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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This book offers the first major discussion of metatheatre in Australian drama of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It highlights metatheatre’s capacity to illuminate the wider social, cultural, and artistic contexts in which plays have been produced.
'Drawing from existing scholarly arguments about the value of considering metatheatre holistically, this book deploys a range of critical approaches, combining textual and production analysis, archival research, interviews, and reflections gained from observing rehearsals. Focusing on four plays and their Australian productions, the book uses these examples to showcase how metatheatre has been utilised to generate powerful elements of critique, particularly of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations. It highlights metatheatre’s vital place in Australian dramatic and theatrical history and connects this Australian tradition to wider concepts in the development of contemporary theatre.
'This illuminating text will be of interest to students and scholars of Australian theatre (historic and contemporary) as well as those researching and studying drama and theatre studies more broadly.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter|18 pages
Introduction
Chapter 1|21 pages
The metatheatre of Dorothy Hewett's The Man from Mukinupin
Chapter 2|23 pages
The metatheatre of The Man from Mukinupin on stage
Chapter 3|20 pages
Louis Nowra's Royal Show
Chapter 4|19 pages
Sideshow Alley as metatheatre in Louis Nowra's Royal Show
Chapter 5|20 pages
Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good
Chapter 6|20 pages
Our Country's Good
The metatheatre of rehearsal, backstage, and the 'Aboriginal Australian'
Chapter 7|21 pages
Peta Murray's Things That Fall Over – an (anti-)musical of a novel inside a reading of a play, with footnotes, and oratorio-as-coda
Chapter 8|20 pages
Peta Murray's Things That Fall Over
Con(texts), paratexts, metatheatre
Chapter|7 pages
Conclusion
Swansongs and other sideshows
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Rebecca Clode. Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage : An Exploration of Metatheatrical Techniques
2024
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , 4 November vol. 23 no. 2 2024;
— Review of Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage 2022 multi chapter work criticism 'Rebecca Clode invites a mutual exploration for “future scholars and theatre-makers alike” (13) in a book that seeks to highlight “metatheatre’s capacity to illuminate the wider social, cultural and artistic contexts in which plays have been produced” (Preface). Describing metatheatre as sometimes fraught and murky critical territory, this book draws from a range of sources— production history, performance traces in review, literary analysis, and wider scholarship—to develop a reading of Australian metatheatre. The case studies, explored in paired chapters, include canonical works: Dorothy Hewett’s The Man from Mukinupin, and UK playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good; Louis Nowra’s ensemble piece Royal Show; and Peta Murray’s practice-led research project, which culminated in a 2014 showing of Things Fall Over. Notably Our Country’s Good, a drama conceived in the UK but based on Australian Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker, is paired with Peta Murray’s performance text, demonstrating that Clode is actively seeking to expand a conversation about drama and performance in Australia. By including Australian content produced outside of the nation state, as well as techniques and performance that extend beyond mainstream drama, Clode’s mixed methodology works to meaningfully account for production exposure. The scope of this book and its methodology are carefully described, and its emphasis on exploration should be taken as an entry point for readers.' (Introduction)
-
Rebecca Clode. Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage : An Exploration of Metatheatrical Techniques
2024
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , 4 November vol. 23 no. 2 2024;
— Review of Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage 2022 multi chapter work criticism 'Rebecca Clode invites a mutual exploration for “future scholars and theatre-makers alike” (13) in a book that seeks to highlight “metatheatre’s capacity to illuminate the wider social, cultural and artistic contexts in which plays have been produced” (Preface). Describing metatheatre as sometimes fraught and murky critical territory, this book draws from a range of sources— production history, performance traces in review, literary analysis, and wider scholarship—to develop a reading of Australian metatheatre. The case studies, explored in paired chapters, include canonical works: Dorothy Hewett’s The Man from Mukinupin, and UK playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good; Louis Nowra’s ensemble piece Royal Show; and Peta Murray’s practice-led research project, which culminated in a 2014 showing of Things Fall Over. Notably Our Country’s Good, a drama conceived in the UK but based on Australian Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker, is paired with Peta Murray’s performance text, demonstrating that Clode is actively seeking to expand a conversation about drama and performance in Australia. By including Australian content produced outside of the nation state, as well as techniques and performance that extend beyond mainstream drama, Clode’s mixed methodology works to meaningfully account for production exposure. The scope of this book and its methodology are carefully described, and its emphasis on exploration should be taken as an entry point for readers.' (Introduction)
