The AustLit Australian Drama Archive - Oriel Gray

Oriel Gray (1920-2003)

Oriel Gray was a successful playwright who worked in the theatre and with ABC radio for decades. Gray has the misfortune of being the co-winner, with her play The Torrents, of the 1955 Playwrights' Advisory Board award for the best play with Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Lawler's play went on to win international acclaim while Gray's did not receive the promised production and suffered from poor productions subsequently.

AustLit record for Oriel Gray

This image has been sourced from Doollee.com

Oriel Gray lived in Sydney during the early part of her writing career and later re-located to Melbourne. Gray's major output as a playwright was in the period from the 1940s to the 1960s. Her plays are regarded as being ahead of their time due to the complex manner in which they deal with social issues. Gray inventively addressed issues of Aboriginal rights, life in the bush, migrant experience and women's employment.

Her first full-length play, Lawson, based on some of Henry Lawson's short stories, was produced by Sydney New Theatre, in 1943.

See full AustLit entry

The Plays

The following plays have been digitised and delivered through AustLit, thanks to the generous support of Nic Hepworth, Oriel Gray's son. Had We But World Enough will be published in print by Playlab before it will be made available online through AustLit.

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Lawson

Lawson is Oriel Gray's first full-length play, and is based on the stories of Henry Lawson. These stories include 'Past Carin'', 'At Dead Dingo', 'Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock', 'The Man Who Forgot', 'Pretty Girl in the Army', 'Water them Geraniums' and 'Steelman’s Pupil'.

The narrative begins with Wilson, Macquarie and Lawson yarning round a campfire beside a drover’s track.

See the AustLit record for Lawson.

Read the play here.
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Sur le Pont : A Play in One Act

Oriel Gray's Sur Le Pont is a one-act play set in the wardrobe room of the Talma Theatre in the small French provincial town of Arles in June 1944. The narrative begins shortly after an allied bombing raid has destroyed the armament compound hidden by the German military beneath the town's railway bridge.

The members of the small theatre company, which is currently presenting a revue, become aware that one of them is now passing information to the military police in order to propel his career opportunities elsewhere.

See the AustLit record for Sur le Pont.

Read the play here.
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Had We But World Enough

Set in the 1940s, Had We But World Enough dramatises the tension that arises in a country town over a teacher's decision to cast an Aboriginal girl as the Virgin Mary in a locally written school nativity play. The casting is approved by the playwright, a journalist for the town's paper, and also a returned soldier who fought alongside Aboriginal servicemen. During the course of the narrative, others find themselves being forced into taking sides, however. This leads to consequences that impact on the characters in different ways - affecting careers, relationships, social standing or conscience.

See the AustLit record for Had We But World Enough.

This play is being published in print by Playlab in association with AustLit. It will be made available through AustLit after a reasonable embargo period. The manuscript of the play is held at the Fryer Library of The University of Queensland.
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Sky Without Birds (Stage)

Set in the post office of the fictional town of Koorora a few years after the end of World War II. A desert settlement of some 67 people that exists mainly to support the building of the Trans-Australian Railway line (which crossed the Nullarbor Plain from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta), Koorora typifies the railway workers' joke that their trains 'stop at nothing.'

Heinrich (Heine) Schafer is the town's new railway mechanic. He is also a new Australian - a German Jew who spent much of the war imprisoned by the Nazis.

See the AustLit record for Sky Without Birds : The Stage Play.

Read the play here.
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Sky Without Birds (Radio)

Set in the post office of the fictional town of Koorora a few years after the end of World War II. A desert settlement of some 67 people that exists mainly to support the building of the Trans-Australian Railway line (which crossed the Nullarbor Plain from Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta), Koorora typifies the railway workers' joke that their trains 'stop at nothing.'

Heinrich (Heine) Schafer is the town's new railway mechanic. He is also a new Australian - a German Jew who spent much of the war imprisoned by the Nazis.

See the AustLit record for Sky Without Birds - The Radio Play.

Read the play here.

Significant Work about Oriel Gray

Explore the many works written about Oriel Gray and her works through her AustLit record.

In 2016, as a part of the development of the Australian Drama Archive, Jemimah Thompson, who was interning with AustLit, undertook research into the liminal space inhabited by Oriel Gray in the history of the Australian theatre industry. Her essay, The Dramatic Spaces of Oriel Gray, was published by AustLit as an accompaniment to the digitised plays.

Image Credits

All images are public domain or without known copyright restrictions. Some have been slightly modified for publication.

Sur La Pont

Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Harlem Bridge" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1885. Source

Lawson

Swagmen off on the track, Australia. Melbourne, Victoria : Victoria Stamp Market, approximately 1910. Via National Library of Australia. Source

Had We But World Enough

Domestic interior, 1969. Unidentified creator. Via John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Source

Sky Without Birds (Stage)

Cutting of the East-West Railway c.1901. Unidentified creator. Via State Library of South Australia. Source

Sky without Birds (Radio)

The rail head work south line, Adelaide to Darwin. 1928. Unidentified creator. Via State Library of South Australia. Source

AustLit

Lawson

Sur le Pont : A Play in One Act

Had We But World Enough

Sky Without Birds (Stage)

Sky Without Birds (Radio)

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