Historical Overview of Theatre in Australia

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Historical Overview of Theatre in Australia
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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)

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Australia and New Zealand
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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

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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

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Uluru (Ayers Rock)
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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

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Convict Transportation 1788-1868

• 1776 Britains 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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History of Australian Theatre Convict Theatre
1788-1840

• convict theatre fueled by late-Georgian craze for
  amateur theatricals
• instigated by convicts
• first play George Farquhars The Recruiting
  Officer, June 4 1789
• 1796 Sydneys first theatre, managed by Robert
  Sidaway
• convict performances sustained until c.1840

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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

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Towards an Australian Theatre1900-1950

• 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

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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

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Aboriginal Theatre, 1970-2005

• 1960s organized Aboriginal civil rights movement
• 1971 Kevin Gilberts 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