Ngarnna Taikurra in the Land of the Dreamtime: The 3rd International Women Playwrights Conference 3-10 July 1994, Adelaide, Australia

Abstract

Surely the main challenge to Western feminisms today is the reproach that they have not sufficiently attempted to hear other cultures, perhaps because listening hard for difference involves examining our own complicity with colonialism and the ravages of cultural imperialism. This is precisely what the 3rd International Women Playwrights Conference required North Americans and Europeans to do in Adelaide, Australia, July 1994, when over 500 delegates from 36 countries gathered to celebrate and explore the relationship between traditional ritual or storytelling and the theatre of modernity. One could describe the Adelaide conference as a beautifully executed large-scale production about the cultural limits of theatre and the theatrical limits of culture which went into rehearsal three years ago when its organizers, Julie Holledge and Phyllis Jane Rose, began elaborating the dramaturgy of its supertext: the cross-cultural implications of the female body in performance. Throughout the one-week program, leading practitioners and scholars from around the world were invited to address the conference in forums, lead workshops, and present readings or performances of their work at the Adelaide State Theatre. Each day, the conference had a specific thematic focus: Ritual and the Body, Storytelling, Language and Laughter, and Identity. Both the purpose and location of the gatheringheld for the first time outside of North America-highlighted non-West-