Laura Ginters

Laura, Gay and Paul discuss the Australian theatre and research scene vis à vis uses of speech and sound in performance, thinking through dramaturgy, ethnography and rehearsal as interrelated practices, methods, and spaces of exploratory orality. This conversation was recorded on 10.07.2020.

Relatively little account has been taken of radio drama's unique qualities as an acoustic art (rather than a deficient form of theatre), and in particular the way in which music may function as a critical part of its makeup. This paper will examine the ways radio drama and the role of music within it have been described and will conclude with brief analyses (including sound clips) of two plays by No lle Janaczewska, Slowianska Street and Glissando 24, to demonstrate how music may be used as an integral compositional element, rather than merely an incidental aspect of production.

In the first half of 1997 Kim Spinks was the Project Co-ordinator for the Centre before being elevated to the NSW Ministry for the Arts, where she is now manages the theatre, dance and touring programmes. I took over at the end of July to oversee the programmes Kim had instigated, got a few going myself and made a plan for 1998.WorkshopsThe Honours students arc required to attend a number of practical workshops, and they had a wide variety to choose from in 1997. This programme, sponsored by the Centre, is also open to any other interested people.Body WeatherIn first semester students could join Tess de Quinccy and Stuart Lynch for 'Body Weather' training sessions, a form of Japanese butoh practice. Tess and Stuart were in residence at the Centre January-March and this led to their installation, The Gravity of Dante.antistaticTess and Stuart also took part in The Performance Space's contemporary dance project, antistatic for which the Centre was a venue. The two weeks of...

Australasian Drama Studies was first published in October 1982, so this year, 2012, it celebrates its thirtieth birthday with this, its sixtieth issue. To celebrate this milestone, we decided to ask some Australasian theatre scholars - a couple of old hands and mid-career scholars and an early career researcher - to reflect on trends in theatre and performance in Australasia over the lifetime of the journal, developments in the reception of and scholarship about those trends, and the ways in which the journal has reflected them. This article begins with founding co-editor Richard Fotheringham's personal reminiscence of co-editing the journal in earlier days. It is followed by a conversation among four other scholars, contributors and readers with general editor, Geoffrey Milne. Contributors refer several times to 'ADSA'; this is the acronym of the principal learned society for Australasian scholars of Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. ADSA was begun in 1977 as the ...

Lindy Davies was a foundation member of the Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory and contributed to the renaissance of Australian theatre in the 1970s. During the 1980s she worked as an actress and director at Playbox, State Theatre Company of South Australia and Belvoir Street Theatre and won an Australian Film Institute award for her performance in the film Malcolm. During the past decade, Lindy has worked as an actor, trainer, performance consultant and director, winning award nominations for directing and performing. She has worked extensively in film as a performance consultant. Her work includes Dennis Potter's Karaoke, Kenneth Branagh 's production of Hamlet, Sally Potter 's The Tango Lesson and Alan Rudolph's Afterglow, for which Julie Christie received a 1998 Academy Award nomination. She directed the acclaimed West End production of Old Times with Julie Christie in 1995. In 1996 at the Chichester Festival she directed the highly successful Hedda ...

GAY MCAULEY, NOT MAGIC BUT WORK: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF A REHEARSAL PROCESS (MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012)'Your book is my legacy.' So said production manager Liam Fraser when talking to Gay McAuley about the ephemerality of work in the theatre and the lack of time for reflection upon it as theatre-workers inevitably move quickly on to their next gig/production (138). This book represents more, though, than a legacy of the work carried out by a talented team at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre when they created the premiere production of Michael Gow's play, Toy Symphony, directed by Neil Armfield (2007). This, the first ever full-length ethnographic account of a theatre rehearsal, Is also, in its way, McAuley's own legacy to a discipline - Rehearsal Studies - which she pioneered, and it isa beautifully written, highly engaging and carefully theorised contribution.McAuley turns to a favourite quote - it also graces an earlier article - for her title. Berto...

A discussion on how the actual theatre space is reshaped by a blurring of the boundaries between the white audience space and black actor space is presented. The issue is discussed with reference to John Harding's play 'Up the Road'. The strategies used to demonstrate dominant traditions of the play's social context, while constantly challenging and redefining those traditions, are explored.

A performance analysis of Robert Wilson's 'Dantons Tod' at the Berliner ensemble is presented. The manner in which he incorporates his visual artistic sensibilities to present the performance in its traditional content but in a universal form is discussed.

There are a large number of studies and researches that are being conducted for explaining the significance of audience and spectators in a live performance. The article discusses these findings and also explains the way in which the spectators and the performances affect each other.

This paper, along with Tim Fitzpatrick's contribution to this collection, was part of a panel on various aspects of the performance preparation process, flowing from a research cluster initiative which has been funded by the Network for Early European Research, and which is seeking ARC funding through the Discovery Grants scheme. This work focusses on attempting to understand what might have been involved in the preparation process before the arrival of the director in the late nineteenth century. The research involves traditional archival work to uncover evidence from company records, analysis of the textual remnants of the predominantly oral process of organising performance, and analysis of oral testimonies of participants.

When your work, just months after being published, is being quoted as an epigram by another writer, you can be pretty certain that you’ve made an impact. Rachel Fensham’s book, To Watch Theatre. Essays on Genre and Corporeality, is a fascinating collection of essays which proposes a model of embodied spectatorship located in the complex interactions between genre, corporeality and performance. ‘To watch theatre’, Fensham claims, ‘is then to watch carefully for the remaining signs of a fragile humanity’ (23). This quote (which also opens Sylvain Duguay’s essay in this year’s issue of About Performance) is an intriguing one and sets the tone for the book to come. The essays are a privileged window into the mind and imagination of a very skilled theatre watcher.

An interview of Lindy Davies by Laura Ginter is presented, where in she continues to discuss her unique approach to theatre training and direction. She intends to take up the project, Women Beware Women up, but urges people to see it, since they will not take on unless they see it.

“The years between about 1957 and 1963 have gone down in folklore as a sort of golden age at Sydney University: an outpouring of creative talent unmatched since the Athens of Pericles or the Florence of the Medicis. Even I, as one who was there, am prepared to admit that this is probably something of an exaggeration.” – Mungo MacCallum For all Mungo MacCallum’s self-deprecation, it has been widely acknowledged that this period saw an extraordinary blossoming of artistic activity, and the beginning of many brilliant careers. At this time, the Sydney University Dramatic Society the Sydney University Players were a powerhouse in Sydney theatre. College groups, university departments, and the annual University Revues contributed to this very lively scene, and played a significant role in the otherwise rather barren theatrical landscape of Sydney in the late 1950s-early ‘60s. SUDS and Players were often at the cutting edge of contemporary theatre, delivering the Australian premieres of radical new plays from Europe, and regularly being reviewed in the mainstream Sydney press. A striking number of participants – John Bell, Clive James, Bruce Beresford, Leo Schofield, Robert Hughes and Germaine Greer – went on to have high profile careers. The “New Wave” in Australian theatre from the late 1960s can be directly traced back to the activities of those prominent in SUDS and Players a decade earlier: John Bell, Richard Wherrett and Ken Horler founded the Nimrod Theatre, for example. The “New Wave” has been extensively researched, but almost no attention has been paid to this earlier, foundational period at the University of Sydney: it is as though – as erroneously often claimed – Australian theatre only really “began” in the late 1960s. Dr Laura Ginters teaches in the Department of Performance Studies. Robyn Dalton is retired and works on this project as research associate.