A new production revisits a play dropped from the Australian theatrical canon long ago. Set in a regional newsroom, the play’s themes are strikingly relevant today.
A new production of Cloudstreet - the play adapted from Tim Winton’s literary epic - is visually arresting. But despite a diverse cast, Indigenous characters remain spectral and peripheral.
Eliza Winstanley, who died of diabetes and exhaustion in Sydney in 1882, is largely forgotten. But as a leading artist on Australia’s earliest stages she deserves a prominent place in our theatrical histories.
A new play tells the story of George Johnston and Charmian Clift’s time on the Greek island of Hydra, which ultimately led to the novel My Brother Jack - but not without sacrifices.
Was Mary Stuart a passionate and jealous failed queen, or a brave and complex woman? Opposing representations in a new film and play reflect modern anxieties about women’s agency and leadership.
David Williamson and Jack Hibberd tower over Australian drama. Williamson’s The Department and Hibberd’s A Stretch of the Imagination both showcase the strange yet compelling detachment of these playwrights’ visions.
From Cate Blanchett to David Williamson, some of Australia’s most well known theatre artists have performed at La Mama, which celebrates its 50th birthday this year.
The idea of a ‘canon’ changes over time and despite its elitist overtones, identifying one can be both illuminating and fun. In a new series, we nominate the best of Australian drama.
It’s been seven years since Kevin Rudd delivered his apology to Indigenous Australians. On Australia’s stages dramatists continue to explore the ramifications of that apology and colonial history.
Playwriting occupies a weak position in Australian culture because its historical role is not to be “good”, but to be socially acceptable. We need now to take a modern attitude to drama.
Drama involves an altered representation of reality – and the way we understand both the representations and the reality evolve. Duncan Graham’s recent play Cut shows how significantly those understandings change.
Many of the scholarly observations made about plays – who wrote them, when and why, their history, their canonical status, or not – are irrelevant. Audiences do not need to know such things.
Sociologist Max Weber once called politics “the slow boring of hard boards”. If he had been in the arts he might have added, “using your head as a drill”. Australia’s cultural agenda often feels like an…