AustLit

'This essay seeks to assert the significance of the New Theatre in relation to both its theatrical and political experimentation and innovation. In so doing the essay will re-situate the New Theatre, which will, in turn re-map accepted theatre history. ... The essay will also identify the ways New Theatre encouraged and produced Australian plays when very few companies would consider staging them, as well as its encouragement of female playwrights, whom they employed as writers, well before second wave feminism. Indeed its political and social project was wide-ranging and it has produced plays that dealt with the plight of Aborigines, censorshp, gender inequality, war and fascism long before the advent of identity politics embraced by the New Wave.' (187)