Twentieth-century Australian drama
12 points * Second semester * Clayton
The subject deals with a wide range of the work of Australian playwrights of the last one hundred years. While the seminar program will focus on critical approaches to the prescribed plays, it will be concerned as well with a number of issues beyond the individual texts: the patterns of preoccupations which the plays reflect and the ideologies and conventions to which they are related; the theatrical models, both local and international, to which the plays may refer; the empowering and disabling influences of a consciousness of tradition, and the cultural assumptions on which they are based; and the ways in which the playwrights have shaped or adapted images of Australian identity. The subject aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to the history of Australian theatre in the period and to the work of a number of its most prominent writers, but that properly involves attention to their audiences, and to processes of textual transmission in the theatre which are not culture-specific at all. For further details see the entry for ENH4820 (Twentieth-century Australian drama).