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Australian Drama (THE2005)
Semester 1 / 2010

Texts

y separately published work icon Australian Women's Drama : Texts and Feminisms Peta Tait (editor), Elizabeth Schafer (editor), Paddington : Currency Press , 1997 Z69253 1997 anthology drama (taught in 6 units)
y separately published work icon The Cherry Pickers Kevin Gilbert , 1968 1968 (Manuscript version)x401069 Z245424 1968 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

"When the cold August wind abated in its final sigh of emergence from the lean, hard winter months into springtime, the People emerged from the cold, and often leaky shanties, and old discarded car-bodies, which were their home, to gather together their few ragged possessions and tie them in bundles ready for traveling to the cherry orchards, often many hundreds of miles away. Many would travel by bicycle with their swags swinging crazily from the frames; many traveled in old tattered caravans drawn by horses; many just walked beside the caravans through the red sandhill and mallee country, while the more daring 'jumped the rattler', the slow old steam train that chugged across the land.

Wherever the people gathered there too was a spirit of revival, of intense relief, for the "cherry season" meant a temporary release from near starvation. In a good season it could mean some old debts would be repaid. It meant food and toys for the children for the forthcoming Christmas season and, above all, it meant some independence, some freedom, from under the crucifying heels of the local police and the white 'station' managers; an escape from the refugee camps called 'Aboriginal Reserves'. The cherry season was the time for hope, for meeting old friends and relatives, for laughing and for making love. The Cherry Pickers tells it all.' Source: http://blackwebs.photoaccess.org.au/~kevingilbert/books/books.html (Sighted: 12/4/2009).

y separately published work icon The One Day of the Year Alan Seymour , 1960 (Manuscript version)x400866 Z525120 1960 single work drama (taught in 11 units)

'Undoubtedly one of Australia's favourite plays, the One Day of the Year explores the universal theme of father-son conflict against the background of the beery haze and the heady, nostalgic sentimentality of Anzac Day. It is a play to make us question a standard institution - Anzac Day, the sacred cow among Australian annual celebrations - but it is the likeability and genuineness of the characters that give the play its memorable qualities: Alf, the nobody who becomes a somebody on this day of days; Mum, the anchor of the family; Hughie, their son, with all the uncertainties and rebelliousness of youth; and Wacka, the Anzac, with his simple, healing wisdom.'

(Description from publishers website)

y separately published work icon Modern Short Plays Leslie Rees (editor), Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1951 Z498819 1951 anthology drama (taught in 1 units) Contains: The Land of Heart's Desire / by W. B. Yeats - Riders To the Sea / by J. M. Synge - The Proposal / by Anton Chekhov - Interior / by Maurice Maeterlinck - Birds of a Feather / by J. O. Francis - The Drovers / by Louis Esson - The Carrier Pigeon / by Eden Phillpotts - Royal Favour / by Laurence Housman - Campbell of Kilmhor / by J. A. Ferguson - Ile / by Eugene O'Neill - The Odyssey of Runyon Jones / by Norman Corwin - Spoiled Darlings / by Edmund Barclay - Great Inheritance / by Gwen Meredith.
y separately published work icon These People Ben Ellis , 2003 Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2004 Z1050214 2003 single work drama (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon The Touch of Silk Betty M. Davies , 1928 (Manuscript version)x401235 Z968576 1928 single work drama (taught in 4 units)
— Appears in: The Touch of Silk [and] Granite Peak 1988; (p. 1-83)

A poignant drama centred on Jeanne, a homesick French war bride and her shell-shocked husband battling hardship and prejudice in a drought-stricken Mallee town.

y separately published work icon The Jack Manning Trilogy David Williamson , Strawberry Hills : Currency Press , 2002 Z966803 2002 selected work drama (taught in 1 units)
y separately published work icon Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America : A Drama in 30 Scenes Stephen Sewell , Sydney Melbourne : Currency Press Playbox Theatre , 2003 Z1037273 2003 single work drama (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Box the Pony Leah Purcell , Scott Rankin , 1997 Sydney : Hodder Headline , 1999 Z114430 1997 single work drama (taught in 4 units)

One-woman play, written by and for Leah Purcell, which draws on her experiences growing up, her relationship with her mother, and the contrast between her country upbringing and city life.

y separately published work icon Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler , 1955 London Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1957 Z522838 1955 single work drama (taught in 56 units)

'The most famous Australian play and one of the best loved, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a tragicomic story of Roo and Barney, two Queensland sugar-cane cutters who go to Melbourne every year during the 'layoff' to live it up with their barmaid girl friends. The title refers to kewpie dolls, tawdry fairground souvenirs, that they brings as gifts and come, in some readings of the play, to represent adolescent dreams in which the characters seem to be permanently trapped. The play tells the story in traditional well-made, realistic form, with effective curtains and an obligatory scene. Its principal appeal – and that of two later plays with which it forms The Doll Trilogy – is the freshness and emotional warmth, even sentimentality, with which it deals with simple virtues of innocence and youthful energy that lie at the heart of the Australian bush legend.

'Ray Lawler’s play confronts that legend with the harsh new reality of modern urban Australia. The 17th year of the canecutters’ arrangement is different. There has been a fight on the canefields and Roo, the tough, heroic, bushman, has arrived with his ego battered and without money. Barney’s girl friend Nancy has left to get married and is replaced by Pearl, who is suspicious of the whole set-up and hopes to trap Barney into marriage. The play charts the inevitable failure of the dream of the layoff, the end of the men’s supremacy as bush heroes and, most poignantly, the betrayal of the idealistic self-sacrifice made by Roo’s girl friend Olive – the most interesting character – to keep the whole thing going. The city emerges victorious, but the emotional tone of the play vindicates the fallen bushman.'

Source: McCallum, John. 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.' Companion to Theatre in Australia. Ed. Philip Parson and Victoria Chance. Sydney: Currency Press , 1997: 564-656.

y separately published work icon Norm and Ahmed Alex Buzo , 1960-1968 (Manuscript version)x401337 Z342308 1960 single work drama (taught in 3 units)
— Appears in: ノームとアーメッド /​ アレクサンダー.ブ-ゾ 他 1993;

'A rather ocker, white Australian male encounters a well-mannered Pakistani student with revolutionary ambitions in a Sydney park at midnight. Buzo creates an image of race prejudice as a profoundly irrational force in the behaviour of ordinary Australians.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon Plays of the 60s : Volume 1 Katharine Brisbane (editor), Sydney : Currency Press , 1998 Z1174230 1998 anthology drama (taught in 2 units)

'This collection includes: The Well (1960) by Jack McKinney, a rustic comedy in the Steele Rudd tradition set in Queensland; Burst of Summer (1960) by Oriel Gray is a realist play dealing with racial prejudice and is based on the brief success of the Aboriginal actress Ngarla Kunoth, who played Jedda in the Chauvel film; The Season at Sarsaparilla (1962), Patrick White's poetic satire examining the inevitable cycle of birth, copulation and death; White called it a 'charade of suburbia'; and The Promised Woman by Theodore Patrikareas which had its first stage production in Sydney in 1963 and is possibly the first play by a post-war immigrant staged in Australia. The play portrays migrants adapting to their new country and finding new identities and was adapted for the screen in 1974. (1 act, 2 women)' (Publication summary)

Description

This course is structured to survey the multi-faceted nature and the development of Australian drama and theatre since the beginning of white settlement. Historically, the course will focus on the drama and theatre of the mid to the late 20th century, but will refer to earlier times in tracing the development of a recurring theme in Australian drama, that of identity. The course commences with an overview of Australian theatre at the beginning of the 21st century and an exploration of a contemporary play. In subsequent modules, students will be introduced to some of the earlier social, political, economic and artistic elements and key writers who have shaped Australian drama and its theatre. The course attempts to represent a diversity of "voices" in Australian drama, and will draw upon plays, reviews and other secondary materials to explore various relevant socio-political and economic issues as they relate to identification. Within this exploration, the performative possibilities of the plays will be emphasised.

Assessment

ASSIGNMENT 1 - SHORT ESSAY 20%

ASSIGNMENT 2 - ESSAY 40%

EXAMINATION 2 HOURS 40%

Other Details

Current Campus: Toowoomba
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