Cirrus@Austlit

'In this chapter, we trace the development of a vibrant sub-genre of female-led anti-racist comedies on the Australian mainstage that invites the other to laugh back, drawing in particular on Jonathan Rossing’s conception of emancipatory racial humour. Significantly, our three focus plays owe debts to established comedic genres: Single Asian Female (2017) by Michelle Law to the singleton comedy; Nakkiah Lui’s Black is the New White (2017) to the rom-com and the family play; and Anchuli Felicia King’s White Pearl (2019) to the workplace comedy. This is followed by a duologue between King and Law, where they discuss how their identities have both empowered and constrained their playwriting practice.'  (Publication abstract)

'This chapter proposes the category of postmigrant play to describe the re-visioned migration narratives and migratory aesthetics on the Australian mainstage. Understanding the work of three writers of diverse identities, some of which do and some of which do not map directly onto their subjects, helps us to think through how globalisation has re-visioned the dramatisation of migration. To pursue this argument, our case studies are: Jump for Jordan (2014) by Donna Abela; Michele Lee’s Rice (2017); and Counting and Cracking (2019) by S. Shakthidharan. Lee and Shakthidharan then offer us a more detailed description of how their second-generation experience of migration informs their playwriting in the duologue that follows.'  (Publication abstract)

'This chapter considers how Australian playwrights have been pushing at the edges of the realist frame between 2007 and 2020 by employing exaggerated dramaturgies and direct address that transcends and remakes the Aussie Naturalism that predominated on the mainstage in decades prior. Far from the dour realism political theatre might conjure, these plays are instead boldly theatrical and playful without losing any of their accusatory edge. This lineage is illustrated with reference to: Patricia Cornelius and her play Savages (2013); Mortido (2016) by Angela Betzien; and Meyne Wyatt’s City of Gold (2019) in both its theatrical and extra-theatrical performances. A duologue between Betzien and Cornelius follows, in which they discuss the usefulness of realism and political theatre as analytical frames for their work.'  (Publication abstract)

'I suppose that the very beginning for me was the formation of Melbourne Workers Theatre. And it was what used to be called a “middle-range theatre company” that was based in Melbourne that was founded by three people, me included and two other actors – because we were mostly just actors then – who wanted to engage with the politics of unionism and the working-class. That company absolutely, astoundingly, especially now if you think what it’s like now, how bleak it is in terms of middle-range and independent theatre companies, and their lack of existence and a future that’s not very promising – I just think that company grew and was supported and funded and every year was a huge surprise. But the intent of the work was to actually talk about class and all the political agendas that came from class which was about race, and was about gender, and a lot of other things.' (Introduction)

'In this chapter, we consider Australian mainstage theatrical responses to the climate emergency that has dominated the period from 2007 to 2020, both through its urgency and the absurd political intransigence it generated. The case studies begin with Andrew Bovell’s landmark When the Rain Stops Falling (2008), the most internationally successful new Australian play of the decade, before considering two threads of practice that developed in its wake. The first, more resolutely realist strand is considered via Between Two Waves (2012) by Ian Meadows and the more absurdist turn by a pair of Griffin Award winners, The Turquoise Elephant (2016) by Stephen Carleton and Kill Climate Deniers (2018) by David Finnigan. Bovell and Finnigan then try to find some hope amongst the wicked problems of the age of the Anthropocene in a duologue.' (Publication abstract)

'G’day Andrew, lovely to chat. We’ve been tasked to talk about cli-fi and theatre in the Anthropocene. So, one of the pieces that gets talked about a lot in this space is your work When the Rain Stops Falling. Can you talk a little bit about what was behind your inclusion of a climate thread in that play?' (Introduction)   

'This chapter considers how the perennial Australian concern of how to capture and contain the distinctive national landscape on stage has manifested in the period between 2007 and 2020. Analyses of three plays follow: Broken (2016) by Mary Anne Butler, Angus Cerini’s The Bleeding Tree (2016), and Leah Purcell’s adaptation of the iconic Henry Lawson short story The Drover’s Wife (2017). Across each case study, we are also drawn to the distinctive language that is deployed in these rural and regional settings from playwrights deeply familiar with the country they’re evoking on stage: a process of ‘writing from within.’ A duologue between Butler and Cerini follows, which takes up the question of what it means to write from the regions in contemporary Australia.'  (Publication abstract)

'In this chapter, we take up the question of adaptation on the Australian mainstage. After considering the broader lineage of re-visioning the national literary canon for the theatre, we contend that it is specifically the adaptation of the Australian novel that has characterised the period between 2007 and 2020. In order to illustrate a continuum of adaptation, we offer three case studies of adaptations that deploy somatically othered bodies on stage: Andrew Bovell’s The Secret River (2013), from the novel by Kate Grenville; Kate Mulvany’s Jasper Jones (2014/16) from the novel by Craig Silvey; and Tom Wright’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (2017) from the novel by Joan Lindsay. Then, in a duologue, Mulvany and Wright discuss the status of adaptation on the contemporary Australian mainstage.'  (Publication abstract)

'This chapter considers contemporary re-visions of biographical theatre and maps a movement on the Australian mainstage between 2007 and 2020 away from a reliance on the verifiable facts of a subject’s life to a more theatrical embrace of its affective contours. Each of the case studies theatricalises the life of its subject, from Patricia Highsmith in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland (2014), through Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton in Letters to Lindy (2016) by Alana Valentine, to Mark Colvin and Mary-Ellen Field in Tommy Murphy’s Mark Colvin’s Kidney (2017). In the following duologue, Murphy and Valentine discuss the burden of truth that falls on the playwright and how they have negotiated the truth claims across their body of biographical theatre works.'  (Publication abstract)

'This chapter turns to autobiography and the body of work from 2007 to 2020 that places the playwright on stage, whether inside or outside the fictional frame, building on the interest in biography and craving for authenticity that has accelerated in the post-truth age. To outline a range of iterations of the autobiographical pact on the Australian mainstage, our three case studies cover: Lally Katz’s Stories I Want to Tell You in Person (2013), Blue Bones (2017) by Merlynn Tong, and Glace Chase’s Triple X (2020) – fittingly, the play we saw together on the last night before Covid-lockdowns kicked in. Chase and Katz then discuss the stories they tell and the parts of themselves they keep offstage in a duologue.'  (Publication abstract)

'In this concluding chapter, we offer a reflection on the stock-taking exercises that took place during the pandemic-enforced closure of Australian theatres. We use the Dear Australia postcard project, which invited 50 playwrights nominated by 25 different companies from around Australia to produce a short piece of writing addressing the nation-in-lockdown. While the project embraced and codified many of the advances we identify in this book, we also read it as a missed opportunity for the industry, with the retrospective nostalgia of the postcard occluding the bold visions of the future that will be needed to reimagine contemporary Australian playwriting in a post-pandemic world.'  (Publication abstract)