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Paper: 07; Module No: 33: E Text (A) Personal Details: Role Name Affiliation Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee University of Hyderabad Paper Coordinator: Prof. Suchorita Chattopadhyay Jadavpur University Coordinator for This Module: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee University of Hyderabad Content Writer: Sanchayita Paul Chakraborty Bankura University Content Reviewer: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee University of Hyderabad Language Editor: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee University of Hyderabad (B) Description of Module: Items Description of Module Subject Name: English Paper No & Name: 07; Canadian, Australian and South Pacific Literatures in English Module No& Title: 33; Australian Play by a Writer of European Descent: David Williamson – Don’s Party (1971) Pre-requisites: Basic understanding of English Objectives: Introduction to the Australian Play by the writers of European Descent. Introduction to David Williamson as a leading Australian dramatist. Discussion of major plays of David Williamson. Specific focus on Don’s Party. Themes and dramatic style of David Williamson’s plays. Key Words: Australian uniqueness, naturalism, Australian Theatre, social documentation. 1 Content of the Module: This module aims to introduce the Australian plays by the writers of European descent. It will provide a detailed discussion of David Williamson as the Australian playwright of European descent, The module will focus on David Williamson’s famous play, Don’s Party (1971) in specific. It will further analyse the themes and dramatic style of Williamson’s plays. 1. Introduction When in 1788 the First Fleet came to Australia with a bunch of convicts, not only the Europeans set foot in the unknown land, but the European cultural tradition also found a new land to proliferate. European theatrical tradition also came with the First Fleet and the following year saw the performance of one European play in the Australian soil. The convicts performed George Farquhar’s play The Recruiting Officer in 1789 and it became the first formal production of a play. It was an extraordinary situation when the Australian theatre was established. Australian theatre evolved to attain its distinctive character after the Australian Federation in 1901 and the Australianness was eminent in the plays like Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection (1912) and Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955) which portrayed resolutely Australian character and the struggle of the Australian people for survival in the Australian landscape. With the plays of David Williamson, Barry Oakley, Jack Hibberd, Alan Seymour and Nick Enright after the 1970s, Australian theatre witnessed a new wave. Among the Australian playwrights of this era, David Williamson attained an unprecedented eminence both in the national and international stage. 2. David Williamson- The Playwright Sandra Bates in the ‘Foreword’ to David Williamson’s book Collected Plays writes, So what is it that makes David’s success unique in Australia’s theatre history? I believe it has a lot to do with his ability to see and understand Australia’s current circumstances, our society’s circumstances right here right now, indeed to be ahead of what is current so that by the time his plays are produced approximately two years after he has first had the ideas for a play, at production time, the play is absolutely timely. This ability to foresee what is likely to happen is why he is such a theatre genius. 2 David Keith Williamson began his dramatic career as a writer of short comic sketches and satirical portraits for Melbourne University Union’s Theatre, Monash University student reviews and the Emerald Hill Theatre Company in the 1960s. His formal study of the social psychology enriched his creative vision and his penetrating observation of the social and cultural mindscape of the Australian middle class. In 1967, his work as a professional playwright began in The La Mama Theatre Company and The Pram Factory. His first full- length play, The Coming of Stork, which is to become a successful film, Stork, was performed in The La Mama Theatre Company in 1970. But Don’s Party (1971) and The Removalist (1971) gave him fame as a playwright in the 1970s. This was followed by Williamson’s prolific outpourings as a playwright in the plays like Jugglers Three (1972), What If You Died Tomorrow? (1973), The Department (1975), A Handful of Friends (1976), and The Club (1977). Williamson’s dramatic oeuvre is tinged with his naturalistic representations of the Australian life with a mixture of local vernacular. Social problems and a keen insight into the social interaction characterize his plays. The Removalist is regarded as one of the representative work in the world of Australian drama. It presents a classic rendering of the Australian authoritarianism through a portrayal of a young police man’s initiation to his duty and how his first day at work becomes an experience of violence and law enforcement. On the other hand, Don’s Party charts the hope and disillusionment of Don and Kath who hoped for a change of government during the 1969 election and saw the emergence of the Conservatives in the power at the end. Both of these two plays blend biting humour with critical and often satirical understanding of politics, violence and sexism. Williamson is dealing with marital tensions in his play Jugglers Three, which is adapted later in the play, Third World Blues. Autobiographical moments can be found in the play What If You Died Tomorrow? which is centered on a novelist’s treatment of success. The Department and The Club delve deep into the social dynamics of bureaucracies. Williamson also wrote comedy of manners like The Perfectionist (1983) and Emerald City (1987). In Williamson’s Dead White Males (1995), William Shakespeare appeared as a chief character in conversation with his modern day scholars while Williamson’s another play Heretic (1996) deals with the conflict between the anthropologist Margaret Mead and Derek Freeman over the nature of humanity. Other plays of David Williamson are Travelling 3 North (1980), Top Silk (1989), Money & Friends (1992), Brilliant Lies (1993), Up for Grabs (2001), and Influence (2005). 3. Don’s Party This 1971 play was based on the 1969 Federal Election in Australia. The political event is used to trigger off a detailed commentary on the hopes and disappointment, party and pain of group of men and women which finally ends in the emergence not only of the Liberal Party as the victorious one but also in the rise of the conservative social and ethical values. When David Williamson was asked why he wrote the play, he replied, One was, what had happened to Don and his friends? The 20-somethings of Don’s Party were starting to ask themselves how their lives were going to pan out. Would their hopes and dreams be realised? Forty years later they know exactly how things have panned out – who has succeeded and who has failed and what criteria do you use to evaluate such questions in any case? Secondly, what has happened to Australia politically and socially in the intervening years? How has the landscape changed? 4. The Plot Don Henderson throws a party on the night of the Federal Election in 1969. He is a Australian Labor Party supporter. The play is set in suburban Melbourne where Don is living with his wife, Kath and his baby son. The party is thrown in anticipating the win of the Australian Labor Party without the consent of Don’s wife, Kath who eventually has to be engaged in hosting the party. The guests in the party include Don’s university mentor, Mal and his unhappy wife, Jenny; Cooley who is sex-obsessed and a womanizer along with his present teenager girlfriend, Susan; Don’s dentist friend, Evan and his wife, Kerry who is beautiful and an artist and Simon and Jody who are Liberal supporters. The participants in the party are allegedly there to watch the vote counting in the television but their real purpose is to indulge in drinking, in expressing resentments against each- other, exposing their mid-life crisis, engaging into obscene sexual affairs while their women partners are gathering in the lounge room to talk about their children and their unsatisfactory sex lives. With the gradual movement of the play, it becomes clear to Don and his guests that the Labor Party is not winning and it causes dismay to the guests as most of them are supporting the 4 Labor Party. They have engaged in sly verbal attacks on each other after few pegs of drinks and drown themselves in sexual obscenity, disappointments in life and disrespect for their women. The women on the other hand express their utter dismay in their male companion’s treatment and share their tales of suffering. The disillusionments take the centre stage in the lives of Don and his companions in the party when the election night ends with the news of win of the Liberal Party bringing in the conservatism in the political and social landscape of Australia. 5. Critical Analysis Don’s Party has the primary effect of an exhilarating frankness ending up in drunken melancholy where the financial failures, sexual lewdness, secret behaviours of Don’s guests in his party are exposed. David Williamson brings the culture of English drawing room comedy in Don’s Party with the blending of the vernacular Australian. While talking about Don’s Party, he comments Australia's chauvinism, materialism, conservatism and its suburban conformity were put under the microscope, but even as I was savaging such tendencies in plays such as Don's Party it was apparent to me and to audiences that I found my country endearing as well as horrific - our black sardonic humour, our energy, our directness and our hatred of pretentiousness.