AustLit

As part of a summer internship at AustLit, Talia Nelson has been focusing on manuscripts in The Hanger Collection of Australian Playscripts, held at The University of Queensland Fryer Library. These plays were written between 1900 and 1955, and have been indexed to the AustLit database. Some of the work done on this project included collating information about the authors and plays, such as newspaper articles, and reading through some of the original manuscripts in the library. This exhibition showcases some interesting manuscripts discovered over the course of the internship.

The Hanger Collection is a collection of Australian Playscripts, originally curated by Eunice Hanger. Eunice Hanger was a senior lecturer at The University of Queensland, with a lifelong interest in theatre, having been a playwright, actress and producer. Hanger felt that contemporary playwrights of the time were being ignored and so collected their playscripts. (Source: "The Hanger Collection," National Library of Australia.)

An exhibition on Eunice Hanger can be found here, which details her life, career and the Fryer Library in more depth.

These are the works contained in The Hanger Collection of Australian Playscripts that have been added to the AustLit database.

Throughout my internship, I was focused on the manuscripts held in The Hanger Collection of Australian Playscripts, which all have helped shaped the future of Australian theatre. Few of these plays were particularly famous, or still gained any recognition as the foundations for contemporary Australian theatre. Many of these plays stood out in my research, as having absurd, antiquated Australian themes (like jackeroos) or for having 'confronting' subjects for the early 20th century. Most of my internship was spent indexing well over 100 plays to the AustLit database, and when a particular play caught my attention, an in-depth search on Trove found an array of information on the first production/s of the play. Adding what articles and advertisements I could find to records, I started collating information about the authors I found personally fascinating. This exhibition focuses on a select few works and authors that contributed to the history of Australian theatre in intriguing ways.

– Talia Nelson