In TV and film the British monarchy have never had it so good – it’s about time something took a more sceptical eye.
After 71 dead refugees were found in an abandoned refrigeration truck in September 2015, the Bochum Theater organized a public reenactment of the tragedy.
Ina Fassbender/Reuters
In Germany – a country where going to the theater is a deeply ingrained cultural tradition – the stage is a place to confront pressing political issues.
The Chapel Perilous follows the life of Sally Banner “a rebel in word and deed”.
Flickr/Andrew Sutherland
No other Australian playwright has mined their own life as much as Dorothy Hewett. In this expressionist drama, she depicts a girl of yearning heart, looking for love and hungry for life.
Passion, Lament, Glory at Melbourne’s St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2017.
Sarah Walker
Each year at Easter, Christians recreate the spectacularly violent end of Jesus’s life, raising some tough questions about the depiction of suffering on stage.
Scrutinising the output of a national theatre at a time of rising nationalism is a worthwhile activity, but it needs either radical intention or emotional insight.
The Secret River at Adelaide Festival with Ningali Lawford Wolf in foreground.
Shane Reid
Every part of this production - staged outdoors in a quarry - shows evidence of the highest degree of collaboration and the greatest subtlety of decision.
Calum Barbour as the drug dealer in Trainspotting.
A development festival for Indigenous Australian playwrights showcased a range of stories: from the sharply comic tale of a woman hunting for her wayward husband to a powerful exploration of prison violence.
An early review of Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul said it ‘upset everybody who saw it’. But this extraordinary play, once a victim of 60s cultural cringe, marked a turning point in Australian theatre.
Theresienstadt ghetto / Andrew Shiva, Wikimedia Commons
Marilyn Monroe was a magnetic film star, but she had the potential to be a truly great stage actress. Clues in her life point to a missed chance: to escape the pressure of Hollywood and blossom as a serious thespian.
What’s the collective noun for a group of pantomime dames?
PA
In 1955 two plays – The Torrents and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – burst into Australian theatre. Funny and tragic in deeply Australian ways, they marked a new horizon of creative possibility.
‘Molly? Molly? MOLLY?’ Tony Barry as Keghead in Rusty Bugles.
ABC/National Film and Sound Archive
The best Australian play ever written is revolutionary in its treatment of plot, character and language. It has a weary, sardonic perspective on war and an unheroic worldview.
The Theatre Royal in Hobart, Australia’s oldest continuously operating theatre.
Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office/Flickr
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.