Review of *Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre*, by Helen Gilbert, and *Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s*, edited by Veronica Kelly

Abstract

In the past, drama has been something of the Cinderella among Australia's literary genres. In nationalist constructions of of literary history, for example, poetry and fiction were seen as having their originary moments in the 1890s, while drama had to wait until the mid-1950s and Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. In part, this may be attributed to the difficulties experienced by Australian playwrights in achieving professional productions of their works in the first half of this century. In part, perhaps, it relates to literary critics' own difficulties in dealing with a form of writing that could never be reduced just to the words on the page.