The Club
( dir. Bruce Beresford
)
Adelaide
:
South Australian Film Corporation
,
1980
Z384017
1980
single work
film/TV
Volatile relationships affect the success of an Australian Rules football club when the coach, a former star player, tries to stop big business taking over the management and training of his team. His aggressive resistance leads to his loss of control of the club.
Produced as The Players in the United States.
First performed a the Russell Street Theatre in Melbourne on 24 May 1977.
Director: Rodney Fisher.
In 2018, 25A presented an all-female, three-actor version of the play at Belvoir's Downstairs Theatre, 7-22 December 2018.
Director: Tessa Leong.
Cast: Jude Henshall, Louisa Mignone, and Ellen Steele.
In 2019, the State Theatre Company of South Australia presented the above version (all-female, three-actor), produced by isthisyours? and Insite Arts. Space Theatre, 5-20 April 2019.
Director: Tessa Leong.
Designer: Renate Henschke.
Composer and Sound Designer: Catherine Oates.
Cast including Louisa Mignone and Ellen Steele.
'2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the opening up of relations between Australia and the People’s Republic of China. When he became prime minister in 1972, Gough Whitlam sent the first ambassador to China (Dr Stephen Fitzgerald), and in his term of office established support for artists’ exchanges from the Australia Council. The Australian Ballet visited China in 1980, the first major ballet company to tour since the Cultural Revolution. The touring of China by Australian theatre, opera and dance companies has flourished since then, particularly over the last decade, and Australian spoken-word drama has featured in the relationship between the two countries since 1983. Since the 1980s, the work of the New Wave dramatists has captured the interest of Chinese audiences over a sustained period beyond the years of the New Wave itself. The theatre has, in some respects, provided a respite from the rigours of realpolitik and most importantly a means of genuine interaction between ordinary Australians and Chinese citizens who make up the audiences. This article documents the take-up of the New Wave drama in China, and the legacy of the relationships created in this formative period of Australian theatre in its international context.' (Publication abstract)
'First performed in 1977, The Club ranks among the best of David Williamson’s extensive dramatic repertoire. Set in an unnamed AFL football club, its brisk farce and pungent satire captures the niggle, backbiting and shameless hypocrisy of male boardroom culture.' (Introduction)
'The Club - the renowned David Williamson play that has for many come to act as shorthand for masculiinity in 1970s Australia - may seem an unlikely choice for an all-woman theatre company, but that is in many ways what drew isthisyours? director Tessa Leong to the script.'
In David Williamson's 1977 play The Club, the action takes place in a single room, through which traipse combinations of club president, committeeman, general manager, coach, captain and star recruit, conniving and conspiring. Big money and commercial pragmatism threaten to uproot personal loyalties and ancient ways. ‘I want to turn all those photographs around so they don’t have to look down on this shameful scene,’ says one character, who, it turns out, protests too much.' (Introduction)
