSON Korean shamanism: an interview with Kim Kum hwa
6. MEEWON LEE Sahmanism and Korean theatre
7. JUNG SOON SHIM Awakening self: images of women in modern Korean drama
8. KAREN HEESON-SMITH ‘True people’s theatre’: an interview with Ranjana Pandey
9. LI YING NING Tradition and its re-creation
10. FATIMA CHEBCHOUB The female artist in Morocco: with references to actresses
11. ANNE-MARIE MORGAN Three approaches to modern theatre in Jakarta in the 1990s: Rendra, Putta Wijaya and Ratna Sarumpaet
12. PLAYSCRIPT: Ms Serena Serenata & Beaset, Luv! By Merlinda Bobis
13. TONY MITCHELL ‘High Art’ and Low Purse’” Adelaide Ristori tours Australia 22 July- 4 December 1875 Part Two
14. SUSAN PFISTERER Cultural anxiety and the new woman playwright: Mrs E.S.Haviland’s On Wheels
15. NOTE: Performance studies – a reply by Gay McAuley
16. Review: TOM BURVILL, Bali: Adat by Graham Shiel, and Aftershocks nu the Newcastle Workers' Cultural Action Committee with writer-in-residence Paul Brown
17. Review: NADIA FLETCHER: Mongrels by Nick Enright, and Furious by Michael Gow
18. Review: ROBIN BOND: Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy by A.M.Bowie
19. Review: BETSY TAYLOR: The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre ed. Richard Beadle
20. Review: DENISE CUTHBERT: Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference by John Gillies
21. Review: PHILIP AYRES: Hamlet versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Tragedies by David Margolies
22. Review; LIZ SCHAFER : As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women by Penny Gay
23. Review: EDWARD SCHEER: Artaud and the Gnostic Drama by Jane Goodall
24. Review: BARBARA GARLICK: The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian plays 1920-1955, domp. & ed. Jack Bedson and Julian Croft
25. Review: CAROLYN PICKETT:Original Women's Theatre: The Melbourne Women's Theatre Group 1974-77 by Peta Tait, and Playworks: Women Theatre Writers 1993
26. Review: PAUL MAKEHAM: John Romeril ed. Gareth Griffiths
27. Review: GARETH GRIFFITHS: The Cambridge Guide to Africa and Caribbean Theatre ed. Martin Banham, Errol Hill and George Woodyard
28. Review: TOM BURVILL, Theatre and Cultural Interaction by Maria Shevtsova
29. Review: GORDON BEATTIE: Architecture, Actor and Audience by Iain Mackintosh
30. Review: FRANCES BONNER: Television and Women"s Culture: The Politics of the popular ed. Mary Ellen Brown
31. Review: JOHN DOWNIE. The Actor's Way by Erike Exe Christoffersen, and Playing Boal: Theatre Therapy, Activism ed. Mady Schutzman and Jan Cohen-Cruz
32. Review: RICHARD CORBALLIS: Avant Garde Theatre 1892-1992 by Christopher Innes

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 26 April 1995

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Theatre in Southeast Asia

Number 25 October 1994

 

 

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 24 April 1994

 

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 23 October 1993

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 22 April 1993

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Women in Theatre

Number 21 October 1992

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Theatre for Communities

Number 20 April 1992

Issue 020 (Full Issue PDF)

Contents

DAVID WATT
Community theatre: a progress report

MARY ANN HUNTER
A Good Yarn and a yarn with Allen Lyne and Alan Holy

DEAN TUTTLE
Street Arts: counting the community

MARKO PAVLYSHYN
Culture and the émigré consciousness: Ukrainian theatre in Australia 1948-1969

GEOFFREY MILNE
Community theatre in Melbourne: The Bridge

PLAYSCRIPT
The Bridge by Vicky Reynolds

MARIA SHEVISOVA
Audiences for Filef Theatre Group’s L’Albero delle rose/The Tree of Roses and Storie in cantlere/Stories in Construction

TONY MITCHELL
Wogs still out of work: Australian television comedy in colonial discourse

 

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 19 October 1991

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Theatre and Drama in New Zealand

Number 18 April 1991

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 17 October 1990

 

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture

Number 15/16 April 1990

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 14 October 1989

Australasian Drama Studies

Australian Theatre Double Issue

Number 12/13 1988

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 11 October 1987

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 10 April 1987

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 9 October 1986

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 8, April 1986

Australasian Drama Studies

Number 7 October 1985

Australasian Drama Studies

Issue 6, April 1985

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 3 Number 1 October 1984

Table of Contents

1. Issue 3.1 (Full Issue PDF)
2. Guest editorial  TERRY STURM
3. A brief chronology of theatre in New Zealand LAURIE ATKINSON
4. Dunedin's Globe Theatre: the Carey years DAVID CARNEGIE
5. Dunedin's Globe Theatre: the Carey years DAVID CARNEGIE
6. 'What kind of a society can develop under corrugated iron?': glimpses of New Zealand history in New Zealand plays SEBASTIAN BLACK
7. Footrot Flats: a casebook RICHARD CORBALLIS
8. Raymond Boyce, stage designer JOHN ROBERTS
9. 'Divine gossip': interviews with six New Zealand directors RUTH HARLEY
10. The third New Zealand playwrights' workshop DAVID CARNEGIE
11. Promise and frustration: New Zealand playwrighting since 1975 MERVYN THOMPSON
12. Reviews     PHILLIP MANN: New Zealand Drama 1930-1980,: an illustrated history by John Thomsom; MICHAEL NEILL: Out in the Cold by Greg McGee; JEAN BETTS: Outside In by Hilary Beaton; SUNNY AMEY: On Stage 1; Four Plays for Secondary Schools, ed. David Dowling; JOHN THOMSON: New Zealand Theatre Annals: Christchurch 1900-1919, comp. Howard McNaughton; MAY­BRIT AKERHOLT: Netherwood by Patrick White; RICHARD FOTHERING­HAM: Spangles and Sawdust: the Circus in Australia by Mark St. Leon.

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 2 Number 2 April 1984

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 2 Number 1 October 1983

 

Australasian Drama Studies

Popular Theatre Issue

Volume 1 Number 2 April 1983

Australasian Drama Studies

Volume 1 Number 1 October 1982