AustLit

Using the theatrical and film productions of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll as an example, Tom O'Regan explores the failure of film studies to create the kind of productive relationship with theatre/performance studies that it had had for more than a decade with literary theory. He argues that 'nowhere is this more evident than in the separation of the study of Australian theatre and filmmaking in critical discourse. This is despite the fact that the theatre has constituted a reference point for film producers from pre-sound cinema days to the present in terms of film properties, script-writers, acting talent, and directors; and there has always been a significant crossing over of personnel from one medium to the other right up to David Williamson in the present.'