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y separately published work icon Inside the Island single work   drama   - 14 scenes
Issue Details: First known date: 1980... 1980 Inside the Island
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

"In Nowra's play, images of whiteness, and of the haunting of white Australia by its violent past are given vivid metaphorical treatment. The play is in many ways a ghost story, illustrating the irruption of the past into the present. Set on a remote wheat property in western New South Wales in the summer of 1912, where a picnic/cricket-match is held amongst raw-recruit soldiers sent to this isolated spot on peacetime manoeuvres. The cricket ground itself had previously been an Aboriginal campsite, and was granted as a 'gift' to the government by the dead father of the property's current matriarch, Mrs Lillian Dawson. At their Captain's request, Lillian makes the men a gift of flour milled from wheat grown on the property, which is then made into bread for a picnic cricket match held by the soldiers. But when tragedy seems to strike, questions are asked about Lillian’s real intentions and her love for this island continent is questioned. Concerned with the mechanics of power and isolation, the inheritance of violence and dispossession, this is a stirring play looks at our own views of the land we inhabit and questions whether white Australia can ever escape it’s past when it still hides from it."

Source

Production Details

    • Play with music.
    • First performed at the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney on 13 August 1980. Music composed by Sarah de Jong (q.v.).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 1980

Works about this Work

A Land's Allegiance : Functions and Representations of Landscape in Post-Colonial Theatres Eric Wagner , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Summer vol. 16 no. 3 2009; (p. 569-589)
Focuses on the different uses of landscapes in Nowra's Inside the Island and in The Hungry Earth by South African playwright Maishe Maponya,
Staging Otherness in Mainstream Australasian and Canadian Dramaturgies Marc Maufort , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transgressive Itineraries : Postcolonial Hybridizations of Dramatic Realism 2003; (p. 27-79)
Section III of this chapter is entitled 'Alienating Naturalism : Louis Nowra's Dramatury'.
Anzac and Why I Write Louis Nowra , 1996 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Kunapipi , [Double Issue] vol. 18 no. 2-3 1996; (p. 342-344)
Ghosts in a Landscape : Louis Nowra's "Inside the Island" and Janis Balodis' "Too Young for Ghosts" Helen Gilbert , 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southern Review , December vol. 27 no. 4 1994; (p. 432-447)
"Speaking the Formula of Abjection" : Hybrids and Gothic Discourses in Louis Nowra's Novels Gerry Turcotte , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , September vol. 36 no. 3 1991; (p. 61-72) Peripheral Fear : Transformations of the Gothic in Canadian and Australian Fiction 2009; (p. 165-180)
Raw, Ugly Glimpse of Australia Brian Hoad , 1980 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 26 August vol. 101 no. 5226 1980; (p. 77)

— Review of Inside the Island Louis Nowra , 1980 single work drama
Staging Otherness in Mainstream Australasian and Canadian Dramaturgies Marc Maufort , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transgressive Itineraries : Postcolonial Hybridizations of Dramatic Realism 2003; (p. 27-79)
Section III of this chapter is entitled 'Alienating Naturalism : Louis Nowra's Dramatury'.
A Land's Allegiance : Functions and Representations of Landscape in Post-Colonial Theatres Eric Wagner , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Summer vol. 16 no. 3 2009; (p. 569-589)
Focuses on the different uses of landscapes in Nowra's Inside the Island and in The Hungry Earth by South African playwright Maishe Maponya,
"Speaking the Formula of Abjection" : Hybrids and Gothic Discourses in Louis Nowra's Novels Gerry Turcotte , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , September vol. 36 no. 3 1991; (p. 61-72) Peripheral Fear : Transformations of the Gothic in Canadian and Australian Fiction 2009; (p. 165-180)
Nowra On Another Winner David Nethercote , 1988 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 29 June 1988; (p. 30)
Louis Nowra Candida Baker (interviewer), 1989 single work biography interview
— Appears in: Yacker 3 : Australian Writers Talk About Their Work 1989; (p. 236-258)
Last amended 5 Sep 2022 11:50:01
Settings:
  • Far West NSW, New South Wales,
  • 1910s
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