AustLit

'The young Australian theatre director John Tasker arrived back in Australia in 1959, having spent the previous seven years in England and Europe training as an actor, but also absorbing the rich cultural life on offer. On his return, Tasker soon made the acquaintance of Patrick White, who quickly became convinced that Tasker was the most promising young director in Sydney: Tasker would go on to direct the premiere productions of three of White's plays in just over two years in the early 1960s, beginning with The Ham Funeral. This article serves as a 'prologue' to White's early reception in the Australian theatre, tracing Tasker's own engagement with (a broadly defined) modernism and examining how his early - and today almost unknown - productions in Australia reflected this affinity, attracted White's attention, and indeed presaged the successful launch of the theatrical careers of both men.'  (Publication abstract)

'This provocative new study of Australian theatre focuses on women writers who have changed our ways of seeing Australian culture. They include Hannie Rayson on the sisterhood, Joanna Murray-Smith on generation f, Jenny Kemp on desire, Katherine Thomson on working girls, Jane Harrison on the stolen generation, Leah Purcell on black chics and Beatrix Christian on miscegenation. Drawing on the title of the ground-breaking Australian play of the 1950s, Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Rachel Fensham and Denise Varney explore the social and imaginative transformation of Australian theatre in the last twenty years.' (Publication summary)