'‘I’ve been invited to edit the Australasian Drama Studies journal.’
‘Great! How does it rank?’
'The changing of the guard in the editorship of this journal offers the opportunity to consider its mission, its form, its value and its position in an increasingly challenging and stringent research environment. Here, outgoing editors Julian Meyrick and Meredith Rogers, and incoming editor Yoni Prior, offer thoughts about the past, present and future of Australasian Drama Studies in a moment of transition: between editors; between past and present locations; between print and digital publication; and between positions in the rankings game. In 1992 I attended my first ADSA conference, at Wollongong University. By then the Association was over ten years old. As a beginner in the academy, I felt I was joining a robust community of scholars with hefty credentials in the history of theatre, textual analysis and the still emerging field of performance studies. But alongside the evident depth and generosity of the scholarship, there was also a sociability and playfulness not always found among researchers, as well as a sense of tradition and continuity so relatively recently established. There were intriguing rumours of fabled events at past conferences, including the existence of a photograph of massed nude theatre scholars on a Western Australian beach, though the evidence has never been sighted by this researcher.' (Rick, Juli Anmey; Prior, Yoni and Rogers, Meredith. Editorial)
Contents indexed selectively.
'This article brings to light the career of Australian-born theatrical agent Harry Lyons (1841–1913) whose entrepreneurial activities span the period now attributed by historians as the first phase of globalisation (from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of World War I). Travelling internationally in pursuit of his commercial speculations, Lyons introduced Australian audiences to some of the biggest international stars of the era. Revealing that Lyons’ commercial interests covered the cultural spectrum from high art (opera and Shakespeare)to popular entertainments (circus, bicycle meets, ethnographic installations), the author examines Lyons’ eclectic career within the context of modernity, arguing he was one of the newly emergent middlemen of culture who influenced popular consumption and the making of taste. Progressing in tandem with the modernities of his era, Lyons’ long career provides a useful lens through which to reconsider the expansion and diversification of late-colonial theatrical activity, as well as the ways that theatrical production in Australia absorbed international influences and contributed to trends internationally.' (Publication abstract)
'When the New South Wales Board of Studies put Tom Holloway’s Beyond the Neck (2007) on the list of prescribed texts for the Year 12 Verbatim Theatre elective, they seemed to be wilfully ignoring the playwright’s statement that the play is not verbatim. On the one hand, the lack of vernacular speech and characters that correspond to real-life people would seem to confirm Holloway’s argument. Conversely, the play’s reliance on interviews, community consultation, bottom-up history and mode of diegetic theatricality would seem to support the Board of Studies’ decision. This article argues that this difference of opinion is due, in part, to a difference of definition: whereas Holloway conceives of verbatim as a genre, the Board of Studies sees it as a practice. To contemplate verbatim as a practice opens the way for new research across theatre, performance, dance, television and film.' (Publication abstract)
'During her seventeen years as Artistic Director and CEO of Polyglot Theatre, Sue Giles has led significant shifts in Polyglot’s creative practice. As Vice-President of ASSITEJ, she has been a remarkable advocate for young audiences. Giles’ Platform Paper A Review of Young People and the Arts: An Agenda for Change clearly articulates recent developments in theatre-making by and for young people and children. Her survey encompasses the broad range of practices within this field, including youth arts, theatre for young audiences, and work made by professional contemporary artists with children and young people for adult audiences.' (Introduction)
