Catching Australian Theatre in the 2000s
Catching Australian Theatre in the 2000s

Author: Richard Fotheringham

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 9401210039

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Whether catching Australian theatre during the 2000s or catching up now, this volume provides the reader with an overview of the decade. It reveals how Australian theatre continues to reflect the major political and social concerns of our time. Each contribution explores an important area of Australian performance so that the volume provides crucial background and insightful analysis for current theatre practice. The contributions cover political theatre, Indigenous theatre, playwrights concerned with cultural identity, key Shakespearean productions, the impact of funding and arts policy on theatre, dramaturgy and innovative projects, leading directors on rehearsal processes, theatre for young people, regional theatre including the Northern Territory, and physical theatre and Circus Oz. The book confirms the consolidation of previous artistic achievement over the decade and identifies the emergence of new trends and creative practices.

Dorothy Hewett’s Drama, Memory and Australian Theatre
Dorothy Hewett’s Drama, Memory and Australian Theatre

Author: Peter Beaglehole

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-09-29

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 9004682023

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When Dorothy Hewett joked about needing a face-lift and sex-change to improve her standing, she drew attention to forces that shaped the production and reception of her drama. Drawing on production of her plays over four decades, and interviews with Hewett’s collaborators, this book reveals how cultural memories in theatre solidify and dissolve. Viewing theatre production as a mode of remembrance, Beaglehole grapples with Hewett as a divisive figure who was ahead of a conservative Australia. Revisiting frequently produced plays, including chapters on The Man from Mukinupin and The Chapel Perilous, as well as rarely-produced works, including Nowhere and The Tatty Hollow Story, this book articulates the ongoing relevance of Hewett’s drama to the history of theatre in Australia.

Actor Training in Anglophone Countries
Actor Training in Anglophone Countries

Author: Peter Zazzali

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-29

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 100042328X

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Actor Training in Anglophone Countries offers a firsthand account of the most significant acting programs in English-speaking countries throughout the world. The culmination of archival research and fieldwork spanning six years, it is the only work of its kind that studies the history of actor training from an international perspective. It presents the current moment as crucial for student actors and those who teach them. As the profession continues to change, new and progressive approaches to training have become as urgent as they are necessary. Using drama schools and universities as its subjects of inquiry, this book investigates acting programs in the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Among the case studies are the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, National Theatre School of Canada, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and Carnegie Mellon University. All recognized for their distinguished reputations by industry professionals and acting teachers alike, the book examines each program’s pedagogical approach, administrative structure, funding apparatus, and alumni success. In doing so, it identifies the challenges facing acting schools today and offers a new direction for training in the twenty-first century. Actor Training in Anglophone Countries will be of interest to theatre and performance scholars, artists, students, and teachers.

Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage
Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage

Author: Charlotte Farrell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-16

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 100044127X

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This is the first book-length study of Australian theatre productions by internationally-renowned director, Barrie Kosky. Now a prolific opera director in Europe, Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage accounts for the formative years of Kosky's career in Australia. This book provides in-depth engagements with select productions including The Dybbuk which Kosky directed with Gilgul theatre company in 1991, as well as King Lear (1998), The Lost Echo (2006), and Women of Troy (2008). Using affect theory as a prism through which these works are analysed, the book accounts for the director's particular engagement with – and radical departure from – classical tragedy in contemporary performance: what the book defines as Kosky's 'post-tragedies'. Theatre studies scholars and students, particularly those with interests in affect, contemporary performance, 'director's theatre', and tragedy, will benefit from Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage’s vivid engagement with Kosky's work: a director who has become a singular figure in opera and theatre of international critical acclaim.

Theatre and Australia
Theatre and Australia

Author: Julian Meyrick

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-01-25

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1350331376

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How has Australia developed, culturally? What is the relationship between European theatre and Aboriginal performance? How do the concepts of memory, space, and love intersect and inform all Australian drama? Theatre and Australia is a stark look at the signal contradictions that make up the nation's sense of self. Exploring how race, gender, and community have influenced Australia's cultural development, this book reveals the history of Australian theatre as a tussle with questions of identity that can neither be entirely repudiated nor fully resolved. This concise study traverses the narrative of Australian theatre since white settlement, examining some of the main plays and performances of the last 230 years, and illuminating the relationship between European, non-Indigenous, and First Nations drama.

Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage
Australian Metatheatre on Page and Stage

Author: Rebecca Clode

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-06-09

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1000600661

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This book offers the first major discussion of metatheatre in Australian drama of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It highlights metatheatre’s capacity to illuminate the wider social, cultural, and artistic contexts in which plays have been produced. Drawing from existing scholarly arguments about the value of considering metatheatre holistically, this book deploys a range of critical approaches, combining textual and production analysis, archival research, interviews, and reflections gained from observing rehearsals. Focusing on four plays and their Australian productions, the book uses these examples to showcase how metatheatre has been utilised to generate powerful elements of critique, particularly of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations. It highlights metatheatre’s vital place in Australian dramatic and theatrical history and connects this Australian tradition to wider concepts in the development of contemporary theatre. This illuminating text will be of interest to students and scholars of Australian theatre (historic and contemporary) as well as those researching and studying drama and theatre studies more broadly.

Rehearsal Practices of Indigenous Women Theatre Makers
Rehearsal Practices of Indigenous Women Theatre Makers

Author: Liza-Mare Syron

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 303082375X

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This transnational and transcultural study intimately investigates the theatre making practices of Indigenous women playwrights from Australia, Aotearoa, and Turtle Island. It offers a new perspective in Performance Studies employing an Indigenous standpoint, specifically an Indigenous woman’s standpoint to privilege the practices and knowledges of Maori, First Nations, and Aboriginal women playwrights. Written in the style of ethnographic narrative the author affords the reader a ringside seat in providing personal insights on the process of negotiating access to rehearsals in each specific cultural context, detailed descriptions of each rehearsal location, and describing the visceral experiences of observing Indigenous theatre makers from inside the rehearsal room. The Indigenous scholar and theatre maker draws on Rehearsal Studies as an approach to documenting the day-to-day working practices of Indigenous theatre makers and considers an Indigenous Standpoint as a valid framework for investigating contemporary Indigenous theatre practices in a colonised context.

Antipodean Antiquities
Antipodean Antiquities

Author: Marguerite Johnson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-03-21

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1350021253

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Leading and emerging, early career scholars in Classical Reception Studies come together in this volume to explore the under-represented area of the Australasian Classical Tradition. They interrogate the interactions between Mediterranean Antiquity and the antipodean worlds of New Zealand and Australia through the lenses of literature, film, theatre and fine art. Of interest to scholars across the globe who research the influence of antiquity on modern literature, film, theatre and fine art, this volume fills a decisive gap in the literature by bringing antipodean research into the spotlight. Following a contextual introduction to the field, the six parts of the volume explore the latest research on subjects that range from the Lord of the Rings and Xena: Warrior Princess franchises to important artists such as Sidney Nolan and local authors whose work offers opportunities for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary analysis with well-known Western authors and artists.

Antipodal Shakespeare
Antipodal Shakespeare

Author: Gordon McMullan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1474271448

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Despite a recent surge of critical interest in the Shakespeare Tercentenary, a great deal has been forgotten about this key moment in the history of the place of Shakespeare in national and global culture – much more than has been remembered. This book offers new archival discoveries about, and new interpretations of, the Tercentenary celebrations in Britain, Australia and New Zealand and reflects on the long legacy of those celebrations. This collection gathers together five scholars from Britain, Australia and New Zealand to reflect on the modes of commemoration of Shakespeare across the hemispheres in and after the Tercentenary year, 1916. It was at this moment of remembering in 1916 that 'global Shakespeare' first emerged in recognizable form. Each contributor performs their own 'antipodal' reading, assessing in parallel events across two hemispheres, geographically opposite but politically and culturally connected in the wake of empire.

Staging Queer Feminisms
Staging Queer Feminisms

Author: Sarah French

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-04-13

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1137465433

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This book examines sexuality, gender and race in Australia’s vibrant independent theatre and performance culture. It analyses selected feminist and queer performances that interrogate the cultural construction of sexuality and gender, challenge the normative trends of mainstream Australian society and culture and open up spaces for alternative representations of gender identity and sexual expression. Offering the first full-length study on sexuality and gender in Australian theatre since 2005, this book reveals a resurgence of feminist themes in independent performance and explores the intersection of feminist and queer politics. Ranging across drag, burlesque, cabaret, theatre and performance art, the book provides an accessible and engaging account of some of the most innovative, entertaining and politically subversive Australian theatrical works from the past decade.