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The Plays of Dorothy Blewett
Published by AustLit
(Status : Public)
Coordinated by Australian Drama Archive
  • Background and Context to It Has Happened Before

    This research into the background and context of It Has Happened Before was undertaken by Taylor Johnson during an internship with AustLit in late 2017 and early 2018.

  • View the AustLit record

    "A very different play of Dorothy Blewett's was "It Has Happened Before", written for the ABC's verse play competition. It is now apparent that this competition has brought forth results eminently worthwhile. It has indeed contributed considerable dramatic and poetic richness to the stock of Australian play literature. Dorothy Blewett's radio play tells with a degree of adult intellectuality and yet sensitive feeling the love story of a German Jew scientist and an Australian girl in Europe.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • It Has Happened Before - Production

    It Has Happened Before, a verse play for radio set in the anxious mid-1930s, is one of Dorothy Blewett’s lesser known yet insightfully poignant pieces. As with other Blewett works including The First Joanna, it draws on the experiences of WWII and the collateral damage it inflicted upon British (and Australian) society at the time. Thematically It Has Happened Before focusses on the Jewish refugee crisis as it unfolded in the pre-war years, yet it also addresses the experiences of women embroiled in the conflict and the sentiments of the broader public at home. It explores the relationship that Australia, a federated yet still psychologically dependant nation, had with the war and its victims, exploring how a far off member of the British Commonwealth was affected by the state of European turmoil. The title, It Has Happened Before, is a reminder of the continuing historical discrimination that Jewish people faced in the lead up to and during WWII and the recurring cultural tensions and bigotry Blewett presents in the play.

    The play was written between 1941–1942 as the war was still ongoing and took inspiration from the refugee problem as it transpired. In 1942 it was entered in the ABC’s Verse Play Competition and drew some praise for its "sensitive feeling" and intellectual rigor (The Listener In 10/2/1951). It was broadcast twice on ABC radio, first in September 1943 and again, eight years later, in February 1951.

  • Plot, Form, and Structure

    It Has Happened Before is a play in five parts. Part one frames the narrative through the setting of a women’s league meeting in Australia, which functions under a mantra of promoting international goodwill. Its motto is: League to promote goodwill among the Nations.

    A guest speaker, Lenora Valentine, then delivers a tale transporting the listener back to 1935 where they relive her experiences in England and Germany prior to the start of the war. Across parts two, three and four Lenora falls in love with a talented German Jewish scientist in Oxford, Leon Schonenberg, and together they attempt to smuggle out from Nazi clutches yet another scientist by the name of Kurt Martin with fatal consequences for Leon. In part four the listener is returned to the setting of the women’s league where Lenora encounters mixed reactions to her emotional story.

    The dialogue is written primarily in blank verse. At the time of its production in the early 1940s, verse plays were experiencing a minor renaissance through the medium of radio (Milton Kaplan 1944: 270). The modern and popular literary format was apt for innovations that could captivate the aural imagination of parlour room audiences, something which despite its increasing unpopularity on the stage, poetic form was able to provide, especially for those plays with tones of tragedy. It Has Happened Before actively appealed to this trend as most of the action transpired in England.

    The five parts of the play are of varying lengths with each delineated by musical breaks. The core cast is relatively small, with only four or five primary speaking roles and an additional seven minor roles, along with the hubbub of a crowd. This conforms to typical radio play conventions which focus on the complete aural transformation of script writing, so that shifts in scene, characterisation and action are very clear and distinguishable for a listener (Milton Kaplan 1950: 25). Unlike in theatre, this format enables more lucid transitions that rely on repetitive sound cues or the fading up of music or background noise (as opposed to the fading out for transitions in traditional theatre) (Cyril Wood 29: 30). These techniques are utilised in It Has Happened Before notably during its Oxford segment, which moves the listener from character to character and from club house to street corner all via specific and symbolic music choices.

  • Historical Context:

    Jewish Refugees in England

    The migration of Jewish people to England from Germany and other Nazi occupied regions was a problematic issue that evolved with the development of the war. Immigration controls set in place in 1919 did not distinguish between refugees and other typical forms of immigration. This made it difficult for Jews fleeing Germany and Austria to gain entry into England during the pre-war years. It wasn’t until 1938 after incidents of persecution in Germany were openly acknowledged and when Jewish advocacy groups guaranteed the financial stability for refugees that the regulations eased and approximately 80,000 Jewish refugees emigrated by 1939 (Yad Vashem: 2). Once the war began however, fears of German espionage activity taking advantage of refugee movements led the government to reinstate harsh migration controls that saw little humanitarian settlement until the war’s end.

    The protection of Jewish academics in the UK, such as the character Leon Schonenberg, was made possible through bodies like the Society for Protection of Science and Learning, which facilitated the protection and escape of leading academics living inside Nazi Germany (CARA). The activities of such groups were kept quiet and this is reflected in the complexities of escape and hiding detailed in the play. However after the war, the benefits of these humanitarian causes became well known when many of the rescued Jewish academics went on to fame and success through their discoveries, particularly in the sciences.

  • The Bulletin 4/12/1946
    382
    538

    [This 1946 cartoon from The Bulletin is an example of the more extreme voices of anti-Semitism in the Australian media at the time. It depicts Arthur Calwell the current Labor immigration minister, as the pied piper ushering in racist Jewish caricatures and exporting white Australians including diggers and children.]

    Anti-Semitism in Australia During the 1940s

    In response to growing revelations on the German atrocities perpetrated against European Jews during the war, a sense of sympathy and shock affected the Australian population’s sentiment towards the Jewish community. The specific problem of Jewish settlement on the other hand, elicited more mixed reactions. As alluded to in It Has Happened Before, negative stereotypes of Jewish wealth and resourceful opportunism were referenced by more radical groups as reason for disallowing Jewish settlement in Australia (Gollan 1975: 159).

    Opposition to these views were clearly voiced across the country yet there is evidence of these conservative fears having a pervasive effect on Jewish and Gentile communities. Incidents of anti-Semitism were present throughout the 1940’s with antagonism emanating from both law enforcement and civilian groups. For example, reports of unwarranted police searches of newly migrated families for ‘concealed diamonds’ reflect the underlying social anxieties towards these migrants at an institutional level and factor into the inspiration for the treatment of characters Kurt and Elsa Martin in Blewett’s play (The Age 3/12/1949).

    It Has Happened Before takes into account, through the character "Woman with the Ear-Trumpet", how such extreme distaste towards Jews in Australia was still a marginalised perspective at the time, as many in the meeting attended by Lenora are touched and moved by her story. But following these sentiments, contrast is drawn with a nightmarish sequence of building voices, spurred on by the woman with the ear-trumpet, chanting slogans emblematic of racist mob mentality and a manufactured fear of foreign migration. A confusion and sense of uncertainty as to how the Australian populace interacts with humanitarian immigration issues is on display, and Blewett’s concern is that, like at the point of germination for Nazism in Germany, an underlying and lurking fear of Jews will result in a broad awakening of nationalised bigotry.

  • Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate 12/2/1947
    457
    329

    In reality very few Jewish refugees settled in Australia. Entry was permitted for 2,000 people out of some 200,000 displaced European Jews in 1946 (Gollan: 158). This contrast of confused sentiment and perception of the crisis is part of how Blewett saw the collateral blowout from the war affecting the Australian psyche and the victims themselves.

  • Reception

    After its first broadcast the play received some initial praise that reflected on its social commentary and competent construction and performance (The Australian Quarterly 9/1943). It also endured in some minor academic discussion as an example of one of Blewett’s finer works on social justice concerns and as an accompaniment to her most well-known work, The First Joanna (Rees: 121). The play is important as a tried performance piece, with historical commentary, rare form and public appeal through an emphasis on fast paced romance and action. The subject of Australia’s rejection of refugees during times of conflict and war remains relevant today.

    Since its production, It Has Happened Before and all of Blewett’s catalogue of works, became lost to scholarship and the public, partly because it was unpublished and little comprehensive work has been undertaken on Australian radio plays of the period, while much work remains to be done on relatively minor writers working at a time when print publication was hard to achieve and the production of Australian plays faced major difficulties.

    AustLit’s publication of It Has Happened Before is a part of a larger revival of Blewett’s and other playwrights’ works from the first half of the twentieth century.

  • References

    CARA. ‘Our History’. 2018. 

    Cyril Wood. ‘The Technique of the Radio Play’ Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 87.4487 (1938): 22.

    ‘Drama In Sydney’. Review of It Has Happened Before by Dorothy Blewett. The Australian Quarterly, 9/1943.

    Leslie Rees. Towards and Australian Drama. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. 1953. Print.

    ‘Local Author’s Play Impresses’. Review of It Has Happened Before by Dorothy Blewett. The Listener In, 10/2/1951

    Milton Kaplan. ‘The Radio Play as an Introduction to Drama’ The English Journal 39.1 (1950): 23.

    Milton Kaplan. ‘Radio and Poetry’ Poetry 64.5 (1944): 270.

    ‘New Australians’ First Night Ordeal’. The Age, 3/12/1949: 3.

    ‘The Pied Harper’. The Bulletin 67. 3486, 4/12/1946: 15.

     Robin Gollan. Revolutionaries and Reformists. Canberra: ANU Press. 1975. Print.

    ‘Refugee Greeted Through the Bars’. Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 12/2/1947: 5.

    Yad Vashem. ‘Great Britain’.  Accessed at

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