y separately published work icon Modern Short Plays anthology   drama  
Issue Details: First known date: 1951... 1951 Modern Short Plays
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Contains: The Land of Heart's Desire / by W. B. Yeats - Riders To the Sea / by J. M. Synge - The Proposal / by Anton Chekhov - Interior / by Maurice Maeterlinck - Birds of a Feather / by J. O. Francis - The Drovers / by Louis Esson - The Carrier Pigeon / by Eden Phillpotts - Royal Favour / by Laurence Housman - Campbell of Kilmhor / by J. A. Ferguson - Ile / by Eugene O'Neill - The Odyssey of Runyon Jones / by Norman Corwin - Spoiled Darlings / by Edmund Barclay - Great Inheritance / by Gwen Meredith.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Sydney, New South Wales,:Angus and Robertson , 1951 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Great Inheritance, Gwen Meredith , single work radio play (p. 239-258)
Spoiled Darlings, Edmund Barclay , single work radio play humour romance

Described in contemporary radio guides as 'a romantic comedy of other days.'

The Drovers : A Play in One Act, Louis Esson , Frank Brown , single work drama

"Life in the bush is hot, hard and not for the faint-hearted. Under the extreme sun of Northern frontier country a pack of itinerant drovers thrive in the land they call home. A freak stampede brings ‘Briglow’ Bill and his mates face to face with mortality and their masculinity and mateship are tested. All the while, Pidgeon, a young Aboriginal boy, watches the white fellows. He sees something the drovers cannot speak of and, for Briglow, this silence is as stifling yet as familiar and as comforting as the heat that surrounds them all.

The Drovers is a bush drama that is rich with tension, grim stoicism and heightened masculinity of the, notably, all-male characters. Clipped sentences and straight-talking speak of the no-nonsense attitude necessary to survive in the remote bush of the 1920s. The play draws us to the campfire where, in light and heat, we see the relationships the drovers experience: between each other, between white man and Aboriginal man, between man and land and, finally, the ultimate and unavoidable relationship: a man’s connection with life and death."

Source.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Other Formats

Works about this Work

Short Views R. G. H. , 1953 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 14 no. 1 1953; (p. 49-59)

— Review of Modern Short Plays 1951 anthology drama
Short Views R. G. H. , 1953 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 14 no. 1 1953; (p. 49-59)

— Review of Modern Short Plays 1951 anthology drama
Last amended 13 Jul 2007 12:04:15
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