Australian Theatre History

In the lead-up to the millennium several Australian productions of Shakespeare featured Aboriginal presence in ways that invited reflection on contemporary Reconciliation politics. These production raised important issues about the history of Aboriginal participation in Shakespeare production, and Reconciliation Shakespeare can be seen to be a completely unique Australian contribution to the stage history of Shakespeare.

The work of theatre practitioners – especially directors, performers, designers – has much to add to the field of Patrick White studies; however, there has been little sustained discussion of White’s plays in performance and the insights theatre practitioners can bring to White scholarship. This article focuses on the White productions of director Neil Armfield, especially his 1989 Sydney Theatre Company Ham Funeral and examines Armfield’s theatrically tested thesis that metatheatre is the key to White’s dramaturgy. The article also looks at the deployment of comedy and the gothic in Ham Funeral and Armfield’s later White productions – A Cheery Soul and A Night on Bald Mountain.

Australian actress, Julie Forsyth has, by any measure, an extraordinary work history, as the number and range of works she has performed over the last four decades attests. Few Australian actresses are offered the opportunity to test their mettle against the canon of European classic theatre, or to work at the heart of an ongoing ensemble for more than a decade. In this interview we discuss the role of actor training in Australia,  the contribution of the ensemble to Australian theatre history, the changes in understanding around the idea of an ensemble, the lived experience of Australian actresses, and the place of the 'veteran' actress in the contemporary artistic and industrial environment.

The careers of Haddon Chambers and Gilbert Murray, two Australian playwrights who often obliquely meditated on Australia and Australianness in their plays, raise important questions about negotiating Australianness through both their playwriting and their performances in everyday life. Although Australia was only rarely their ostensible subject, it permeated much of their London based theatre work.

Examining a range of productions of Twelfth Night in Australia not only indicates the variety of approaches that Australian directors have adopted in constructing their own versions of Illyria but also that a recurring motif circulating around these productions is ‘exotic Englishness’ or a performance of Englishness grounded in Australian stereotypes of the English (and British). Acknowledging this dynamic helps to indicate how well the class war of Twelfth Night sits with, and complements, responses to the British Empire's former presence in Australia and suggests that, although Twelfth Night is not ostensibly concerned with issues of land ownership, it can very readily speak to those issues, particularly in a post-colonial theatrical environment.

He was an only child and his mother died of tuberculosis just before his fourth birthday. He remembered nothing of her and knew none of her relatives. As a child he suffered from a disease of his left arm, anchylosis, and though it was operated on it never had full strength. He suffered too from a stammer which he never entirely overcame. Cyril Hopkins, who wrote a memoir of Clarke, recalled first meeting him on holiday at the Isle of Wight: Whilst looking about us, we noticed a young boy of our own age who, propped against a convenient rock with a cushion at his back, sat regarding us. He had fine, grey, searching eyes and a most winning smile, and on our approaching and speaking to him cordially responded to our timid advances. He explained that he was not allowed to run about or play like other boys because of his weak shoulder ... It was not long before his father, a widower, attired in deep mourning, made his appearance and after a brief warning to us never to persuade Marcus to join us in digging or active play, expressed, with this limitation, his approval of the acquaintance between us ... 1 Cyril and his elder brother Gerard Manley Hopkins became close friends of Clarke: all three were educated at Cholmondley Grammar School, Highgatenear Hampstead Heath, where the Prologue to His Natural Life is set. Clarke showed literary ambitions early, and he and Gerard collaborated on a Gothic tale involving alchemy and the reanimation of the dead, for which

The fame great actors enjoy is more ephemeral than that of great poets and writers. Desley Deacon, a specialist in gender history, revives in this biography the fame and repute of a great star of US stage, film, television and radio, the now largely forgotten Judith Anderson. Born in Adelaide in 1897, Anderson migrated to the US shortly after the First World War and soon established herself as a premier performer of the stage, lauded as the equal and even superior of Olivier and Laughton. She was thought to have brought an Australian physicality to her roles but is now best remembered for her star turn as Mrs Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's 1939 film "Rebecca". This biography charts a remarkable career in diverse media, studded with triumphs and inevitable lows. Valuable cultural history of the US, Australia and cross-cultural relations features.

In  a career lasting over fifty years, director Michael Blakemore has enjoyed box office success, critical acclaim and long term, and fruitful, relationships with leading playwrights of the English speaking world. His approach to direction, which is grounded in self-effacement, means that his work is often under appreciated, but his dedication to nurturing new writing has had a very significant impact on the repertoire of the English speaking theatre.