Historical Overview of Theatre in Australia

The Australian Continent

• modern, industrialized nation on largely unpopulated continent • seven states, territories • only island continent • only continent to be occupied by single nation • population hugs seaboard; interior is mostly desert (80% of country in arid or semiarid zones)

Australia and New Zealand

Aboriginal Australia

• ancestors of the Aborigines arrived on the continent at least 65,000 70,000 years ago • from South Indonesia during the last ice age • over time, separated into distinct tribal groups with their own languages and traditions • subsistence husbandry

Kinship, Religion, and the Land • over this long period, tribal lands were integrated into a complex set of religious beliefs and practices that governed all aspects of Aboriginal life • believed that physical structure of tribal territory embodied ancient spiritual entities that preserved and protected the land and its people • since the land was a physical expression of spirit ancestors, and the spirits were progenitors of the Aborigines, land and people were connected in mutually dependent relationship • land central to sense of personal identity; myths of “Dreamtime”

Uluru (Ayers Rock)

European Exploration

•

Terra Australis Incognita

• 17C Dutch exploration: in 1642 Abel Tasman named Australia “New Holland” • initial reports unfavorable • 1770 James Cook annexed east coast territory on behalf of King George III of England, named it “New South Wales”

Convict Transportation 1788-1868 • 1776 Britain’s North American colonies declared independence • Britain could no longer send convicts to America • overflowing prisons • in the 1780s it was suggested that Britain could use New South Wales as a prison • transportation for seven years, 10 years, or life

The Australian Penal Colony

• in January 1788 the first shipload of convicts arrived in Botany Bay • founded settlement named Sydney • life was very difficult for early convict settlers: soil infertile, food scarce, sickness rife • eventually learned how to survive; convicts who finished their “lags” became free settlers

Colonial Expansion

• Lachlan Macquarie became Governor of the colony in 1810 • number of free settlers increased markedly • exploration inland • development of towns, roads, public buildings • pastoral wealth; gold discovered in 1850s • convict transportation ceased in 1868

What about the Aborigines?

• 18C approx. 600,000 - one million Aborigines • huge cultural gap between colonizers and colonized • Aborigines considered to be “rural pests” • opposing notions of land ownership and use:

terra nullius

• two centuries of appalling economic and cultural disadvantage

The Stolen Generation

• as a result of murder, dispossession, sickness, Aboriginal population plummeted • c.1900 Europeans assumed that Aborigines were dying out • non-full-blood children forcibly removed from families, placed in institutions to learn European values and trades • expected to breed with other “half castes” or whites and ultimately eliminate the Aboriginal blood line • loss of identity, mistreatment

History of Australian Theatre

Convict Theatre 1788-1840 • convict theatre fueled by late Georgian craze for amateur theatricals • instigated by convicts • first play = George Farquhar’s

The Recruiting Officer,

June 4 1789 • 1796 = Sydney’s first theatre, managed by Robert Sidaway • convict performances sustained until c.1840

19C Colonial Theatre

• similar trends to other colonial settlements: melodrama, musicals, comedy, domestic drama, farces, and other “light theatre” • bushranger plays • literary-historical drama in verse, based on historical drama of the 18C (Addison, Racine), also Shakespeare; escapist

Towards an “Australian” Theatre 1900-1950

• call for “indigenous” Australian drama • influence of realism, and Independent Theatres overseas • rise of repertory groups, “authors’ theatres,” e.g. Australian Theatre Society, Adelaide Repertory Theatre • still characterized by amateurism, lacked widespread national support

Postcolonial Influences Post-1950

• • 1950s = theatre subsidization • Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

(1955) and the Australian audience • new era of sustained professionalism in management, production, and acting associated with the Australian play • out of this new creative environment = 1960s new dramatists, artists, experimenting with new forms

Aboriginal Theatre, 1970-2005

• 1960s organized Aboriginal civil rights movement • 1971 Kevin Gilbert’s

The Cherry Pickers

performed • 1970s-80s collective initiatives; Black Theatre Groups • 1989

Bran Nue Dae =

turning point in Aboriginal theatre • 1990s social, political change • more creative control, intense and high-profile activity; women writers; Indigenous Theatre Groups; writing as resistance, also reconciliation