y separately published work icon Betty Can Jump single work   drama  
Issue Details: First known date: 1972... 1972 Betty Can Jump
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 1972
      .
      (Manuscript) assertion

Works about this Work

Betty Can Jump at the Pram Factory : the Radical 1970s Play That Built a Scene – and Changed Australia Kath Kenny , 2023 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 19 January 2023;

'Conceived at Helen Garner’s Fitzroy share house during the 70s, this women’s show upended the establishment – and reminds us why arts funding matters'

y separately published work icon Staging a Revolution : When Betty Rocked the Pram Kath Kenny , Perth : Upswell Publishing , 2022 25546109 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'In January 1972, five women took to the stage of Carlton’s Pram Factory to preview their women’s play Betty Can Jump. Claire Dobbin, Helen Garner, Evelyn Krape, Jude Kuring and Yvonne Marini mocked the ocker character beloved by Pram Factory playwrights, and performed monologues about men, sex, and how they felt “as a woman”. Directed by Kerry Dwyer and produced by the Carlton Women’s Liberation group, the play’s frank revelations stunned audiences and shocked the Pram Factory world.

'Set against a backdrop of moratorium marches, inner-city cafes and share houses, and the rising tide of sexual liberation and countercultural movements, Kath Kenny uses interviews and archival material to tell the story of Betty Can Jump. On the 50th anniversary of this ground-breaking play, she considers its ongoing impact on Australian culture, and asks why the great cultural renaissance of women’s liberation has been largely forgotten. She sets out her stake in this story, as a theatre reviewer today and as a child born into the revolutionary early 1970s. And she asks why feminism keeps getting stuck in mother-daughter battles, rethinking her own experience as a young feminist who clashed with Garner over the publication of The First Stone.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Friday Essay: ‘With Men I Feel like a Very Sharp, Glittering Blade’ – When 5 Liberated Women Spoke the Truth Kath Kenny , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 30 September 2022;

'There’s a climactic scene in Helen Garner’s third and latest diary where she describes tipping a box of her then husband’s cigars into a pot of soup, picking up a pair of scissors, slashing a straw hat that belongs to his lover and stuffing the pieces in his “ugly black suede shoes.”' (Introduction)

From Grotowski to Betty Can Jump Kerry Dwyer , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , October no. 71 2017; (p. 178-193)

'In Nancy, France, at the Centre for Theatre Training and Research, Kerry attended a workshop with Jerzy Grotowski, whose work at his Theatre Laboratory in Poland was exciting the European theatre world. Grotowski and his leading actors taught the international students their basic approach to actor training and dramaturgy. The work was intense, rigorous and spiritual, and had a profound effect on her. On her return to Melbourne, keen to share her discoveries of the intensity and power of Grotowski's work with colleagues from university theatre days, she found that they were engaged in fostering a new Australian theatre. It was 'Ocker' theatre with a decidedly male point of view and in no way sacred. Determined for women's voices to be heard, Kerry and a group of women created Betty Can Jump, a powerful, witty, provocative feminist theatre piece at the Pram Factory, partly in response also to Grotowski's question to her, 'Who are you?''  (Publication abstract)

Women's Theatre and the APG Clare Dobbin , Hilary Glow , 1984 single work interview
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 43 no. 1 1984; (p. 129-138)
Women's Theatre and the APG Clare Dobbin , Hilary Glow , 1984 single work interview
— Appears in: Meanjin , Autumn vol. 43 no. 1 1984; (p. 129-138)
From Grotowski to Betty Can Jump Kerry Dwyer , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , October no. 71 2017; (p. 178-193)

'In Nancy, France, at the Centre for Theatre Training and Research, Kerry attended a workshop with Jerzy Grotowski, whose work at his Theatre Laboratory in Poland was exciting the European theatre world. Grotowski and his leading actors taught the international students their basic approach to actor training and dramaturgy. The work was intense, rigorous and spiritual, and had a profound effect on her. On her return to Melbourne, keen to share her discoveries of the intensity and power of Grotowski's work with colleagues from university theatre days, she found that they were engaged in fostering a new Australian theatre. It was 'Ocker' theatre with a decidedly male point of view and in no way sacred. Determined for women's voices to be heard, Kerry and a group of women created Betty Can Jump, a powerful, witty, provocative feminist theatre piece at the Pram Factory, partly in response also to Grotowski's question to her, 'Who are you?''  (Publication abstract)

Friday Essay: ‘With Men I Feel like a Very Sharp, Glittering Blade’ – When 5 Liberated Women Spoke the Truth Kath Kenny , 2022 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 30 September 2022;

'There’s a climactic scene in Helen Garner’s third and latest diary where she describes tipping a box of her then husband’s cigars into a pot of soup, picking up a pair of scissors, slashing a straw hat that belongs to his lover and stuffing the pieces in his “ugly black suede shoes.”' (Introduction)

y separately published work icon Staging a Revolution : When Betty Rocked the Pram Kath Kenny , Perth : Upswell Publishing , 2022 25546109 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'In January 1972, five women took to the stage of Carlton’s Pram Factory to preview their women’s play Betty Can Jump. Claire Dobbin, Helen Garner, Evelyn Krape, Jude Kuring and Yvonne Marini mocked the ocker character beloved by Pram Factory playwrights, and performed monologues about men, sex, and how they felt “as a woman”. Directed by Kerry Dwyer and produced by the Carlton Women’s Liberation group, the play’s frank revelations stunned audiences and shocked the Pram Factory world.

'Set against a backdrop of moratorium marches, inner-city cafes and share houses, and the rising tide of sexual liberation and countercultural movements, Kath Kenny uses interviews and archival material to tell the story of Betty Can Jump. On the 50th anniversary of this ground-breaking play, she considers its ongoing impact on Australian culture, and asks why the great cultural renaissance of women’s liberation has been largely forgotten. She sets out her stake in this story, as a theatre reviewer today and as a child born into the revolutionary early 1970s. And she asks why feminism keeps getting stuck in mother-daughter battles, rethinking her own experience as a young feminist who clashed with Garner over the publication of The First Stone.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Betty Can Jump at the Pram Factory : the Radical 1970s Play That Built a Scene – and Changed Australia Kath Kenny , 2023 single work column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 19 January 2023;

'Conceived at Helen Garner’s Fitzroy share house during the 70s, this women’s show upended the establishment – and reminds us why arts funding matters'

Last amended 8 Jun 2012 09:53:30
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X