“Australian theatre reflects the changing artistic, social, political and personal issues and concerns of our nation.”
Theatre performance has existed in Australia for around 200 years and the subject of Drama has been taught since the 1970’s. This is with the exception of Aboriginal corroborees, a form of dance drama which have been around for around 40 000 years.
Australian theatre began officially on June 4th, 1789 with the production of ‘The Recruiting Officer’ months after the first fleet Arrived in Australia. The production was comedy that had been very successful in England. In Australia it was performed in a mud hut by convicts and had an audience of around sixty people. In the intermission things such as wheat, rum, tobacco and fowls were sold, as this was all that the convicts could afford. Theatre performance gained a new perspective in Australia in 1796 when Robert Sidaway, a convict, opened the first theatre in Australia, which seated 120 people and had an admission of one shilling. This theatre was closed due to pickpocketing and burglary, however another one was opened by Sidaway in 1800 though it did not last very long either.
The main focus of Australian theatre has been on bushrangers and convicts. For over a century stories of Michael Howe, who was shot and killed in Van Dieman’s land in 1818, have been the types of stories that Australian plays have been written about. The very first play in Australian theatre was written by David Burn and was entitled ‘The Bushrangers’. In 1928 it was performed in Edinburgh and Scotland and was later published and performed in Australia in 1971.
The Theatre Royal is marked as the first permanent Australian theatre. It was opened in 1833 by Barnett Levey and had a seating capacity of 1000 people. It presented nearly 400 shows throughout its time, which consisted of mainly farces and melodramas, sometimes showcasing operas and plays written by Shakespeare. Similar to other countries, melodrama conquered Australian theatre throughout the 19th century and made up most of the plays, which were showcased in Australia between 1840 and 1870. The plays were often ones that had been successful in countries around the world that were then imported to Australia. They were often written in a way that is seen as cliché nowadays, focusing on stereotypical characters such as heroes and villains, often with tragic or dramatic events that were always resolved with a happy ending.
Most plays were imported however plays such as ‘The Currency Lass’ and ‘Hibernian Father’ are successful ones that were written by the convict Edward Geoghegan. Convicts such as James tucker created a comedy, which is known as ‘Jemmy Green’, which told a story that mirrored the ideas of convicts who had been brought to Australia and the misfortunes that they were faced with. Charles Harpur created a tragedy about a bushranger that was written as an imitation of the way in which Shakespeare had written his plays.
Australian plays quickly gained interest to many by the end of the nineteenth century however were often not performed in Australia soon after being written, as theatre managers did not want to stage them until they were first performed in London. However, plays such as ‘Forged’ by Arch Murray and ‘Colonial Experience’ by Walter Cooper became increasingly popular in Australia
‘All For Gold’, a play by R.C. Hopkins was able to tour Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand and became the first Australian play to be licensed in England by the Lord Chamberlain. Following the success of his first play, Hopkins went continued to write many plays, which had a similar reaction from the public. One of the producers and starts of many of Hopkins plays, Alfred Dampier, is known as one of the very few managers who were able to stage plays throughout the 1880’s and 90’s in Australia such as ‘For the Term of His Natural Life’. Other writers such as George Darrell had similar success with ‘The Sunny South’, a play that became very popular throughout Australia and England.
The producer of the largest number of plays in Australia at the time was J.C. Williamson who moved from America to Australia in 1879. Across Australia and New Zealand, his company staged many plays as well as employing 650 people, 180 of which were actors. The majority of his plays were written overseas, seeing much success in countries such as London.
By the twentieth century Australian theatre had become vastly popular, with the opening of five theatres in Sydney, five in Melbourne, two in Adelaide, two in Tasmania and three in Brisbane. Though it may have become successful overseas, Australia was still faced with the fact that Australian theater managers would not stage Australian plays. Australia saw an increased amount of plays that talked about life in the Australia when it officially became a nation in 1901.
Australian theatre continued to grow in popularity in countries around the world including England and Ireland. As ‘new realism’ became a topic of interest to playwrights such as Constantin Stanislavski, this inspired Australian writers to mimic this style in their own plays however these plays did not gain much success. ‘The Sentimental Bloke’ by C.J. Dennis and ‘On Our Own Selection’ by Steele Rudd were amongst some of the most popular plays in the twentieth century, which followed the style of light comedies. This style of drama was often popular as it used large amounts of exaggerations and caricature to provide humor for the audience.
Compared to England and America during the twentieth century, women had a very large role in Australian theatre as they provided new perspectives and ideas about Australian culture from their own experiences. Performances such as ‘The touch of Silk’, a story which talked about the attitudes of women in the 1920’s, became very popular in Australian theatre along with many other plays by Roland along with other female writers such as Catherine Shepard and Dymphna Cusack.
Two of the most significant plays in Australian theatre’s history include ‘Summer Locke Elliot’ by Rusty Bugles and ‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’ by Ray Lawler. These plays had much popularity and were acknowledged as a “coming of age” in the Australian Theatre world. As television became increasingly popular, by the 1960’s ABC began to broadcast plays on the television. Many playwrights also began to thrive in this decade, including Thomas Kenneally, Dorothy Hewett, Jack Hibberd and Patrick White who all wrote plays which tacked topics which were very dark and serious, bringing a new perspective to Australian theatre.
The 1970s and 1980s brought a major jump in the performance of Australian plays as well as the teaching of Drama in schools. As many new theatres were built, more companies were formed, many of which would perform vastly popular theatre, including Aboriginal theatre, which was becoming increasingly popular. As theatre began to expand this allowed many well known writers to continue to thrive as well as allowing new theatres with the interest in writing plays growing.
The twentieth century brought many large changes to Australian theatre as it enables playwrights to explore new concepts and ideas that were only seen in Australia as well as different forms of writing, giving Australian theatre an appeal that the rest of the world wanted to see. As the nations theatre grew it brought lots of diversity and truth to its plays that provided Australia with its own unique form of drama and plays that are recognized by countries all over the world.