Contemporary Australian Theatre Research Articles

Thérèse Radic’s A Whip Round for Percy Grainger (1982) and the Archive on Stage

Thérèse Radic’s play A Whip Round for Percy Grainger: A Serious Comedy in Two Acts was premiered in Melbourne in 1982, as part of the celebrations for the centenary of the birth of Australian composer and pianist Percy Grainger (1882–1961). This article explores this play in the context of Grainger’s autobiographical projects—including his extensive autobiographical writings and the autobiographical museum he built at the University of Melbourne—as well as within the dynamics of Australian theatre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This article argues that Radic’s presentation of Grainger, his life, and music, was mobilized at a particular moment of cultural introspection in late twentieth-century Australia to aid in the exploration and critique of contemporary national and cultural currents. Radic’s work is situated first within presentations of ‘documentary theatre’ and historical biography on stage, and then in contemporary Australian theatre’s response to the ‘new nationalist’ movement, while also considering how her representation of Grainger is informed by his own construction of an autobiographical narrative.

The Role of the Production Voice Coach in Contemporary Australian Theatre

The sparse literature that exists globally on the role of the voice coach in theatre productions makes no reference whatsoever to the quantity, nature, challenges, or perception of voice coaching in Australian theatre. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and focus groups, this mixed method study provides an introductory overview of the field, from the perspective of industry professionals and artists in training. The study finds that voice coaches were credited in around 33% of major theatre productions in Australia between 2012 and 2017. Voice is a major component of actor training in all three major Australia drama schools. In production work, coaches’ skills divide broadly into two categories: the technical (vocal health, extreme voice use, acoustics, dialect, verse) and the creative (expressive range, text interpretation). Interviewees offered differing views on the balance of skills it is desirable for a voice coach to deploy in the rehearsal room. Challenges discussed for Australian voice coaching include young actors’ technique and attitude, use of amplification, and the scarcity of resources dedicated to voice. Relationships between directors, actors, and voice coaches can be a source of creative friction and of creative partnership. The study ends by discussing best practice and opportunities for future research.

Unsettling Representation: Monuments, Theatre, and Relational Space

This article explores the ways in which theatrical techniques might intervene in the representational operations of monuments. As illustrated by the controversy surrounding nearly every aspect of the memorial to the destroyed World Trade Center, monumentality implies a finality of meaning and an unavailability of monumental spaces to open and fluctuating meanings. Henri Lefebvre's distinction between ‘representations of space’ and ‘representational space’ suggests a method for unsettling or rewriting these meanings, which Joanne Tompkins develops as an analytical tool in her consideration of contemporary Australian theatre. However, Tinderbox Theatre Company's production of convictions in a decommissioned courthouse in Belfast demonstrates that theatrical representations may have the effect of displacing previous spatial practices, but they also have their own authorizing norms and associated codes of meaning and behaviour. Using Doreen Massey's concept of ‘relational space’ to augment Lefebvre's categories, a set of criteria can be articulated for counter-monumental theatre that is attentive to the politics of openness and closure. And While London Burns, a downloadable audio tour of the financial centre of London produced by John Jordan and PLATFORM, is used as an example of a theatrical event which creates relational spaces that intervene within the normative mechanisms both of corporate organization of urban space and of dramatic narrative. Concluding by co-opting Wren's Monument, And While London Burns asks its participants to rethink identity in spatial terms, and the author argues that this spatial awareness in turn necessitates an awareness of relationality which is relevant to both theatre and politics.

Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda. By Hilary Glow. Sydney: Currency Press, 2007; pp. 220. $26.50 paper. - Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. By Joanne Tompkins. Houndmills, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; pp. 216. $84.95 cloth.

Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda. By Hilary Glow. Sydney: Currency Press, 2007; pp. 220. $26.50 paper. - Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. By Joanne Tompkins. Houndmills, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; pp. 216. $84.95 cloth.

Review of *Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia* by Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, and *Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre* by Joanne Tompkins

Review of *Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia* by Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, and *Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre* by Joanne Tompkins

Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. By Joanne Tompkins. London: Palgrave, 2006. Pp. xii. + 204 + 11 illus. £45 Hb. - Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place. Edited by Gay McAuley. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 306 + 43 illus. SFR 50/€41.20/£27/$45.95 Pb. - Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australian Theatre. By Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo. London: Palgrave, 2007. Pp. x + 245 + 12 illus. £45 Hb.

Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. By Joanne Tompkins. London: Palgrave, 2006. Pp. xii. + 204 + 11 illus. £45 Hb. - Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place. Edited by Gay McAuley. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 306 + 43 illus. SFR 50/€41.20/£27/$45.95 Pb. - Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australian Theatre. By Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo. London: Palgrave, 2007. Pp. x + 245 + 12 illus. £45 Hb. - Volume 33 Issue 2

Review of *Not Wrong - Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Australian Theatre*, by Katharine Brisbane

Publishers details for: Not Wrong - Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Australian Theatre, by Katharine Brisbane. Sydney: Currency Press, 2005. $34.95.

Beauty and the Market: Actress Postcards and their Senders in Early Twentieth-Century Australia

A hundred years ago the international craze for picture postcards distributed millions of images of popular stage actresses around the world. The cards were bought, sent, and collected by many whose contact with live theatre was sometimes minimal. Veronica Kelly's study of some of these cards sent in Australia indicates the increasing reach of theatrical images and celebrity brought about by the distribution mechanisms of industrial mass modernity. The specific social purposes and contexts of the senders are revealed by cross-reading the images themselves with the private messages on the backs, suggesting that, once outside the industrial framing of theatre or the dramatic one of specific roles, the actress operated as a multiply signifying icon within mass culture – with the desires and consumer power of women major factors in the consumption of the glamour actress card. A study of the typical visual rhetoric of these postcards indicates the authorized modes of femininity being constructed by the major postcard publishers whose products were distributed to theatre fans and non-theatregoers alike through the post. Veronica Kelly is working on a project dealing with commercial managements and stars in early twentieth-century Australian theatre. She teaches in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History at the University of Queensland, is co-editor of Australasian Drama Studies, and author of databases and articles dealing with colonial and contemporary Australian theatre history and dramatic criticism. Her books include The Theatre of Louis Nowra (1998) and the collection Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s (1998).

Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre

Reviewed by: Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre Katherine Newey Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre. By Helen Gilbert. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance series. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998; pp. x + 274. $49.50 cloth, $21.95 paper. Sightlines is an important contribution both to theatre studies and post-colonial criticism. Indeed, it is Helen Gilbert’s placing of post-colonial theory in a dynamic relationship with performance studies which offers some of the most productive work of the book. As Gilbert writes in her introduction, her aim is to show how “theories of drama and performance have much to add to debates about how imperial power is articulated and/or contested through discourses centered on the body, space, language, and representation” (6). In a detailed argument Gilbert makes a powerful case for the centrality of performance to post-colonialism, both as a visceral representation of the varieties of lived experience in Australia in the late twentieth century, and as a test of post-colonial theory. This book, together with Gilbert’s other work (she is co-author with Joanne Tompkins of Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics published by Routledge [1996]) also demonstrates the power and sophistication of critical theory from the so-called margins. It is to the credit of the University of Michigan Press that they have recognised that a study of contemporary Australian theatre practice is of more than local interest. Gilbert’s discussion of identity politics is based on a flexible but rigorously argued concept of identity as relational. Gilbert develops a model of identity under colonization which, she argues, “should be conceptualized less as a fixed state than as a complex process informed by a continually self-constituting hegemony that is always under threat from competing discourses” (146). Working through this paradigm allows Gilbert to extend her analysis across a number of key subject positions which might otherwise be seen as mutually exclusive. She does this by dividing her discussion into five chapters, each dealing with a distinct category of post-colonial identity. The opening case study is of “canonical counterdiscourse,” a demonstration [End Page 228] of how the empire writes back, in this case to Shakespeare. The chapters which follow trace the multiple possibilities of contemporary Australian identity as constructed through performance: indigenous theatre, feminist drama, settler/invader plays, and neo-imperialism in an examination of the theatrical representation of Australian-Asian and Australian-American relationships. This approach has many advantages. By teasing out the strands of Australian experience and possible identities into these broad categories, Gilbert is able to bring together a number of potentially antagonistic subject positions in one coherent study. She does this delicately and carefully, with due acknowledgement and working through of difference. Throughout her text there is explicit and implicit recognition of conflicts and complications which can be productive. Gilbert’s chapter on indigenous drama is a prime example of the positive results of her careful negotiations between a rigorous critical analysis of a body of work and a recognition of the very real circumstances of deprivation and discrimination out of which this work is produced. As she writes, her analysis is not concerned with establishing a poetics of Aboriginal drama (for to do so might well be to speak for rather than about indigenous dramatic practice), but to outline “the strategic possibilities of performance for the production and consumption of this body of work as an expression of indigenous culture” (52). It is a complicated balancing act, though, and some things are blurred in the process. While the concentration on relatively discrete areas of subject formation allows detailed and careful analyses of plays and performances, unacknowledged contradictions emerge. The chapter on indigenous drama focuses almost exclusively on male Aboriginal writers, and while such an approach can be properly justified, Gilbert does not do so. This is also the case in Gilbert’s chapter on “Settler/Invader Plays.” Given the kinds of complex models of identity which Gilbert invokes, I would have liked to see some self-reflection on the theoretical and critical consequences of limiting the discussion of women’s theatre work into one chapter on feminist theatre. Such...

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

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.

Sightlines: race, gender, and nation in contemporary Australian theatre

Sightlines: Race, Gender, and Nation in Contemporary Australian asserts the centrality of theater to the ongoing negotiations of the Australian context. By exploring ways in which ideas about race, gender, and nation are expressed in concrete theatrical contexts, the performative qualities of theatrical representation are revealed as compelling, important sites of critique.Helen Gilbert discusses an exciting variety of plays, drawing examples from marginalized groups as well as from the theatrical mainstream. While fully engaged with the discourses of contemporary critical thought, Sightlines remains focused on the material stuff of the theater, grounding its discussion in the visual elements of costume, movement, and scenography. And although focused specifically on performance, the author's insistent interest in historical and political contexts also speaks to the broader concerns of cultural studies.The book's recurrent concern with representations of Aboriginality, particularly in the works of nonindigenous playwrights, draws attention to racial politics as a perennial motif in postcolonial nations. Its illumination of the relationships between patriarchy and imperialism is supported by an extensive discussion of plays by and about women. This nomadic approach marks Sightlines as a groundbreaking study of recent Australian theater, a provocative application of postcolonial theory to the embodied qualities of theatrical representation.An impressive and ground-breaking study that provides a coherent postcolonial approach to Australian drama. --Bill Ashcroft, University of New South WalesElegantly written, and always beautifully lucid in its argument. . . . this is a very original work, particularly in its marriage of performance theory and postcolonial analysis. --Deidre Coleman, University of SydneyHelen Gilbert is Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Queensland, and co-author, with Joanne Tompkins, of Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics.

Can't We Talk It Over in Bed?

A backyard sprinkler ... flower-headed fools jumping through a mist of crystal drops ... the constant buzz of giggling beneath a familiar tune, sung with pavlova-coated breath. Sound like an Australian childhood memory? Perhaps, but not quite. This was the final scene in the recent Belvoir St production of As You Like It, and was quite possibly the most enjoyable moment of theatrical magic I have experienced in a long time. Apart from being suitably impressed by the set -- a stage carpeted with real grass and fallen leaves, a working sprinkler and a brilliant midnight-blue tarpaulin sky filled with golden stars -- the cross-cultural consummation of desire between Rosalind (Deborah Mailman) and Orlando (Aaron Blabey), as they leapt through the sprinkler arm in arm, would surely have warmed even the hardest heart of a One Nation supporter. Yet perhaps it's all just wishful thinking, you know "dream on white boy, dream on black girl" as the INXS tune goes ... except that theatre companies around the country appear to be determined to make this dream a reality. On the stage at least. The following discussion is inspired by a current trend in contemporary Australian theatre of pro-active racial casting, and will focus specifically on two performances. The term 'desire' is in itself terribly slippery and the following banter positions the term in two quite different contexts. Firstly I look at desire in terms of a post-colonial concept of 'desire for the other' and how erotic desire in the performance text can problematise some tenets of post-colonial theory. Secondly, I look at the political desires of theatre companies who engage in this pro-diversity casting practise. Finally, I see these various desires intersecting with a larger community desire for reconciliation. In the space of one month on the east-coast of Australia there have been three productions by major theatre companies of Shakespearean texts in which indigenous actors have constituted at least half the cast: Romeo and Juliet produced by La Boîte and Kooemba Jdarra in Brisbane; As You Like It produced by Company B Belvoir; and Romeo and Juliet in Black and White produced by the Bell Shakespeare Company. My critical probe was left twitching by the observation of this shared element, spanning three different companies and in such a short period of time; I began to muse at what was fuelling this wonderful trend. I started to wonder about the implications of having 'racially marked' actors performing texts which have erotic desire as their central theme. The temptation to draw on the cultural currency of Benetton iconography, of black and white lips meeting in the perfect display of reciprocal desire is impossible to resist. Yet as Ebony and Ivory-esque as these productions may appear, one needs to consider whether this trend perpetuates an infatuation with a cultural 'other', thus maintaining the much touted, and arguably damaging, fetishistic approach to difference. Or alternatively, does this trend signal a genuine desire, a practical attempt at racial reconciliation? The following will discuss two of the three performances: Romeo and Juliet (La Boîte/Kooemba Jdarra) and As You Like It. Desire for the 'Cultural Other' or simply a yearning between lovers? A great deal of post-colonial theory refers to an intense desire for a cultural 'other'. Robert Young goes so far as to say that being "sick with desire for the other" is a condition which actually defines 'Englishness' (2). It would seem that in both As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet, being sick with desire for another is a core activity for the major characters. Does this mean, then, that casting the desiring couple with one black actor and one white actor in fact fits the model suggested by Young? Perhaps. Yet there is something different in the desires between Rosalind and Orlando and Romeo and Juliet. The condition Young outlines assumes a one-sided desire where the look at the other is through a one-way mirror. However, desire between these couples in question (Romeo/Juliet, Rosalind/Orlando) is evenly matched, the glass is most certainly two-way. Romeo is as infatuated with Juliet and she is with him, Rosalind is as mad about Orlando as he is about her. In fact for both plays to reach their climax it is absolutely crucial that desire between these couples does strike an equilibrium. For Rosalind and Orlando their equally overwhelming desires unite them forever in marriage; for Romeo and Juliet, their reciprocally insatiable desires leave them united forever in death. For both plot-lines to reach fruition, it is imperative that each side of the couple is as 'sick with desire' as their lover is. Certainly, a white Romeo spies on a black Juliet, but his gaze is ultimately returned. A white Orlando is lost in the eyes of a black Rosalind, but her eyes are wide open, similarly glazed with desire. The idea of being sick with desire for a cultural 'other' would thus seem to be made redundant by the mutual mirroring of desire in these cross-cultural performances. To be sick with desire for a cultural other also infers an even balance of 'other' and 'non-other'. Productions of Shakespearean plays often analysed in a post-colonial context like The Tempest or Othello, in which individual characters are set as 'other' against a "notional singularity" (Young 4), would certainly sustain an unequal balance of 'different' and 'normal'. Again though, there is something different about these two productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. As opposed to setting a single 'other' against many, both of these productions set up an indigenous family. I would suggest that by casting entire families with indigenous actors in these shows, the identity-forming structure suggested by Young is irrevocably confused; the 'notional singularity' is made redundant by the presence of more than one actor of colour on the stage. As opposed to setting a single 'other' as an object of desire to be fetishised by a majority of 'non-other', both of these productions cast almost equal numbers of indigenous and non-indigenous actors. Political desires: to be seen or not to be seen, that is the question. Having noted some of the theoretical and performative implications of desire in these two productions, I will turn now to the question of political desires and the desire for racial reconciliation. How does the political desire of a theatre company who might cast a show in this way intersect with desire in the text itself? In her introduction to Erotic Politics, Susan Zimmerman asks, "what is the relationship between politics and desire [?]" (1). The most important part of her response for my purposes here is that "the inter-subjective realm of desire connects to the public, political domain" (1). As noted above, the theatre performance itself embodies this connection through its very public display of a character's personal desires. However, the public display of the theatre company's political desire in these productions is also worth discussion. La Boîte/Kooemba Jdarra and Company B Belvoir differ in their public articulation of the politics behind the casting decision. In a statement which reinforces the desire to create a symbiotic link between politics and text, La Boîte director Sue Rider says, "as they [the Montagues and Capulets] reach towards the first tentative expression of true reconciliation, we know this is not the end. It is just the beginning" (Rider, Romeo and Juliet Programme). In keeping with the collaborative effort between the two companies, it is noteworthy also that the Chair of Kooemba Jdarra, Glenis Charlton, offers on the same page of the programme a brief statement including that "our hope is that the themes of prejudice, misunderstanding and the need for reconciliation within the play strike a resonant chord with today's audience". The desire of both companies to publicly announce their political aims was part and parcel of the production, a mirror for reconciliation in the text itself. In contrast to the publicly clear political desires of La Boîte and Kooemba Jdarra, Neil Armfield makes no reference whatsoever to race or reconciliation in his "Director's Note". However, the impact of such casting, regardless of whether it is publicly articulated by the company, does not pass by unobserved. In his review for The Australian of As You Like It, John McCallum notes that "the father, the exiled Duke, is played by another Aboriginal actor, Bob Maza, which gives the play's theme of reconciliation a contemporary focus. There is a multiplication of sexual as well as racial complications" (12). Indeed extra-textual discussions, those conversations which take place in newspaper reviews, in the foyer at intermission, over inner-city coffee tables, in kitchens, offices and on share-house verandahs are critical sites of cultural negotiation. That McCallum makes public the political implications of such casting in relation to the text is significant. Although the political desire of Company B Belvoir may have been made consciously ambiguous, the desire by the public to interpret the casting decision in relation to current political climates is inevitable. As is the disclaimer for most discussions which merely touch on a subject of much greater magnitude, this brief essay has overlooked a number of crucial elements which demand further investigation. Of special importance is how gender might impact upon desire in this context; both Rosalind and Juliet are played by indigenous actors (although the situation is reversed in the Bell Shakespeare Company's Romeo and Juliet in Black and White). Also, the question of funding bodies and their desire to fund projects which address race-based issues should necessarily be considered in any discussion which conjoins political and textual desires. Instead I will finish by reminding the reader of the visual beauty of a mixed cast, of the image of a distinguished Aboriginal Bob Maza jumping the backyard sprinkler, of how our desires for racial reconciliation can be realised in a moment of theatrical magic. Productions such as those discussed here are progressive and instrumental elements in the journey towards reconciliation. Furthermore, the conversations these plays provoke about race in Australia are absolutely essential in counteracting the racist sentiments appearing all too often in our national and local public arena. Performances As You Like It. By William Shakespeare. Performed at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney. Produced by Company B Belvoir. Featuring Deborah Mailman, Aaron Blabey, Jacek Koman and Bob Maza. Romeo and Juliet. By William Shakespeare. Performed at La Boîte Theatre, Brisbane. Produced by La Boîte and Kooemba Jdarra. Featuring Maria Tusa, Christopher Morris, Roxanne McDonald and Damien Garvey. McCallum, John. Rev. of As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. Company B Belvoir. Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney. The Australian 8 May 1999: 12. Rider, Sue. "Director's Note." Romeo and Juliet Programme. Brisbane: La Boite Theatre, 1999. Young, Robert J.C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Zimmerman, Susan, ed. Introduction. Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage. New York: Routledge, 1992. 1-11. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Melissa Western. "Can't We Talk It Over in Bed?: Desiring Reconciliation in Recent Australian Theatre Productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/theatre.php>. Chicago style: Melissa Western, "Can't We Talk It Over in Bed?: Desiring Reconciliation in Recent Australian Theatre Productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/theatre.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Melissa Western. (1999) Can't we talk it over in bed?: desiring reconciliation in recent Australian theatre productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/theatre.php> ([your date of access]).