AustLit

'For its size, with a population of roughly 80,000, the city boasts a remarkable appetite for performance - exemplified by 10,090 patrons over the three-week season of Strictly Ballroom, staged by local community company, Encore Theatre, in 2019. [...]this passion for theatre is part of a long and proud tradition, from the Muffs Dramatic Club, founded in 1889, and ongoing for many active amateur theatre companies, including the Launceston Players, founded in 1922. Or rather, is the Member suggesting a redefinition, attempting to reframe a collection of feelings, theatrical behaviours and practices more positively as acts of passion, and therefore acceptable in ways that parochialism is not? [...]the debate itself speaks to a surprising level of engagement from both state, and local politicians, who are entwined within the local theatre scene.3 So much so, that Asian Studies Professor Emerita at the University of Tasmania, Barbara Hatley, took a keen interest in local history and practices of theatre, researching the history of amateur theatre in Launceston, which was published in The Fabric of Launceston. The theatre scene of this regional city also sprawls across a range of institutions, and as Hatley's phrasing points out, involves interaction between the personal and the political, and between professional, amateur and pedagogical practices, all gathered under the umbrella of 'theatre'. A TALE OF TWO STAGES Launceston's theatre scene contains an expanse of actants: people, institutions, sites and histories, interlocking and enmeshed in a dense network of agencies.8 Methodologically, detailing this dense network poses distinct challenges, particularly those dense inter-relations that other scholars have framed in terms of ecology. (Publication abstract)

'In December 1882, Eliza O’Flaherty died of “diabetes and exhaustion” at her lodgings in Sydney. Aged 64, Eliza lived in a brick cottage behind a dyeworks, where she had been employed as manager for two years. Her demise might seem unremarkable: a widowed, childless woman of the 19th century who had been worn out by work. But O'Flaherty was actually Eliza Winstanley, the first woman to play Richard III in an Australian theatre, and an early star of the colonial stage.' (Introduction)

'The Mares, a new work by playwright Kate Mulvany, was commissioned by the Tasmanian Theatre Company as a vehicle for some of Tasmania’s leading female performers. The work draws on multiple Greek myths to concoct a contemporary mythological feminist play.' (Introduction)

'Miss W Treads is an encounter with one of Australia’s early theatrical stars. A contemporary performer is haunted by her subject, the renowned nineteenth- century actress Eliza Winstanley: the ‘Mrs Siddons of Sydney’. In a cross-century artistic collaboration, Winstanley treads the boards once more.

'In this new work by writer/director Jane Woollard (The Hammer of Devotion, Aelfgyva, Prophet and Loss) and an award–winning team of theatre makers, the melodramatic challenges the postdramatic to a theatrical duel.

'Miss W Treads is a wry theatrical enchantment which features ghosts, wild violins, sword-fights, mysterious signatures and long-dead theatrical ambitions.'

Source: La Mama Theatre program.

'Eliza Winstanley (1818 - 82) and Maria Taylor (1805? - 41) were English-born actors who were among the early leading performers in Barnett Levey's acting company at his Theatre Royal in George Street, Sydney. Taylor's parents were 'singing actors' who, in the first years of the nineteenth century, performed at London's Haymarket and Covent Garden theatres, and were regularly engaged for the summer seasons in provincial theatres. Winstanley also came from a theatrical family - her father was a scenic painter and her younger sister Ann was a performer. This article describes how Maria Taylor and Eliza Winstanley brought their theatrical skills and resilience to the task of building a theatrical culture in Australia. Both women faced many challenges in their personal and professional lives but both possessed the capacity to bounce back, continuing to practise and refine their craft in difficult circumstances.' (Publication abstract)