AustLit

From the desk of the Director:

26 May 2016

An exciting event is about to happen at the Geoffrey Rush Studio at the University of Queensland in the first week of June.

A long lost play, The First Joanna written by the largely forgotten Australian playwright and novelist, Dorothy Blewett (1898-1965), will be produced by UQ students as a part of 50th anniversary celebrations for UQ Drama.

This gem of a stage play was uncovered in the theatre archives at UQ’s Fryer Library as a part of an Ian Potter Foundation funded project led by Kerry Kilner, Director of AustLit. It was selected for production by UQ senior lecturer and award-winning playwright, Dr Stephen Carleton, and renowned Queensland theatre practitioner and former artistic director of La Boite Theatre, Sue Rider.

Not only will the play be performed for the first time since an adaptation for ABC television in 1961, The First Joanna will become available in full text as a part of a collection of plays published online by AustLit and in print in association with Playlab Press.

Set in South Australia post-World War II, the homecoming of the second Joanna is soured by the close-knit and guarded Deveron family. Feeling as if she can’t connect with the present, Joanna turns to the past to reveal the skeletons in the Deveron family’s closet.

While The First Joanna was not published in Dorothy Blewett’s lifetime, it received many productions in small theatre around Australia during the late 1940s and 1950s, after winning the Playwrights Advisory Board prize in 1947. It was first produced by The Metropolitan Theatre, Sydney, in March 1948.

The version being published, and produced next week, is one revised by Blewett during the 1950s when she lived in London. The First Joanna was optioned by J C Williamson for Australian productions, and by Maxwell Wray’s West End theatre company but, unfortunately, it was not produced in London after all. Another play by Blewett, the hospital drama Quiet Night, did receive a UK production in the 1950s, in the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Research for this project is beginning to reveal a new story of Australian plays in 1950s London.

Re-discovering Dorothy Blewett’s extensive list of works has brought excitement to researchers and students at UQ and delight to Dorothy’s family who are travelling to Queensland to witness this remarkable event.

Blewett's plays, novels, and short stories stand the test of time and her story as a writer and champion of Australian literature should be told. We are currently working on her AustLit records and, with the help of the fantastic archive provided by her family, are discovering more about her extensive work as writer, literary agent, and member of International PEN. We’ll keep you blog-posted as the project unfolds!

The Australian Drama Archive project is a collaboration between AustLit, the School of Communication and Arts, UQ’s Fryer Library, Playlab Press, and the University of New England. It aims to open up these and other theatre works to a whole new generation of readers, producers, actors, and students of Australian theatre.

The First Joanna’s season runs 1 – 4 June at the Geoffrey Rush Drama Studio, University of Queensland, St Lucia.

Bookings preferred, but not essential. To book, please call (07) 33652552

For more event information, please refer to the Facebook event page or contact the production team via email.

For press interest, please contact AustLit: info-austlit@austlit.edu.au