Cirrus@Austlit

How are masculinities enacted in Australian theatre? How do Australian playwrights depict masculinities in the present and the past, in the bush and on the beach, in the city and in the suburbs? How do Australian plays dramatise gender issues like father-son relations, romance and intimacy, violence and bullying, mateship and homosexuality, race relations between men, and men's experiences of war and migration?

Men at Play explores theatre's role in presenting and contesting images of masculinity in Australia. It ranges from often-produced plays of the 1950s to successful contemporary plays - from Dick Diamond's Reedy River, Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Richard Beynon's The Shifting Heart and Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year to David Williamson's Sons of Cain, Richard Barrett's The Heartbreak Kid, Gordon Graham's The Boys and Nick Enright's Blackrock.

The book looks at plays as they are produced in the theatre and masculinity as it is enacted on the stage. It is written in an accessible style for students and teachers in drama at university and senior high school. The book's contribution to contemporary debates about masculinity will also interest scholars in gender, race and sexuality studies, literary studies and Australian history. (Rodopi newsletter http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=AP+11)

'Whether catching Australian theatre during the 2000s or catching up now, this volume provides the reader with an overview of the decade. It reveals how Australian theatre continues to reflect the major political and social concerns of our time. Each contribution explores an important area of Australian performance so that the volume provides crucial background and insightful analysis for current theatre practice. The contributions cover political theatre, Indigenous theatre, playwrights concerned with cultural identity, key Shakespearean productions, the impact of funding and arts policy on theatre, dramaturgy and innovative projects, leading directors on rehearsal processes, theatre for young people, regional theatre including the Northern Territory, and physical theatre and Circus Oz. The book confirms the consolidation of previous artistic achievement over the decade and identifies the emergence of new trends and creative practices.' (Publication summary)

'This book about the work of actor director John Bell is essential reading for anyone interested in Australian theatre and in Shakespearean performance. Adrian Kiernander makes use of the Stage on Screen archive of Australian theatre with extensive video excerpts of performances, and lucidly explains how, for over five decades, Bell has revived and reinvented theatre in Australia with his interpretations of radical new drama and particularly his innovative approach to staging Shakespeare's plays. This scholarly book reveals why Bell deserves the reputation as a 'national living treasure' and a giant of the Australian theatre. It presents a perspective on recent history and national identity through the achievements of theatre and its evolution over time. From carnivalesque to circus, tragedy to farce, Bell has created theatre that is dynamic, vibrant and politically aware and that continues to challenge and excite audiences.' (Publication summary)

'In Australian Theatre after the New Wave, Julian Meyrick charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian theatre companies, the Paris Theatre (1978), the Hunter Valley Theatre (1976-94) and Anthill Theatre (1980-94). In the years following the controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam's Labor government in 1975, these 'alternative' theatres struggled to survive in an increasingly adverse economic environment. Drawing on interviews and archival sources, including Australia Council files and correspondence, the book examines the funding structures in which the companies operated, and the impact of the cultural policies of the period. It analyses the changing relationship between the artist and the State, the rise of a managerial ethos of `accountability', and the growing dominance of government in the fate of the nation's theatre. In doing so, it shows the historical roots of many of the problems facing Australian theatre today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In Acts of Resistance in Late-Modernist Theatre, Richard Murphet presents a close analysis of the theatre practice of two ground-breaking artists – Richard Foreman and Jenny Kemp – active over the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century. In addition, he tracks the development of a form of ‘epileptic’ writing over the course of his own career as writer/director. 

'Murphet argues that these three auteurs have developed subversive alternatives to the previously dominant forms of dramatic realism in order to re-think the relationship between theatre and reality. They write and direct their own work, and their artistic experimentation is manifest in the tension created between their content and their form. Murphet investigates how the works are made, rather than focusing upon an interpretation of their meaning. Through an examination of these artists, we gain a deeper understanding of a late modernist paradigm shift in theatre practice.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)