New Work in Australian Theatre Writing, Jan 22, 2000

New Work in Australian Theatre Writing: themes, content and style

Writer: Kate Herbert

Jan 22, 2000

It has always been the responsibility of artists to reflect and critique the society in which we live. Playwrights observe our political, historical and psychological behaviour, often with devastating accuracy.

Theatre, it may be argued, is in the vanguard of social change. Some argue that radical theatre merely reflects change immediately after it has occurred.

In Eastern Europe, writers were compelled to disguise their political concerns. In order not to be arrested for treason, they buried their arguments for social change within allegories. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Eastern bloc artists were left with no beast of conservatism to fight. Theatre companies disintegrated.

Last year, nine years after the Berlin Wall came down, the leftist Berliner Ensemble, fonded by Bertolt Brecht, closed its doors. The older artists just stopped wanting to fight.

So what are the themes and styles that are preoccupying our own playwrights in this rapidly changing world? It seems that the future, the economy, technology, feminism, history, families and relationships are on the top of our playwrights’ lists of topics.

Kate Cherry, Associate Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, suggests there is a plethora of styles but she observes three main themes prevalent in new writing by major playwrights.

Firstly, Cherry observes writers "re-examining our place in Asia". Louis Nowra's Language of the Gods set in Indonesia, queries the impact of Dutch colonisation. Adam May's Rising Fish Prayer criticises Australia's role in New Guinea

Secondly, Cherry sees writers "examining the effects of economic rationalism and what happens if our world becomes more technological." The corporatisation of universities features in Hannie Rayson's play, Life After George. In Woman at the Window, Alma de Groen postulates a world in which poetry is a dangerous but marketable commodity.

Finally, says Cherry, playwrights are questioning "what it is to be in a post-modern family ... and how families are breaking down and re-forming" into non-traditional groups.

"Is it mum, grandpa and children?", Cherry asks. The Sick Room by Stephen Sewell, Burnt Piano by Justin Fleming and Joanna Murray-Smith's Nightfall, all attempt to penetrate the dark morass which is the family in crisis.

In the first, a daughter dies, the second a mother obsesses about a famous man while ignoring her child's needs, and in Nightfall, parents struggle with their daughter's accusations of incest.

Liz Jones, Artistic Director of La Mama describes the content in fringe writers' work similarly. She sees many new writers expressing "concerns about the future (and) what kind of society we want."

They ask, Jones says, "How a community relates to its history, how the future relates to the past, how we can have a caring sharing society, how the personal relates to the technological."

Sam Sejavka's Eaters of Filth challenges our obsession with youth and longevity. Raimondo Cortese, in Features of Blown Youth, examines the inner-urban angst of young people as does Christos Tsiolkas in Viewing Blue Poles.

Jones also sees "a strong feminist thrust which is not overt... Both men and women are considering the position of women in history". A few years ago, according to Jones, women were writing about relationships and doing solo shows.

"They are writing more broadly now, which is a statement of their confidence. They are not writing just for themselves now and not just for women."

Tom Healy, Artistic Associate at Playbox Theatre, sees two categories of styles in the unsolicited plays arriving at Playbox.

"palys by young writers in their 20's to early 30's, have a filmic influence, are naturalistic in style, with chopped up scenes, out of order but not abstract.". Their content, observes Healy, is often "grungey, drug-ridden, nihilistic, expressing a high level of despair."

The other prevalent style Healy describes as "aren't we quirky". situation-based naturalism.

The younger writers are not focussed on the political, Healy and Jones agrees. Whereas established playwrights such as Nowra, Hall, Rayson and Williamson, investigate political issues.

The major playwrights are also using naturalistic dialogue accompanied by broader metaphorical stories visions and language Healy believes that "the prevailing critical attitude is that naturalism is somehow less worthy than the larger landscape." 

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Healy sees four of the major plays in the Playbox 1999 season,

as having "a sense of disease.... They reflect a fractured and uncertain society."

Tom Consadine at MTC, also reads unsolicited plays. Many, by middle-class, middle-aged white writers, voice concerns with aboriginality and reconciliation.

This is also true of Return to the Brink by Rodney Hall. It has elements of naturalism in the Australian historical and political landscape. It investigates the Mile creek massacre.

The other area that is very successful is drawing on television comedy. Secret Bridesmaid's Wedding by Elizabeth Coleman is a very funny situation comedy.

The content of our new work seems mainly concerned with social change and has a distressed rather than joyous quality. We are riddled with questions about the rightness of our journey into the 21st century.

Perhaps we need more Secret Bridesmaid's Weddings, which is a comic island in a sea of pain. I mean, you've gotta laugh!

By Kate Herbert