Australian Drama: A Currency Press Collection - Overview and Analysis, Slides of Theatre

Download Australian Drama: A Currency Press Collection - Overview and Analysis and more Slides Theatre in PDF only on Docsity! metamorphosis into a tree, the drought breaks, washing away the foun- dations of white civilization based there. This apocalyptic flood is per- haps the end result of the nuclear testing. The rain washes away the dust, which remains outside the natural order of things, and is essentially the residue of white civilization. In Wongar's writing, for example in the poem "The Dust", dust is not an element from which anything can be created. At the end of Karan, the river cleanses and the land slowly greens, and the scars left behind by white men are gradually healed. ELIZABETH PERKINS DRAMA ROUNDUP Clem Gorman, A Fortunate Life (adapted from the novel of A.B. Facey). Sydney: Currency Press and Harvest Theatre Company, South Austra- lia, 1987. Leslie Rees, A History of Australian Drama, Vol. 2 "Austral- ian Drama 1970-1985." Revised and enlarged. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1987. Michael Gow, Away. Sydney: Currency Press and Playbox Theatre Company, Melbourne, 1986. Daniel Keene, Cho Cho San. Sydney: Currency Press, Playbox and Company B, Belvoir Street, Sydney, 1987. Jim McNeil, Collected Plays. Australian Dramatists Ser- ies. Sydney: Currency Press, 1986. Stephen Sewell, Dreams in an Empty City. Sydney: Currency Press and State Theatre Company of South Australia, 1986. David Williamson, Emerald City. Sydney: Currency Press, 1987. Gordon Francis, God's Best Country. Sydney: Currency Press and Western Australian Theatre Company, 1987. Heather Nimmo, The Hope. Sydney: Currency Press and Playbox Theatre Com- pany, Melbourne, 1987. Steele Rudd, In Australia, or The Old Selection. Edited by Richard Fotheringham. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987. John Cousins, The Inspector (adapted from Gogol's The Government Inspector). Sydney: Currency Press and Harvest Theatre Company, South Australia, 1987. Patricia Cornelius, Lilly and May. Sydney: Currency Press and Playbox Theatre Company, Melbourne, 1987. Louis Nowra, edited by Veronica Kelly. Australian Playwrights Monograph Series, General editor, Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 1987. Rosemary John, Luck of the Draw. Sydney: Cur- rency Press and Playbox Theatre Company, Melbourne, 1986. Dymphna Cusack, Morning Sacrifice. Sydney: Currency Press and Grif- fin Theatre Company, 1986. Jack Davis, No Sugar. Sydney: Currency Press, 1986. Barry Dickins, Royboys. Sydney: Currency Press, 1987. Tony Strachan, State of Shock. Sydney: Currency Press, Playbox and 97 Company B, Belvoir Street, Sydney, 1986. Richard Beynon, Summer Shadows. Currency Press and Spoleto Melbourne Festival, 1986. A muster of play texts, issued from Currency Press over twelve months, shows again the strengths of this indefatigible publishing house and the value of its co-operative policy with the Theatre Compan- ies, representing here all the States except Queensland. Queensland is rescued from oblivion once again by editors Veronica Kelly and Richard Fotheringham of the University of Queensland, and general editor Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt of Griffith University. Two eminent drama critics and editors, Kelly and Fotheringham also initiated Australasian Drama Studies, a substantial, scholarly and lively journal which has regularly appeared twice yearly since October 1981, and which offers its subscribers a series of free play texts. Veron- ica Kelly's Introduction to the monograph of Louis Nowra is an in for- mative and thoughtful summary of the present achievements of a play- wright and novelist who, her argument convincingly suggests, is "one of the most exciting living dramatists." Kelly's Introduction in itself sketches out "the territory of Australian dramatic criticism, its con- cerns, assumptions and debates", a task which she points out is under- taken by the book in greater detail. Since one of Nowra's earliest preoccupations has been the way in which human consciousness is constructed through language and is reflected in the language used by others, and the way the individual is made by the surrounding culture, Nowra's plays, his novel The Misery of Beauty (1976) and his compila- tion The Cheated(1979), are of special interest to psycho-linguists who might normally ignore dramatic texts as a field of concern. This, however, is peripheral to Nowra's achievement as a stage dramatist who has contributed to that dimension of Australian theatre which could be called "operatic", his own word, rather than "stage realistic", or the "filmic" dimension, exploited, for example by David Williamson. A fourteen page Autobiography by Nowra included in the monograph is a fascinating private account, which supplies background to some of the plays without in any way explaining the creative imagina- tion and theatrical craftsmanship that go into their making. Nowra also speaks in his lecture, reproduced from Australian Literary Studies, "Inner Voices and the First Coil", explaining his concept of his themes as "developing like a spiral"; in an interview with Jim Davidson from Meanjin; and in a video interview with Veronica Kelly. Director Rex Cramphorn and academics Veronica Kelly, Brian Kiernan, Gareth Griffiths, John McCallum and Peter Fitzpatrick con- tribute articles collected from earlier sources, providing almost as com- 98