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DOUBLE DIALOGUES

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Issue 11
Winter 2009
Enter The New Wave

Issue 11

Enter The New Wave

It’s Not Simple Stupid: Re-Reading Margaret Williams on New Wave Drama

Julian Meyrick
La Trobe University
This paper examines Margaret Williams' three well-known 1972 Meanjin articles on New Wave drama. It reads them retrospectively, against the overall achievements of the movement, to show the cogency and prescience of Williams' critique.

Political Lessons of the ‘New Wave’: Romeril’s The Floating World

Denise Varney
University of Melbourne
This paper reflects on research conducted twenty years ago into the APG that focused on the period 1969 to 1974. Working from the APG archives in the State Library, I analysed three of its productions: A Stretch of the Imagination, Don's Party and The Floating World.

Lygon Street Limbo: The Disabling Myth of the New Wave

Maryrose Casey (Monash University) & Jodi Gallagher (University of Melbourne)
The celebration of the New Wave in Australian theatre parallels and is closely allied to other celebrations within Australian culture such as Anzac Day. The assumption that the New Wave defined and expressed the Australian voice is almost universally acknowledged.

The experimental Jane Street seasons: Seeking the Australian play and finding Australian performances

Adrian Guthrie
University of South Australia
NIDA and the New South Wales Drama Foundation set up the Jane Street theatre to encourage playwrights by offering try-out productions with young actors and directors.

A Heterodox View From Sydney: Rex Cramphorn and the New Wave

Ian Maxwell
University of Sydney
For a three-year period from 1968, Rex Cramphorn wrote a series of reviews of Sydney theatre for the national news magazine, the Bulletin.

The Chapel Perilous: The Paradigm of Fertility Overshadowed by the Quest

Jasna Novakovic
Monash University
It is widely acknowledged that Dorothy Hewett borrowed the idea of The Chapel Perilous from the Arthurian romances reinvented by Tennyson and Eliot in rather different ways. What remains, however, unacknowledged in the discussion of Hewett's work is that Eliot took his key paradigm from Frazer.

Theatre of the Old Wave: Mona Brand’s On Stage Vietnam

Angela O'Brien
University of Melbourne
Mona Brand (1915 - 2007) wrote almost exclusively for the New Theatre, a radical amateur theatre company which began in 1935 and was associated with the 'old left' and the use of theatre 'as a weapon' in the struggle against capitalism.

The New Wave: A Brisbane Perspective: La Boite Theatre Company’s Distinctive Contribution

Dr Christine Comans
Queensland University of Technology
In 1967 Brisbane Repertory Theatre made a decision that was to change the city's cultural landscape in a significant and lasting way. Faced with crippling theatre rental costs, Brisbane Rep. found a realistic solution by converting one of its properties into a unique theatre.

Jack Hibberd’s White with Wire Wheels: Then and Now

Conference Transcript: Day 1, Session 1
Welcome to Enter the New Wave: 1967 to 1970 which celebrates the emergence of a dynamic Australian theatre movement. This is a very special theatre that we're sitting in: The Open Stage.

Enter the New Wave: Melbourne

Conference Transcript: Day 1, Session 2
In this session we are going to look at some of the diverse theatre activity that was happening during the time of White With Wire Wheels. They were extraordinarily generative years.

Jack Hibberd’s A Stretch of the Imagination

Conference Transcript: Day 1, Session 3
We shall begin our next session. I'm Paul Monaghan, and my role is to say very little. Our first speaker is Max Gillies, and there's a nice image up there of Max in A Stretch of the Imagination, by Jack Hibberd, which I'm sure some of you will recognise.

Aspects of the New Wave: Mona Brand, The Human Body (Sydney), APG (Melbourne), New Theatre and Peter King (1989)

Conference Transcript: Day 1, Session 4
Our session this afternoon is very diverse but all about what everyone insists on calling the New Wave. I think of it as the fourth wave. Angela O'Brien is going to be talking about the New Theatre and Mona Brand.

Discussion after a Performance/Reading of Alex Buzo’s Norm and Ahmed

Conference Transcript: Day 1, Session 5
I think in the context of the symposium and White With Wire Wheels and where we've been going, it would be nice to talk just a little bit before we go, about Alex Buzo and Norm and Ahmed. Does anybody have an immediate reaction?

Enter the New Wave: Sydney

Conference Transcript: Day 2, Session 1
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Judging by the size of the audience, this would be the conference about the New Wave [laughter]. My name is Julian Meyrick and I'm chairing this session.

Dorothy Hewett and The Chapel Perilous

Conference Transcript: Day 2, Session 3
I want to start by saying that this session was generated by the convenors seeing Suzanne Chaundy's production of Dorothy Hewett's The Chapel Perilous at La Mama recently.

John Romeril: ‘Still Here’

Conference Transcript: Day 2, Session 4
As I had anticipated John [Romeril] has been introduced and you all know who he is, although none of us know exactly how much he has done. It says in his biography that he is the author of eighty plays.

Closing remarks: Angela O’Brien

Conference Transcript: Day 2, Session 5
It's time to finish the conference as we're running out of time, and I want to thank a number of people who have been involved, but before I do, I would like to make one comment. What this conference has been about is really celebrating a history.

 

 

Centred around the University of Melbourne’s Student Union and Carlton’s La Mama Theatres, Australian theatre found a voice of its own in 1967. In 2007, to celebrate 40 years of Australian theatre, a restaging of Jack Hibberd’s seminal White With Wire Wheels was held at the University of Melbourne with an accompanying symposium.

The papers in this issue of Double Dialogues are the result of that symposium, covering topics that illuminate the reign of the ‘New Wave’ (1967-70), the social and political change of the late '60s, and the legacy of the ‘New Wave’ in Australian theatre history: the key productions, the plays and the writers.

 

Double Dialogues | Refereed Arts Journal | ISSN 1447-9591  
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