AustLit logo
y separately published work icon Belonging : Australian Playwriting in the 20th Century multi chapter work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Belonging : Australian Playwriting in the 20th Century
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Strawberry Hills, Inner Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,:Currency Press , 2009 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Turn of the Century, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 1-22)
Bush and City, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 23-49)
Settling the Land, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 51-76)
Into the City, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 77-90)
Patrick White, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 91-112)
Playwrights in the 60s, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 113-137)
The New Wave, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 139-166)
David Williamson, John McCallum , single work criticism
'Of all the bright young playwrights of the early New Wave the most successful, and later the most controversial, has been David Williamson.'
 (p. 167-186)
Playwrights in the 70s, John McCallum , single work criticism
'Many of the playwrights of the New Wave rose, shone briefly, and then sank without a trace, in a theatre culture that briefly supported them and then moved on. Alexander Buzo and Alma De Groen, and to a lesser extent Jim McNeil, were major dramatists whose plays have never become a regular part of the repertoir in the way that the plays of White and Williamson have. This chapter also covers the remarkable work of Reg Livermore, a performer, who wrote his own material in the 1970s for a series of highly original shows.'
 (p. 187-208)
The New Internationalism, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 209-238)
Playwrights in the 80s, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 239)
Identity and Community, John McCallum , single work criticism
'After the New Wave few people other than politicians and advertisers ever spoke again with confidence about the Australian National Character. In the theatre, as elsewhere in the 1980s, the idea that such a complex notion as 'Australianness' could ever be summed up in a simple drama of representation came to be seen as absurd. Difference was celebrated. The politics of personal and social identity became key determinants in the way in which new plays were produced and read by their audiences.'
 (p. 265-280)
Imigrants and Exiles, John McCallum , single work criticism (p. 281-300)
Aboriginal Theatre, John McCallum , single work criticism
Kevin Gilbert's The Cherry Pickers, written in 1968, before the ocker New Wave started, anticipated many of the issues that were to be raised in the debates over identity poitics in the 1980s. Originally workshopped at the Mews Theatre, Sydney, in 1971, with an all Aboriginal cast as Gilbert insisted, the play was the forerunner of a great body of work by Indigenous playwrights.
 (p. 301-325)
Playwrights in the 90s, John McCallum , single work criticism
''Australian Drama' as a cohesive idea emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, was institutionalised by advocates, notably Leslie Rees, in the middle years, and reinvented during the New Wave. It was challenged during the rise of identity and community-based drama in the 1980s, and by the end of the century it had all but died. The playwrights who rose to prominence in the 1990s include some of the best of the century.'
 (p. 327-345)
The End of the Twentieth Century, John McCallum , single work criticism
The 1990s was a bad decade for the poor, the inarticulate and the outcast. Katherine Thomson and Debra Oswald, and, in different ways, Michael Gurr, Andrew Bovell and Daniel Keene, all addressed this.
 (p. 347-371)
X