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Avant-Garde Theatre in Australia, 1965-1985 Adrian John Guthrie University of Wollongong

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Avant-Garde Theatre in Australia, 1965-1985 Adrian John Guthrie University of Wollongong University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 1996 When the way out was in: avant-garde theatre in Australia, 1965-1985 Adrian John Guthrie University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Guthrie, Adrian John, When the way out was in: avant-garde theatre in Australia, 1965-1985, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 1996. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/1762 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] WHEN THE WAY OUT WAS IN: AVANT-GARDE THEATRE IN AUSTRALIA 1965 -1985 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the award of the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by ADRIAN JOHN GUTHRIE, MCA (Wollongong) FACULTY OF CREATIVE ARTS 1996 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to many people who have assisted me, especially my supervisors Professor Ron Pretty who has been a patience guide throughout, and Professor Susan Rowley who was a provocative sounding-board at an earlier stage. Errol Bray and Howard Stanley conducted interviews on my behalf and helped to place at the centre of this study a set of authentic voices from the theatre of this period. Jan Wawrzyhczak kindly allowed me to use the transcripts of interviews he had made with former members of the APG. All those interviewed gave their valuable time, and trusted me with their recollections. I thank you all. Geoffrey Milne also kindly sent me some notes on La Mama. For help in directing me towards original documentation my thanks go to Paul Bentley and the staff at the Dennis Wolanski Library and to Frank Van Straten and Sally Fisher at the Victorian Performing Arts Museum, to Tony Marshall at the LaTrobe Library and to Francis Love at the Australia Council Library. Early in the research I was assisted by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at University of Western Sydney Macarthur. Several colleagues at Macarthur also gave me valuable research material, notably Dr Francis de Groen, Anita Apelis and Dr Gaye Gleeson. Dr Gaynor McDonald gave valued advice and encouragement. While doing research in Melbourne, my brother, Robin and his wife, Ruth, housed me and generally looked after me, and Natalie Bate lent me her car. (Support for research sounds here like support for the arts!). Thanks. Above all, my efforts have been supported by my wife and children: Liliana Licina has her own theatre credits and together we have Rhys, Imogen and Cynthia who are our best productions by far. Although Liliana may have feared me lost to the brazen IBM in my study, it is with her that I have parented this other, troublesome offspring, the manuscript before you now. Abstract The advent of modem and postmodern theatre in Australia in the years 1965 to 1985 was stimulated by increased communication and travel between Australia and the rest of the world and this reflected international trends associated with youth culture and the counter culture. Conservative discouragement of modem theatre in Australia was overcome by broadly-based support for 'alternative' cultural activity in this period. The international model of the theatre experiment and the theatre laboratory were widely influential in Australia, as was the practice of the theatre workshop. These were key means of the production of performances within modem theatre and laid the ground for the reflection of feminist, poststructuralist and formalist discourses in the postmodern theatre of the nineteen-eighties in Australia. The college and university sector were vital in providing environments for the emergence of an Australian theatre. A nationalist theatre emerged from the anti-establishment and anti-colonial alternative theatres and was rapidly transferred to the mainstages of the state theatre companies. Abbreviations used ACAR Australia Council Annual Report 1977-1978, 1978-9, then published annually for the calendar year. ADS Australasian Drama Studies, (1982-), edited Veronica Kelly and Richard Fotheringham, University of Queensland. AETT Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust APG Australian Performing Group MTC Melbourne Theatre Company MWTG Melbourne Women's Theatre Group nd no date np no pagination NSW New South Wales NTA New Theatre Australia (1987-1989), edited James Waites, (Paul McGillick), Kings Cross: New Theatre Australia Publications. PAYBA Performing Arts Year Book of Australia volumes 1-6, Sydney: Showcast Publications, 1977 - 1982, various editors. [From 1976 to 1979 PAYBA was published the following year. For example PAYBA 1976, was published in 1977. There was no volume titled, PAYBA 1980. PAYBA 1981 and 1982 list activities of the previous years, 1980 and 1981, respectively. In this study PAYBA are refered to by title, not presumed publication date.] pu page unknown SMH Sydney Morning Herald, published by John Fairfax & Sons, Sydney. TA Theatre Australia (1976 -1981), edited Robert Page, Mayfield, New South Wales. WOD Writings On Dance, edited Elizabeth Dempster, Sally Gardner, Anne Thompson, Jude Walton, Collingwood: Writing On Dance, from 1987. Contents Introduction Introduction 1 Definitions 9 Background 17 Methodology 23 Part One: Becoming Modern... Modernism suppressed in the theatre in Australia (before 1965) 30 Struggles to re-place the colonial centre (1960-1970) 40 Modern ensembles, incipient nationalism (1959-1966) 53 National spaces for modern Australian theatre (1965-1969) 62 Ecstatic alternatives: modern 'tribes' (1968-1972) 76 The new theatre & 'The New Left' (1970-1981) 90 Theatre laboratories: modern mean of production (1970-1979) 111 The modern larrikin: a post-colonial stage (1970-1986) 130 Part Two: Reverses in Marginality... Going beyond the established centre... 146 Margins of language 174 Gendered marginality: women's theatre 190 State controlled alternatives 206 Marginal centres: the embodiment of modern theatre 218 Part Three: Bodies of postmodernism Bodies in space: visual theatre 239 Bodies in suspense: art performed 256 Bodies in motion: urban theatres 269 Conclusion 288 Notes 310 Bibliography 352 Introduction Introduction The proposition The influences which supported the adoption of modern theatre and postmodern theatre in Australia in the period 1965 to 1985 provided a framework for the articulation of a diversity of representations of Australian-ness and a plurality of Australian voices. The international social flux expressed in the radicalisation of youth culture, the counter­ culture and the New Left vitalised avant-garde theatre practice and, in Australia, this converged with a reaffirmation of nationalism. These cultural mechanisms shifted the neo- colonial constraints on Australian theatre and allowed cosmopolitan and contemporary theatre (as defined on page 14) to become established in Australia. The New: Radical, Experimental and Avant-garde The intention in this thesis is to describe a major, but largely unrecorded, section of new Australian theatre from 1965 to 1985, out of which have come many of the defining characteristic of Australian theatre as it now is practiced and understood. I am setting out to make a straightforward historical account of a very un-straightforward category of work, which is, nonetheless, largely self-defining. The makers of the work used labels that - with only a very few expectations, discussed later - signal their inclusion in this category of new work. These labels were clear markers, but, as is frequently the problem with critical terms, the meaning and application shifted and contained contradictions. Such contradictions in the way key terms were used were characteristic of this shifting period between modernism and postmodernism. There are also contradictions in the values of science and mysticism (discussed on page 5), notions of success and failure (page 6) and the responsibility taken by individuals and groups collectively (pages 5, 8 and throughout). Above all - and foundational to this thesis - there was a characteristic contradiction between the impulse towards inclusiveness and the exclusion of a non-coterie audience (usually the 1 (usually the middle-class), at whose expense work was often directed in an active attack. That which was not of the moment, the old fashioned and the past itself became the enemy, as it had become for the historical avant-gardes.1 Rosalind Krauss (1986: 157) has noted the "many guises" of the avant-garde artist, pointing to the concept of originality as the apparently common thread that she then takes further, commenting that the Futurists saw themselves within a "parable of absolute self-creation." It is a "metaphor referring not so much to formal invention as to sources of life. The self as origin is safe from contamination by tradition..." This conception of the original present opposed to the past, describes a significant element in the culture of the later twentieth century, which is also found manifest in the counter culture, rock and roll and experimental theatre. It is ironic that, in itself, this concept became a tradition. The period The period 1965 to 1985 was marked by major changes in Australian society and cultural life. If the preceding decade, 1955 to 1964, produced a growing number of instances of modem theatre and the first modem Australian vernacular theatre to be acclaimed, it was still a promise rather than a fulfilment of a modem Australian theatre. Major contributors to modern theatre in Australia, Barry Humphries and Ray Lawler both went to England to prove their mettle in this earlier period, and, in the neo-colonial manner, they stayed. This suggests the potential shift which was to occur in the following decade when artists stayed in Australia (some even returned from overseas) and prospered. A viable modem national theatre grew, catalysed by active avant-garde theatre. The avant-garde theatre challenged the conservative mainstream theatre and prompted change. The two were mutually dependent in their historical and critical emergence. A national theatre in an international context The theatre in the years 1965 to 1985 in Australia was exposed to a period of dynamic social change.
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