The Australian Drama subset provides information about published and unpublished Australian drama, articles, reviews and performance reviews about Australian drama. The subset also includes information on playwrights from 1778 to the present, and covers a diverse range of performance texts from the earliest years of the colony to the current wealth of plays for contemporary Australian and international audiences.

	The University of Queensland takes special responsibility for recording this field of Australian literature.
	The Australian Drama subset originated in the specialist work From Page to Stage : An Annotated Bibliography of Australian Drama, compiled by Kerry Kilner and established with the support of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University.

Search the Australian Drama Subset.

Australian Drama is indexed according to the AustLit Scope Policy. The Drama subset includes information about multi-act plays, one-act plays, sketches, verse plays, radio plays, musicals and operas, and about the creators of these works.

The Australian Drama subset includes records for nearly 6,000 plays, of which more than 1,800 are unpublished. The dramatic works described range from the theatrical farce and melodrama of the late 18th century to contemporary plays which fuse drama and musical forms.

AustLit aims to include full bibliographical records for published plays by Australian writers, whether published in books, journals, magazines, collections or anthologies, and whether in print or electronic form. While the central focus is on published plays, unpublished dramatic works are also included where possible.

Plays often appear in collections and are frequently published in small print runs. They rarely achieve long publication histories, and are sometimes published as theatre programmes. Thanks to Currency Press, Australia's only drama publishing house, dramatic works from the 1980s onwards are made available through the Current Theatre Series and sold at theatres during productions of new Australian plays.

Compiled by Kerry Kilner, From Page to Stage received initial funding from the Australian Research Council in 1997 and enhanced earlier work undertaken under the auspices of the Bibliography of Australian Literature project.

The records contained within the Drama subset are produced by all AustLit contributors who collect biographical information on Australian playwrights, and bibliographic information on current and early plays, together with articles and reviews about both performances and publications. Some production information is included, as is Library Holdings information for manuscripts and rare plays. A substantial portion of AustLit records were drawn from Kerry Kilner's From Page to Stage bibliography. The University of Queensland takes special responsibility for new research, and for upgrading AustLit drama records.

AustLit drama information is sourced from the full range of AustLit information sources, including the National Bibliographic Database via Kinetica, and a number of specialist bibliographies, including:

• Miller and Macartney's Australian Literature : A Bibliography to 1938 : Extended to 1950
• Philip Parsons' Companion to Theatre in Australia
• the Hanger collection of unpublished plays at the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland
• the Campbell Howard collection of unpublished plays at the University of New England.

Many individuals and organisations have contributed knowledge to the Australian Drama subset. We particularly thank:

• Content Team members, Joan Keating and Julie Murray, and Ros Follet, from the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland



• Content Team members Terry O'Neill, Sally Batten, and Christopher Wood, and Richard Overell, from Monash University



• Brian Hubble at the State Library of Victoria, and staff of the Mitchell Library at the State Library of NSW



• Veronica Kelly and Richard Fotheringham for assistance in the area of 19th century Australian drama