Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 [Review] Acts of Resistance in Late-Modernist Theatre : Writing and Directing in Contemporary Theatre Practice
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'While this historiographic imprecision is a drawback, the density of analytic detail and informed criticism which Murphet offers makes the book a crucial contribution to performance studies of Australia and the USA. Murphet's dramaturgy fractures events and experience into a series of not necessarily continuous tableaux or filmic frames, which may then be enacted as theatre (as in his first two plays, Quick Death and Slow Love) or are cinematically projected and layered on to a complex, stratified live performance (The Inhabited Woman and The Inhabited Man). [...] even if Murphet's theoretical architecture is not altogether persuasive from a historiographic perspective, the author's detailed focus on process and his cross-referencing between chapters illuminates a number of varying responses to thematic concerns characteristic of twentieth-century dramaturgy as a whole. [...] it is the amplified commentary from the otherwise unnamed figure of the Voice (often Foreman himself) which links his examination of objects, poses, mute positions, entrances, exits, with the subjectivity which is forced to endure them as an audience.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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    y separately published work icon Australasian Drama Studies Regional Theatre in Australia no. 77 October 2020 21039143 2020 periodical issue

    'The inquiry came on the back of an effective shutdown of most work in the creative sector as a result of social distancing restrictions and lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March, and of extensive debate about the Australian Government's reluctance to offer a dedicated financial support package to an industry that, by the government's own estimates, contributed $111.7 billion in 2016/17, or 6.4 per cent of GDP. The terms of reference for the inquiry appeared accordingly broad: 'The Committee will inquire into Australia's creative and cultural industries and institutions including, but not limited to, Indigenous, regional, rural and community based organisations'. More broadly, the frustrations of lockdown, a newfound capacity to work remotely, loss of income, and the more general reassessment of life choices and lifestyle that COVID-19 provoked all resulted in an unprecedented net population loss in Australia's big cities, with an October 2020 Ipsos poll finding that one in ten Melburnians were considering a move to regional Victoria. Meanwhile, among the very limited federal stimulus offered to the arts in the early months of the pandemic was a $27 million 'Targeted Support' package in April, which directed $10 million to the music industry, $7 million to Indigenous arts, and $10 million 'to help regional artists and organisations develop new work and explore new delivery models'. In short, while COVID-19 has arguably reconfigured the Australian arts landscape, and the ways in which we understand where arts happens, it also made visible changes that were already occurring, particularly outside major metropolitan centres. Recommendation 1 was that 'the Federal Government increase its investment in building enabling infrastructure to improve connectivity, key services and amenity through coordinated regional plans', while Recommendation 13 anticipated further work on 'the cultivation of social, cultural and community capital'.5 This initiative built in turn on existing trends. Australia's enormous size continues to present major practical challenges when it comes to touring on the one hand, or building and sustaining arts infrastructure on the other. [...]the high-profile shift in the funding narrative over 2020 towards the regions, as well as the obligatory pivot towards the digital environment, has not entirely done away with a metropolitan funding bias, which is most apparent in the fact that the city-based Major Performing Arts organisations receive a disproportionate amount of the federal funding pie.' (Editorial introduction)

    2020
    pg. 352-361
Last amended 2 Feb 2021 10:01:44
352-361 [Review] Acts of Resistance in Late-Modernist Theatre : Writing and Directing in Contemporary Theatre Practicesmall AustLit logo Australasian Drama Studies
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