avant-garde theatre in Australia, 1965-1985

409 Pages·2012·8.75 MB·English

University of Wollongong
Research Online
University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections
1996
When the way out was in: avant-garde theatre in
Australia, 1965-1985
Adrian John Guthrie
University of Wollongong
Recommended Citation
Guthrie, Adrian John, When the way out was in: avant-garde theatre in Australia, 1965-1985, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Faculty of
Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 1996. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/1762
Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the
University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW
Library: [email protected]

WHEN THE WAY OUT WAS IN:
AVANT-GARDE
THEATRE IN AUSTRALIA
1965 -1985
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the
requirements of the award of the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
from
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG
by
ADRIAN JOHN GUTHRIE, MCA (Wollongong)
FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS
1996
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to many people who have assisted me, especially my supervisors Professor
Ron Pretty who has been a patience guide throughout, and Professor Susan Rowley who
was a provocative sounding-board at an earlier stage.
Errol Bray and Howard Stanley conducted interviews on my behalf and helped to place at
the centre of this study a set of authentic voices from the theatre of this period. Jan
Wawrzyhczak kindly allowed me to use the transcripts of interviews he had made with
former members of the APG. All those interviewed gave their valuable time, and trusted me
with their recollections. I thank you all. Geoffrey Milne also kindly sent me some notes on
La Mama.
For help in directing me towards original documentation my thanks go to Paul Bentley and
the staff at the Dennis Wolanski Library and to Frank Van Straten and Sally Fisher at the
Victorian Performing Arts Museum, to Tony Marshall at the LaTrobe Library and to
Francis Love at the Australia Council Library.
Early in the research I was assisted by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University
of Western Sydney Macarthur. Several colleagues at Macarthur also gave me valuable
research material, notably Dr Francis de Groen, Anita Apelis and Dr Gaye Gleeson. Dr
Gaynor McDonald gave valued advice and encouragement.
While doing research in Melbourne, my brother, Robin and his wife, Ruth, housed me and
generally looked after me, and Natalie Bate lent me her car. (Support for research sounds
here like support for the arts!). Thanks.
Above all, my efforts have been supported by my wife and children: Liliana Licina has her
own theatre credits and together we have Rhys, Imogen and Cynthia who are our best
productions by far. Although Liliana may have feared me lost to the brazen IBM in my
study, it is with her that I have parented this other, troublesome offspring, the manuscript
before you now.
Abstract
The advent of modem and postmodern theatre in Australia in the years 1965 to 1985 was
stimulated by increased communication and travel between Australia and the rest of the
world and this reflected international trends associated with youth culture and the counter
culture. Conservative discouragement of modem theatre in Australia was overcome by
broadly-based support for 'alternative' cultural activity in this period. The international
model of the theatre experiment and the theatre laboratory were widely influential in
Australia, as was the practice of the theatre workshop. These were key means of the
production of performances within modem theatre and laid the ground for the reflection of
feminist, poststructuralist and formalist discourses in the postmodern theatre of the
nineteen-eighties in Australia. The college and university sector were vital in providing
environments for the emergence of an Australian theatre. A nationalist theatre emerged
from the anti-establishment and anti-colonial alternative theatres and was rapidly transferred
to the mainstages of the state theatre companies.
Abbreviations used
ACAR Australia Council Annual Report 1977-1978, 1978-9, then published
annually for the calendar year.
ADS Australasian Drama Studies, (1982-), edited Veronica Kelly and Richard
Fotheringham, University of Queensland.
AETT Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust
APG Australian Performing Group
M TC Melbourne Theatre Company
M W TG Melbourne Women's Theatre Group
nd no date
np no pagination
N SW New South Wales
NTA New Theatre Australia (1987-1989), edited James Waites, (Paul McGillick),
Kings Cross: New Theatre Australia Publications.
PAYBA Performing Arts Year Book of Australia volumes 1-6, Sydney: Showcast
Publications, 1977 - 1982, various editors. [From 1976 to 1979 PAYBA
was published the following year. For example PAYBA 1976, was published
in 1977. There was no volume titled, PAYBA 1980. PAYBA 1981 and
1982 list activities of the previous years, 1980 and 1981, respectively. In this
study PAYBA are refered to by title, not presumed publication date.]
pu page unknown
S MH Sydney Morning Herald, published by John Fairfax & Sons, Sydney.
TA Theatre Australia (1976 -1981), edited Robert Page, Mayfield, New South
Wales.
W OD Writings On Dance, edited Elizabeth Dempster, Sally Gardner, Anne
Thompson, Jude Walton, Collingwood: Writing On Dance, from 1987.
Contents
Introduction
Introduction 1
Definitions 9
Background 17
Methodology 23
Part One: Becoming Modern...
Modernism suppressed in the theatre in Australia (before 1965) 30
Struggles to re-place the colonial centre (1960-1970) 40
Modern ensembles, incipient nationalism (1959-1966) 53
National spaces for modern Australian theatre (1965-1969) 62
Ecstatic alternatives: modern 'tribes' (1968-1972) 76
The new theatre & 'The New Left' (1970-1981) 90
Theatre laboratories: modern mean of production (1970-1979) 111
The modern larrikin: a post-colonial stage (1970-1986) 130
Part Two: Reverses in Marginality...
Going beyond the established centre... 146
Margins of language 174
Gendered marginality: women's theatre 190
State controlled alternatives 206
Marginal centres: the embodiment of modern theatre 218
Part Three: Bodies of postmodernism
Bodies in space: visual theatre 239
Bodies in suspense: art performed 256
Bodies in motion: urban theatres 269
Conclusion 288
Notes 310
Bibliography 352
Introduction
Introduction
The proposition
The influences which supported the adoption of modern theatre and postmodern theatre
in Australia in the period 1965 to 1985 provided a framework for the articulation of a
diversity of representations of Australian-ness and a plurality of Australian voices. The
international social flux expressed in the radicalisation of youth culture, the counter
culture and the New Left vitalised avant-garde theatre practice and, in Australia, this
converged with a reaffirmation of nationalism. These cultural mechanisms shifted the neo-
colonial constraints on Australian theatre and allowed cosmopolitan and contemporary
theatre (as defined on page 14) to become established in Australia.
The New: Radical, Experimental and Avant-garde
The intention in this thesis is to describe a major, but largely unrecorded, section of new
Australian theatre from 1965 to 1985, out of which have come many of the defining
characteristic of Australian theatre as it now is practiced and understood.
I am setting out to make a straightforward historical account of a very un-straightforward
category of work, which is, nonetheless, largely self-defining. The makers of the work used
labels that - with only a very few expectations, discussed later - signal their inclusion in this
category of new work. These labels were clear markers, but, as is frequently the problem
with critical terms, the meaning and application shifted and contained contradictions. Such
contradictions in the way key terms were used were characteristic of this shifting period
between modernism and postmodernism. There are also contradictions in the values of
science and mysticism (discussed on page 5), notions of success and failure (page 6) and
the responsibility taken by individuals and groups collectively (pages 5, 8 and throughout).
Above all - and foundational to this thesis - there was a characteristic contradiction between
the impulse towards inclusiveness and the exclusion of a non-coterie audience (usually the
1
(usually the middle-class), at whose expense work was often directed in an active attack.
That which was not of the moment, the old fashioned and the past itself became the enemy,
as it had become for the historical avant-gardes.1 Rosalind Krauss (1986: 157) has noted
the "many guises" of the avant-garde artist, pointing to the concept of originality as the
apparently common thread that she then takes further, commenting that the Futurists saw
themselves within a "parable of absolute self-creation." It is a "metaphor referring not so
much to formal invention as to sources of life. The self as origin is safe from contamination
by tradition..." This conception of the original present opposed to the past, describes a
significant element in the culture of the later twentieth century, which is also found manifest
in the counter culture, rock and roll and experimental theatre. It is ironic that, in itself, this
concept became a tradition.
The period
The period 1965 to 1985 was marked by major changes in Australian society and cultural
life. If the preceding decade, 1955 to 1964, produced a growing number of instances of
modem theatre and the first modem Australian vernacular theatre to be acclaimed, it was
still a promise rather than a fulfilment of a modem Australian theatre. Major contributors
to modern theatre in Australia, Barry Humphries and Ray Lawler both went to England to
prove their mettle in this earlier period, and, in the neo-colonial manner, they stayed. This
suggests the potential shift which was to occur in the following decade when artists stayed
in Australia (some even returned from overseas) and prospered. A viable modem national
theatre grew, catalysed by active avant-garde theatre. The avant-garde theatre challenged
the conservative mainstream theatre and prompted change. The two were mutually
dependent in their historical and critical emergence.
A national theatre in an international context
The theatre in the years 1965 to 1985 in Australia was exposed to a period of dynamic
social change. Advocates of the new Australian plays described them, at the time, as an
'indigenous' flowering of national theatre that was not beholden to anywhere else.
However, this study will argue that Australian theatre in this period was deeply influenced
by a number of currents in the international cultural environment that were expressed in
avant-garde theatre. These included the emergence of youth culture, music, and the
2