A poignant drama centred on Jeanne, a homesick French war bride and her shell-shocked husband battling hardship and prejudice in a drought-stricken Mallee town.
The Touch of Silk
2011
2011
9508264
2011
single work
radio play
A poignant drama centred on Jeanne, a homesick French war bride and her shell-shocked husband battling hardship and prejudice in a drought-stricken Mallee town.
This play was included on the Playwright's Advisory Board's list of recommended Australian plays.
Source: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-713525848/view?partId=nla.obj-713536184#page/n8
1928: Playhouse Theatre, Melbourne; 3 (World Premiere) and 5-8 November
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204241472
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204131444
1929: Turret Theatre, Milson's Point, NSW; 24 October (Sydney Premiere) - November
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/225156821
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16595742
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16595922
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/223501421
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/180834842
1929: The Bohemia Theatre, Brisbane; 8 (Queensland Premiere) - 9 November
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/21472687
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/21479785
1930: The Australia, Angas Street, Adelaide; 24, 28 and 31 May
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/30485589
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/73805061
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/73810223
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/30484050
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/73803642
1932: Princess Theatre, Melbourne; 3-4 August
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/242974344
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/203792898
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/243041350
1934: Soviet Union
Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128852033
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/137006481
1936: Princess Theatre, Brisbane; 3, 10 and 17 October
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205446130
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/97972190
1937: Perth; 14-17 April
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/58821995
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/41294730
1939: 161 Forbes St, Sydney; 27 May
Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17588665
1948: Stow Hall, Adelaide; 19-21 July
Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/43775384
1952: Williamstown, Victoria; 22-24 August
Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/70704961
1985: Adelaide Festival Centre Playhouse, Adelaide
Source: https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/docview/1438407117?accountid=14723
There have been numerous amateur productions in Australia since 1928, the details of some remain untraced.
First professional production:
1976: Sydney; 25 September
Betty Roland (1903-1996), a little-known figure in Australian literary circles, was a prolific storyteller. Whilst there are few zones of literature into which she did not venture between the late 1920s and 1990, Roland is perhaps best remembered as a dramatist. Her Australian outback melodrama, The Touch of Silk, was first performed by the Melbourne Repertory Company in 1928, and is still produced today. Reviewers of the time described the play as ‘a beautiful and abiding piece’ of theatre, and named Roland as Australia’s first genuine playwright. Silk’s bleak twists and far-reaching insights into authoritarian bourgeois morality, helped to make it the first among a number of successful radio serials for Roland and paved the way for later film scripts. Perhaps because she was a playwright rather than a novelist at the time, Roland has never been grouped with Australia’s celebrated women writers of the 1920s and 30s, such as Miles Franklin, Eleanor Dark and Katharine Susannah Prichard. Roland was, however, engaged in a burgeoning cosmopolitan print-culture that extended well beyond those years as well as Australian borders. (Author's introduction)
