Cirrus@Austlit

'The space I usually dwell in is the back of my head, what poet Les Murray thought of as a dreaming space. Poet J. S. Harry wrote: “Living in-all-in your-head / is a kind of thistle madness.” An academic colleague once called me “an absent-minded professor.” My sisters thought I would never be a driver, as I’m too vague and distracted. “Reality escapes you,” my partner regularly declaims' 

(Introduction)

'In contemporary Australian Theatre, creators are making increasing use of postdramatic vocabularies, specifically exploring the way they may be deployed to address the challenging and emotive processes of truth telling and cultural memory as we continue to explore Australian history. Often, this encompasses the use of actor-driven approaches familiar to physical theatre to provoke thought and dialogue by encouraging an active audience. In order to critically engage with these works, it is helpful to reflect on the history of the physical and postdramatic modes, before moving to an exploration of their emergence in Australian performance'