PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Zabala First name: Gabriela Other name/s: Sylvia Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD School: Arts and Media Faculty: English Title: The politics of drama

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

One of the longest running theatre companies in , New Theatre began life as the Workers' Art Club in in 1932 as a Communist Party of Australia initiative. It was one of the first theatres in Australia with an orientation to working class audiences. By 1936 it had become the New Theatre and by the 1950s there were, in addition to Sydney, New Theatres in Adelaide, , Western Australia, Newcastle and . The New Theatre movement's social mission was inextricably linked to the political perspectives of the Communist Party of Australia which were influenced by ideas and theories of socialist realism and proletarian culture that had been decreed by Zhdanov in 1934 in the . Of particular interest to New Theatre were the innovations in theatre such as agit-prop and dramatic reportage typical of workers' theatre in the Soviet Union and the United States. This thesis demonstrates how the party's prescriptive views on art and literature often found expression in the plays of New Theatre writers Oriel Gray, Betty Roland and Mona Brand. It will demonstrate that in order to prevent ideological heterodoxy within New Theatre, management and production committees were comprised solely of Communist Party members, whose work for New Theatre constituted their work for the Communist Party of Australia. This thesis also draws attention to a gap in the literature about the contribution of New Theatre writers, and the scholarly analysis of some of their unpublished material. Three authors whose work has been underplayed are analysed, and critical responses to them which have escaped examination are brought to light. Through the use of original, previously unpublished documents, this thesis will demonstrate the way in which the Communist Party of Australia intervened to censor or exclude plays and writers to ensure ideological orthodoxy. It will also explore in detail previously unpublished work by neglected writers, as well as addressing criticism of these writers by internal committees of New Theatre, but mining the New Theatre archives, and Communist Party and ASIO files, enabling a richness of reference to original material not previously studied.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

25/07/2012 …………………………………………………………… ……………………………………..……………… ……….……………………...…….… Signature Witness Date

The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.

FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completion of requirements for Award:

THIS SHEET IS TO BE GLUED TO THE INSIDE FRONT COVER OF THE THESIS ORIGINALITY STATEMENT

‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’

Signed ……………………………………………......

25/07/2012 Date ……………………………………………...... COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'

Signed ……………………………………………......

25/07/2012 Date ……………………………………………......

AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

‘I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format.’

Signed ……………………………………………......

25/07/2012 Date ……………………………………………......

      

% ' #"& $')"'#!!(" &'

%'*#(&'% ")'%

% '%&.20/+.21-&

i



One of the longest running theatre companies in Australia, New Theatre was an initiative of Jean Devanny, a writer and member of the Communist Party of Australia.

Beginning life as the Workers’ Art Club in Sydney in 1932, it was one of the first theatres in Australia with an orientation to working class audiences. By 1936 it had become the New Theatre and by the 1950s there were, in addition to Sydney, New

Theatres in Adelaide, Melbourne, Western Australia, Newcastle and Brisbane. The

New Theatre movement’s social mission was inextricably linked to the political perspectives of the Communist Party of Australia which were influenced by ideas and theories of socialist realism and proletarian culture that had been decreed by Zhdanov in 1934 in the former Soviet Union. Of particular interest to New Theatre were the innovations in theatre such as agit-prop and dramatic reportage typical of workers’ theatre in the Soviet Union and the United States.

This thesis will show how the party’s prescriptive views on art and literature often found expression in the plays of New Theatre writers Oriel Gray, Betty Roland and Mona

Brand. It will demonstrate that in order to prevent ideological heterodoxy within New

Theatre, management and production committees were comprised solely of

Communist Party members, whose work for New Theatre was considered part of their work for the Communist Party of Australia.

This thesis also draws attention to a gap in the literature about the contribution of NT writers, and the scholarly analysis of some of their unpublished material. Three authors whose work has been underplayed are analysed, and critical responses to them which have escaped examination are brought to light. I am the first researcher to access

ii

Mona Brand’s personal papers, I was given access to a private collection of Oriel Gray material by her son, and I have brought to light important material in New Theatre and

CPA archives.

Aspects of the well known relationship between the Communist Party of Australia and

New Theatre writers will also be examined, building on and giving substance to what is known of the influence of the CPA on New Theatre. Through the use of original, previously unpublished documents, this thesis will demonstrate the way in which the

Communist Party of Australia intervened to censor or exclude plays and writers to ensure ideological orthodoxy. It will also explore in detail previously unpublished work by neglected writers, as well as addressing criticism of these writers by internal committees of New Theatre, but mining the NT archives, and CPA files and ASIO files, enabling a richness of reference to original material not previously studied.

New Theatre is approaching its eightieth birthday at its location in Newtown in Sydney, and it is perhaps the only theatre in Australia that has enjoyed almost eight decades of uninterrupted production. Examining its history as part of a theatre of protest and reviewing its links with the Communist Party of Australia will not only fill some of the gaps in the literature, but will enrich our understanding about Australian theatre’s radical past.

iii



Acknowledgements ...... v 

Introduction ...... vi

Chapter One: Literature Survey ...... 1 

Chapter Two: From Kharkov to Sydney: How New Theatre arrived in Australia..39

Chapter Three: Betty Roland—The ‘birth’ of Australian drama ...... 72 

Chapter Four: Betty Roland—1933 and beyond: Agit-Prop plays and post-CPA disillusionment ...... 95 

Chapter Five: Oriel Gray, the ‘non-existent’ playwright—Two Revues ...... 121

Chapter Six: Oriel Gray:Leaving satire behind—Towards a nationalist ethos and overt propaganda ...... 145 

Chapter Seven: Oriel Gray: A double bimd—political disillusionment and broadening themes 1946-1959 ...... 170 

Chapter Eight: Mona Brand: Unacknowledged and out of the mainstream ...... 210

Chapter Nine: Post-Kruschev’s secret speech—a ‘new’ direction ...... 253

Chapter Ten: Beyond New Theatre: New Theatre’s theatrical innovations—a prelude to, or progenitor of, mainstream satire and the New Wave? ...... 284 

Conclusion ...... 316

Bibliography ...... 321 

Appendix.363

iv

   

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of my supervisor Professor Peter

Alexander. His expertise, advice, patience and encouragement have been invaluable, and completion of this thesis would not have been possible without his guidance and unflagging belief in this enterprise. My co-supervisor, Professor Ludmila Stern, has also been immensely helpful in providing very important advice, information and research methods crucial to my thesis. Special thanks must go to David and Betty

Milliss who gave their time freely and generously for interviews and advice. Nic

Hepworth was also an enormous help in providing me with much valuable material relating to his mother, Oriel Gray, and authorising my use of Gray’s unpublished plays held at the Fryer Library at the . Thanks also must go to the staff at the Mitchell Library, especially the late Arthur Easton whose assistance guided my research at the library. My family has also been incredibly supportive in every way possible. In this regard, particular mention must go to my partner, Ismet Redzovic, without whose support—emotional, psychological and financial—none of this work would have been possible, and he has been instrumental in maintaining my focus especially during the last stretch of this thesis. Lastly, I would like to thank the School of Arts and Media at UNSW for providing me with the necessary resources to undertake my research and for their support towards its completion.

v

 

The Left playwright faces the fact conscientiously that his job is not only to entertain his audience, not merely to give it pleasure, necessary as both these elements are, but also to instruct it. He recognises too, that instruction or enlightenment must be translated into human terms.

Victor Arnold, New Theatre Secretary, letter on Repertory of Left Theatre.1

The theme of this thesis emerged when several years ago, in researching material for a review of Peter Carey’s novel My Life as a Fake, my chance encounter with a quotation from Katharine Susannah Prichard set into motion a series of enquiries that led to an exploration of communist affiliated writers. The basis of Carey’s novel is the infamous Ern Malley hoax by James McAuley and Harold Stewart in the early 1940s.

Having published the Malley poems in Angry Penguins as an exemplar of modernist writing, the editor Max Harris was prosecuted for obscenity in the Victorian courts. Two years later Angry Penguins—virtually the only journal to champion modernist prose and poetry in Australia—folded. While not applauding the means by which modernism had been supposedly ‘exposed’, Prichard, a Communist Party of Australia (hereafter CPA) member since the party’s foundation in 1920, nevertheless praised the outcome in an article entitled ‘Hoax renders service to literature’ in the CPA theoretical organ

Communist Review. Here she did not criticise the poems in question, but fulminated against their authors’ supposed political perfidy, denouncing them as having

1 New Theatre Records, MLMSS6244, Box 149. vi

entered the lists of those who pave the way for Fascism by chasing lurid fantasies, escaping from the hard road to human progress down the side tracks of spurious adventures, and worse, by flaunting their hostility to the people and organisation most active to prevent Fascism ever becoming a force in Australia.2

The clichéd vituperation resembled the Moscow bureaucracy’s response towards experimental art and literature and warranted further investigation. To what, if any, extent did the CPA and its intellectual supporters and members thwart the development of modernism in Australia? Did the CPA wield any influence at all in the development of Australian culture, and more specifically on writers? These questions prompted research in the area of communist writers, and in the process further areas of material began to emerge. It transpired that Australia had cultivated quite a number of communist writers aside from Prichard, including Dorothy Hewett and ,

Jean Devanny, Nance Wills, Jim Crawford, Catherine Duncan, Betty Roland, Oriel

Gray and Mona Brand.

Another common denominator strengthening the link between these writers, except

Hewett, is that they had all written for New Theatre, which was established in 1932 as an initiative of the CPA. The Sydney New Theatre in Newtown, an inner suburb of

Sydney, still operates and has enjoyed continuous production for close to eight decades. Until the 1960s there were New Theatres throughout Australia, except

Tasmania and the , all of which were established by CPA members

2 Katharine Susannah Prichard, ‘Hoax Renders Service to Literature’, Communist Review (March 1945): 456. vii

whose theatre work was considered their political work for the party. The fact that many of the neglected writers are being rediscovered readily challenges the hierarchical nature of Australian theatre history which sets up Ray Lawler’s Summer of the

Seventeenth Doll as the benchmark for all subsequent attempts at a native drama, and asserts the originality of the male-dominated and critically acclaimed New Wave of the

1960s and 1970s. The New Theatre in Australia based itself on the Workers’ Theatre

Movement of England3, and took its name from the New Theatre in the United States, where it was also part of an extensive workers’ theatre movement.4

Hundreds of New Theatre plays and manuscripts are held in the New Theatre archives at Sydney’s Mitchell Library and they provide a veritable treasure trove of published and unpublished plays by writers well-known, little known or unknown outside of the confines of New Theatre. Aside from the CPA-affiliated writers, other writers who flirted briefly with left-wing politics also contributed to New Theatre, such as James McAuley and artist Albert Tucker. Before joining Angry Penguins Tucker designed sets for New

Theatre and photographed their participation in May Day parades. Aside from playwrights, many actors including well-known theatre and television actor John

Hargreaves worked in New Theatre, as did other well-known Australian television and theatre actors and directors.5 Peter Finch attended performances in the early 1940s and John Bell of the Bell Shakespeare Company gave lectures at New Theatre cultural

3 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre—the New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne 1935–1983’, Meanjin XXI (1984): 58. 4 See Michael Denning, The Cultural Front—The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century ( and New York: Verso, 1998). Denning traces the development of workers’ cultural groups including the Workers’ Theatre and New Theatre League from which the Australian counterparts took the name. 5 Well known stage and television actors Maggie Kirkpatrick, Noelene Brown and founder of Q Theatre in Penrith, Doreen Warburton all acted in New Theatre productions. viii

conferences. The painter George Finey, who was a major influence on other left-wing

Australian artists such as Noel Counihan, volunteered his services to New Theatre. Les

Tanner, the Walkley award winning cartoonist and journalist, was on the production committee of New Theatre and also directed and acted in many plays.

New Theatre was also one of the few, if not the only, theatre company producing plays by twentieth century Soviet, American, European and English playwrights. For example, in the 1930s New Theatre produced plays by Maxim Gorki, Sergei Tretyakov,

George Bernard Shaw, Clifford Odets, Irwin Shaw, Eugene O’Neill, Ronald Gow and

Bertolt Brecht. In fact, New Theatre in Sydney was probably the first in Australia to stage a Brecht play: Senora Carrara’s Rifles in Sydney in 1939 and his anti-fascist play

The Informer in 1942, while Katharine Susannah Prichard incorporated Brechtian techniques in her play for New Theatre about the conditions of Australian miners in the 1930s.

In the 1940s Australians who contributed to New Theatre include James McAuley,

George Landen Dann, , Ric Throssell, Dymphna Cusack, Joan Clarke and Jim Crawford. New Theatre produced plays by Lillian Hellman, Anton Chekhov,

Henrik Ibsen, Ronald Gow, Moliere, Tennessee Williams, Maxim Gorki, John

Steinbeck, Sean O’Casey, Ilya Ehrenburg, Ben Jonson and Albert Maltz. According to

ix

Ken Harper, “The New Theatres were probably the most experimental companies in

Australia right up until the 1960s”.6

The New Theatre attracted a number of aspiring playwrights, in particular in its incipient years, because of its impressive repertoire as well as its political radicalism. The gravitation by artists and intelligentsia towards the CPA was not an unusual phenomenon. Internationally, the communist parties, which were all affiliated with the

Comintern, were perceived as the only avenue through which fascism could be fought, and these sentiments were prevalent also among Australia’s artists and intelligentsia.

Andrew Milner remarks on the appeal of the CPA for radical intellectuals in Australia:

“For three decades virtually all non-Labor radical intellectuals were either Communist

Party members or fellow travellers, or at the very least, found their activity necessarily directed towards and linked with that of the Communist Party”.7

In Australia, New Theatre writers sought to give expression to the social ills caused by capitalism, with a strong emphasis on the class struggle. Yet themes of social critique were not popular with mainstream theatres where light operettas and Broadway productions were standard fare. Although the styles and themes were in many instances required to conform to CPA ideology, New Theatre writers defied public opinion and critical censure by being one of the first theatre companies in Australia to

6 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre’, 62. 7 Andrew Milner, ‘Radical Intellectuals: An Unacknowledged Legislature?’ in Constructing a Culture: A People’s History of Australia since 1788, eds. V. Bergman, Jenny Lee, 268-9 (Melbourne: McPhee/Gribble, Penguin Books, 1988). The period Milner refers to is 1930s– 1960s. x

write about important, yet unpopular and controversial, issues, including the plight of

Aborigines and the ‘white Australia’ policy,8 anti-fascism and workers’ struggles. Ian

Syson maintains that “writing in the novel-form about the revolutionary proletariat is in itself—given the historical absence of this class in European and — an innovative enterprise”.9

In the New Theatre, playwrights not only found a venue for their plays of social critique, but just as important it also afforded women the opportunity, unavailable in most other theatre companies, to have their plays produced. Modjeska remarks that, while women writers in Australia were relatively successful in carving a niche for themselves as novelists, they participated in a tradition that stretched back centuries to Jane Austen, for example. Writing plays was another matter altogether and did not guarantee acceptance in the world of theatre. According to Modjeska, “the theatre was openly hostile to women”.10 New Theatre plays point to a rich vein of theatre practice that was politically left-wing, oriented toward a working class audience, and which addressed controversial and unpopular themes as well as concerning itself with theatrical innovations such as agit-prop and dramatic reportage in the Living Newspaper style that were largely attributed to the radical New Wave of the 1960s. The New Theatre archives also provide minutes of discussions and decisions taken in relation to New

Theatre productions which demonstrate that the aims and ambit of New Theatre were

8 Although the policy was never officially labeled ‘white Australia’ it has assumed this nomenclature colloquially and will be referred to as such in inverted commas throughout this thesis. 9 Ian Syson, ‘It Just isn't Trendy at the Moment': Thinking About Working Class Literature through the 1990s’, Tirra Lirra 10, no. 2 (Summer 1999-2000): 12. 10 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 (London; Sydney: Sirius Books, 1981), 255. xi

not always under the control of its writers, but that, on the contrary, the decision- making process regarding productions was often largely determined by the politically expedient imperatives of the CPA.

The relationship between the CPA and New Theatre forms the premise for this thesis, which is to analyse the relationship between the CPA and New Theatre writers Betty

Roland, Oriel Gray and Mona Brand. It will seek to demonstrate that the CPA influenced New Theatre writers in several ways, even though the CPA never assumed power as did the communist parties in the former Soviet Union and in the Eastern

European buffer states in the post-World War Two period. The influence was exercised, for example, by the imposition of an ideological framework that circumscribed the writers’ freedom of expression, which often affected the aesthetic quality of plays as writers often strove to adhere to the ideological line of the party in their work. For instance, the working class always had to be depicted in a positive light, and the middle-classes and bourgeoisie in a negative light. Excess concern with form was frowned upon also and denounced as “formalism”; an approach and attitude to art that resembled Soviet attitudes and decrees on such matters. Proletarian culture and socialist realism, the latter decreed by Zhdanov in 1934 as the literary method for socialist writers, was also encouraged, although applying it to the Australian context would prove problematic, given that Australia was not a socialist country.

Furthermore, while New Theatre writers were not always ‘instructed’ on themes and style by the CPA and New Theatre management and production committees, the advice to alter aspects of their plays, if the ideology in the play was considered

xii

unsound or contravened party policy, was unambiguous in its implied threat of party censure. This was particularly problematic for New Theatre writers, especially in the

1930s and early 1940s, as CPA policies shifted sometimes from one day to the next in relation to both art and politics. However, this is not to argue that, although the CPA often viewed the function of literature as utilitarian, New Theatre writers necessarily saw in New Theatre a mere vehicle for the dissemination of political propaganda.

Where necessary, playwrights did often write propaganda pieces, but in those plays that are not strictly propagandist, all New Theatre writers strove for mainstream acceptance.

New Theatre writers submitted to the ideological tenets of the CPA and New Theatre production and management committees because they believed they were not only contributing to the development of a progressive movement politically and artistically, but that their involvement with New Theatre granted them the freedom—a paradox given the rather prescriptive approach of the CPA to art—to write about social issues from their left-wing viewpoint.

However, given the imprecise definitions of socialist realism or proletarian culture, especially in the Australian context, it is worthwhile adopting, or at least considering, the framework provided by Ian Syson who maintains:

It is crucial that the various creative and critical material that has gone under the name of socialist realism be examined in order that the revolutionary Marxist and progressive working class babies do not get thrown out with the Stalinist bathwater. This material falls into three categories, only the first of which is dogmatically Stalinist—that xiii

which is clearly propaganda for the CPSU or other Communist parties; the second is that which, in part, tries to be this kind of propaganda for these parties but obtains a value despite its authors' assumed or stated intentions;the final category is that which is described by specific uses of the term ‘socialist realist’, but which bears only a slight relation to Zhdanovism.11

Roland, Gray and Brand’s work can and does fall into these categories, although in most cases their plays can be categorised as belonging to the second category and on occasion to the first and third. These writers joined the CPA at different periods in the history of New Theatre, and, although their association with the CPA and New Theatre marginally overlap, they each represent a different epoch in the life of the theatre and its association with the CPA. Each writer, therefore, while contending with the demands of the CPA, wrote in different political and social contexts. For example, in the post-

World War Two period, the CPA and New Theatre management and production committees were much more insistent on adherence to party ideological orthodoxy in playwrights’ works. This approach was bound up with the tensions between the USSR and its erstwhile allies during World War Two, when communist parties around the world insisted that writers employ the socialist realist method, about which there seems little disagreement regarding its political origins. For example, Nikolas

Luker avers:

For all the forests of paper and seas of ink which have been exhausted since 1932 in attempts to define, reflect and promote the doctrine, it remains essentially a Stalinist device to enlist literature

11 Ian Syson, ‘It Just isn't Trendy at the Moment': Thinking about Working Class Literature through the 1990s’, Tirra Lirra 10, no. 2 (Summer 1999-2000): 12. xiv

and art in the service of the Communist state. [...] Political, not literary, considerations are paramount.12

Applying socialist realism in the non-socialist Australian context was problematic, as

Cath Ellis points out in her study of the doctrine and its impact on Katharine Susannah

Prichard’s writing.13 Furthermore, given that from the 1950s onwards Australia was governed by the conservative Liberal government of , socialist realism would appear to be not only more contradictory and difficult a doctrine to apply, but also incongruous. Although less punitive than the McCarthy witch-hunts of the United

States in the same period, Menzies’ anti-communism contributed to the ‘reds under the beds’ atmosphere in which ASIO expended much energy and resources on surveillance of anyone with the remotest connection with the CPA.14 New Theatre and

CPA members were often compelled to carry out party work clandestinely in order to retain their jobs or careers. In this social and political climate, left-wing playwrights in

1950s Australia were anathema to mainstream theatre.

For New theatre writers such as Gray and Brand, their relationship with the CPA and

New Theatre was somewhat complex and contradictory during this period. Eschewing political conservatism, New Theatre writers were often compelled, in the absence of other alternatives, to submit to party dictates on artistic matters, including Australian

12 Nicholas Luker, ed., From Furmanov to Sholokhov: An Anthology of the Classics of Socialist Realism (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988), 34. 13 Cath Ellis, ‘Socialist Realism in the Australian Literary Context: With Specific Reference to the Writing of Katharine Susannah Prichard’, Journal of Australian Studies, No. 54-55 (1997). 14 David Lowe explains how Menzies denounced communism as foreign doctrine antithetical to the ‘Australian way of life’. Menzies and the ‘Great World Struggle’: Australia’s Cold War 1948- 1954 (Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press, 1999), 101. xv

interpretations of socialist realism. This is of particular significance as most of the New

Theatre playwrights expressed in the 1930s a desire to contribute to the building of not only a national literature, but also a literature that would reflect the internationalist ethos of their socialist convictions. However, in the 1940s and 1950s, a resurgence of nationalism saw CPA writers exalting the traditions of radical nationalism and realism peculiar to Australia and expressed in the writings of Lawson and Furphy in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Lawson in particular would be rediscovered by the CPA and New Theatre in the 1940s and 1950s and New Theatre’s most successful musical, Reedy River, was based on his poetry. Gray’s play Lawson in the 1940s for

New Theatre was also successful. This combination of factors—radical nationalism and socialism in one country—provided the conditions for a distinctly Australian form of socialist realism, as Modjeska points out:

...the form taken by the socialist realist literature of the fifties owes as much to this tradition as it did to the influence of cultural theories originating in Stalinist Russia. The theory of socialist realism, which had already been introduced into Australia during the thirties, and the discussions of Marxist aesthetics, fell on fertile ground and could take shape in a literary environment particularly well suited to it.15

In this context I will examine how Roland’s, Gray’s and Brand’s plays for New Theatre were often written or produced according to CPA political ideology, determined by the

New Theatre production and management committees who were required to be CPA members. The New Theatre production and management committees, and sometimes

CPA Central Committee members, not only discussed the merits or otherwise of plays,

15 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home, 251. xvi

but were also tasked with ensuring that New Theatre playwrights maintained ideological orthodoxy in their plays. In some instances, this led to a re-interpretation of well-known plays by established European writers in order to ensure that they conformed to CPA ideology. New Theatre sought a working class audience, and to appeal to such an audience they deemed it necessary that playwrights adopt theatrical techniques such as agit-prop and dramatic reportage. The avant-gardism intrinsic to these approaches was often diminished by subordinating aesthetic considerations to political ideology.

My focus on New Theatre and its relationship with the CPA builds on a growing body of work that examines left-wing writers in Australia. Several former CPA members, such as Bernie Taft, note in their autobiographies that little research has been undertaken into the extent of the CPA’s influence on the development of Australian culture in general.16 For example, organisations aside from New Theatre that were affiliated with, established by, or controlled by members of the CPA include the Writers’ League,

Fellowship of Australian Writers, Realist Writers’ groups, Unity Dance, Australasian

Book Society and the journal Overland among others. Although Taft adopts an uncritical attitude in relation to this influence, this thesis will, in the process of analysing the CPA and New Theatre relationship, attempt to address this gap about the not only the influence of the CPA in New Theatre, but how this influence was wielded and its impact on the writers’ work.

16 Bernie Taft, in Memoirs of Bernie Taft: Crossing the Party Line (Newham, Australia: Scribe Publications, 1994) and Eric Aarons, in What’s Left?: Memoirs of an Australian Communist (Ringwood, : Penguin and Australia Council. Literature Board, 1993) both commented on the significance of New Theatre as one of the CPA’s cultural organisations in their autobiographies. xvii

The reason for focusing on Roland, Gray and Brand is because they were the most prominent playwrights in New Theatre, writing almost exclusively for New Theatre while members of the CPA, functioning as virtual resident playwrights (a fact in the case of

Gray) in the course of their association with New Theatre. Another writer who wrote exclusively for New Theatre through his entire playwriting career is Jim Crawford. He remains unpublished and access to his manuscripts in the Fryer Library at Queensland

University has been restricted due to copyright issues, therefore an entire chapter on his contribution to New Theatre is not possible in this instance. His writing for New

Theatre, alongside that of several others who contributed to New Theatre, will be noted in a later chapter based on Connie Healy’s assessment of several of his plays in her book Defiance: Political Theatre in Brisbane 1930–196217 and on several manuscripts of his plays—including Rocket Range—that I accessed at the Mitchell Library.

Roland’s, Gray’s and Brand’s collective contributions to New Theatre span more than five decades, each overlapping, with Roland writing for New Theatre from 1935 to

1940, Gray from 1938 to 1950 and Brand from 1948 until the 1980s. Each of these periods was marked also by important shifts in policy in the CPA which often finds expression in these playwrights’ work. Focusing on these three writers is justified as each of their contributions can be said to constitute an oeuvre, in particular in the case of Brand.

17 Connie Healy, Defiance: Political Theatre in Brisbane 1930-1962 (Mount Nebo, Australia: Boombana Publications, 2000). xviii

The CPA’s history dates back further than that of New Theatre, having been founded in

1920. It never really developed a political perspective independent from that of the

Moscow bureaucracy, and in matters of art and literature it was no different, never deviating from the Moscow edicts. Virtually every oscillation in policy emanating from

Moscow was adopted by the CPA. As Oriel Gray recalls in her autobiography:

The Russians had an awkward habit of suddenly bringing a style, or an art form, or a morality into the bright light of party approval, and communist organisations throughout the world felt compelled to follow suit.18

The prescriptive attitude of the CPA to art and literature lasted until the 1960s, when a liberalisation of sorts occurred. This liberalisation was the inadvertent outcome of the political crisis within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and concomitantly the

CPA, following the publication of Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956. Although there was no consensus regarding the attitude to art in this period—indeed, there were strong disagreements—New Theatre writers such as Mona Brand took advantage of the liberalisation, which enabled her to stretch her talents and demonstrate her flair for satire and comedy, writing plays that are less ideologically constrained.

,*-,-*'))*(!

Given the planned structure of my analysis, a chronological method is best suited to chart the course of development over more than four decades of the playwrights’ collective contribution to New Theatre. Moreover, it more accurately reflects and

18 Oriel Gray, Exit Left (Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books, 1985), 41. xix

corresponds with the fluctuating fortunes and oscillating policies of the CPA, to which

New Theatre was subordinate for so much of its existence. My analysis will be based on the Marxist method elaborated by Georgii Plekhanov in his many lectures and essays on aesthetics.

Plekhanov’s judgment of the aesthetic quality of any given work is arrived at by considering the development of art and literature historically; this involves by necessity a sociological and philosophic approach to determine the relationship between the development of society historically and the artists’ relationship to society in this context.

The trends and developments in art and culture arise out of changed historical circumstances, giving rise also to philosophical attitudes taken up by artists, attitudes which invariably find expression in their work. This method assists in determining how and why certain art and literary forms appear at given moments in history. For example, it aids in ascertaining whether they develop organically out of existing literary or artistic trends under certain conditions or are politically imposed as is the case with, for instance, the theories of socialist realism and proletarian culture.

Plekhanov countered the notions, prevalent in Russia (as in the West) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, of art for art’s sake, as well as the utilitarian function of art and literature, the purveyors of which seek in art a means to an end.

Plekhanov argues that art’s objective is to cognize reality through images with all its contradictions, thereby sensitising aesthetically, rather than effecting direct social change, which is a political task. In sensitising audiences or readers, art makes its contribution to effect social change. The aesthetic power of Gogol’s Dead Souls, for

xx

example, despite his conservative outlook, had this effect, radicalising youth and revolutionaries against Russian serfdom and the idiocy and philistinism of Russian peasant life, and in the process against Tsarism, the upholder of that status quo. An aesthetic evaluation is undertaken in accordance with the development of art and literature as specific fields of human endeavour.

Marxist critic Aleksndr Voronsky follows and builds on the aesthetic approach of

Plekhanov. Voronsky wrote on art and literature, in particular on proletarian culture, and was editor of several journals in the Soviet Union. He was a champion of the young Soviet literature and its experimentation, much of which was based on a rejection of “bourgeois” literature of the past, but he was aware also that the largely illiterate Russian peasantry and working class needed to also become familiar with the classical heritage of the past, including literature such as Tolstoy, Flaubert, Goethe,

Dostoyevsky and others. His writings on Gorky, among others, offer a more nuanced and complex analysis than those of official Stalinist criticism that turned Gorky into a bland icon of socialist realism. Although invited to the First All-Union Congress of

Soviet Writers in August 1934, where Zhdanov decreed socialist realism the official artistic and literary method, Voronsky refused to attend. He was subjected to intense criticism for his thoughtful analyses of Russian writers such as Dostoyevsky and

Pushkin and earned the wrath of the On Guard group, who championed proletarian culture and who accused him of favouring “fellow traveller” writers over proletarian writers. He was charged with presenting a “false objectivism” and of “presenting the art

xxi

of seeing the world” instead of “the art of changing the world”.19 Never brought before the infamous Moscow trials, Voronsky nevertheless met a similar fate to those who did: he faced a twenty minute trial before three members of the Military Collegium of the

Supreme Soviet and was executed immediately afterwards on August 13, 1937.

His writings demonstrate an acute sensitivity to literature and cultural development in a politically intense period—a period when decisions taken about art and literature were to influence communist parties internationally in their attitudes towards cultural production and to writers specifically.

George Lukács’s work on aesthetics bears some similarities to the approach of

Plekhanov and Voronsky, although he bases his ideals on those expounded by Hegel.

For Lukács, realism is the “core of all art”20 and, like Plekhanov, he critiques “art for art’s sake” and the weaknesses intrinsic to naturalism. Lukács elaborates a theory of aesthetic reflection, through which he discusses the “distortion” of reality in modernist literature by writers such as Joyce, Kafka and Beckett in whose works he claims “the characters do not receive an autonomous life, independent of the writer”.21 These theoretical premises are similar to those of Voronsky who, in his essay ‘On Artistic

Truth’, explains the artistic process as one where “distorted reflections” yield

19 Aleksandr Voronsky, Art as the Cognition of Life, trans. and ed. Fred Choate (Oak Park, Michigan: Mehring Books Inc., 1998), 361. 20 Bela Kiralyfalvi, The Aesthetics of Gyorgy Lukács (London: Princeton University Press, 1973), 67-8. 21 George Lukács, Realism in Our Time, trans., John and Neeke Mander (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 33. xxii

“discoveries of amazing depth” but that these are “one-sided”.22 Lukács, by virtue of historical circumstance, is able to provide a critique of socialist realism which he argues is “a possibility rather than an actuality”.23

Structurally, the thesis will be divided into chapters according to chronology and theme.

Each chapter will contain subsections where necessary. The first chapter will consist of the Literature Survey where I document the primary and secondary sources utilised in the research, such as New Theatre archival material consisting of management and production committee meetings as well as playscripts and manuscripts; former CPA members’ biographies and memoirs; history of the CPA; ASIO files; critics’ analyses and critiques of Roland’s, Gray’s and Brand’s plays; as well as all published critical material on New Theatre.

The second chapter will provide the historical contextual framework for the founding of

New Theatre. The founding of the Workers’ Art Club and then New Theatre within the context of international developments in workers’ theatres, such as the blue-shirts in the Soviet Union and the New Theatre League in the United States, will be examined.

An overview of the development of proletarian literature and socialist realism will be provided to contextualise New Theatre’s adoption of these approaches in the

Australian context.

22 Aleksandr Voronsky, Art as the Cognition of Life, 331. 23 Bela Kiralyfalvi, The Aesthetics of Gyorgy Lukács, 69. xxiii

Betty Roland will be the subject of chapters three and four. Having achieved a measure of success with her play The Touch of Silk in 1928, which was heralded as the “birth” of

Australian drama in The Bulletin24, Roland also has the distinction of writing the script for Spur of the Moment, Australia’s first talking film, in 1931. Roland joined the CPA upon her return to Australia in 1935 from a fifteen month sojourn in the Soviet Union, and her first task as party member was to establish the New Theatre in Melbourne. She wrote much of New Theatre’s most popular agit-prop during the 1930s before falling foul of the party line when she spoke out in opposition to the 1939 Stalin–Hitler pact.

Expelled from the CPA in 1940 and as persona non grata, her plays were also banned forthwith from New Theatre. After her departure from the CPA and New Theatre, she wrote the play Granite Peak which was runner-up in the Commonwealth Jubilee

Literary Competition in 1951 and was adapted for television in Britain on 24 April 1957.

These chapters will examine Roland’s relationship with the CPA and New Theatre as well as her writing prior to joining the CPA, her agit-prop for New Theatre as a CPA member and her work after her departure from the CPA and New Theatre in order to demonstrate that her writing for New Theatre during this period was primarily for propaganda purposes.

In the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters I will illustrate the impact of CPA policy on Oriel

Gray in her capacity as resident playwright for New Theatre, a role apparently previously inaccessible to women in Australia and one she regards as a victory for the

‘left’ theatre. Gray joined New Theatre and the CPA in 1938, and ultimately left the

CPA in 1950 over her disagreement with the party’s stance on the miners’ strike in

24 Merv Skipper, The Bulletin, November 7, 1928, reproduced by Betty Roland in An Improbable Life (Sydney, NSW: Collins Publishers, 1989), 90-91. xxiv

1949 in opposition to the Chifley Labor government. Her tenure as resident playwright produced several political revues and various serious plays dealing with topical issues.

Although New Theatre continued to produce her plays after her departure from the

CPA, it refused to produce Burst of Summer, Gray’s personal favourite, because it ran counter to the party’s political tenets. Noted Australian theatre critic Katharine

Brisbane, however, considered Burst of Summer worthy of inclusion in her compilation

Plays of the 60s.

Brand’s career with New Theatre will be examined in chapters eight and nine. Chapter eight will analyse the first eight years with New Theatre when the pressure to write according to CPA ideology was rigorously enforced, as a corollary of the ‘left turn’ taken by Moscow and adhered to by all communist parties internationally. Chapter nine looks at Brand’s plays following Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956 and the subsequent liberalisation of attitudes within New Theatre: this new atmosphere finds expression in Brand’s plays and revues of the 1960s.

Brand became a member of New Theatre in 1948 before becoming a member of the

CPA in 1955. The first of these chapters covers the years 1948–1955 and will look at

Brand’s most critically acclaimed play Here Under Heaven, which enjoyed continuous production in the Soviet Union and virtually all the satellite states in Eastern Europe.

This play will be discussed within the framework of her developing Communist sympathies and her subsequent membership of the CPA. The Malayan insurrection against British colonialism is the theme of the next play examined, Strangers in the

Land. The play will be discussed from the standpoint of how it met with political

xxv

disapproval, with Brand incurring the wrath of the CPA and New Theatre. She was upbraided for her perceived deviation from the ideological party line for emphasising the middle-class characters in the play and supposedly attributing to them a positive role.

Brand’s second decade with New Theatre will form the basis of chapter nine which examines Brand’s work for New Theatre in the 1960s through to 1984. During the

1960s Brand’s thematic representations and styles express the liberalisation in New

Theatre. Her domestic dramas such as Barbara and the satire Our Dear Relations are a contrast from her previous sternly political plays, overburdened as they were with rhetoric and the requisite socialist realist optimism. The plays of the later period are informed by a much more humane approach and demonstrate a developing flair for comedy, in particular the satire in the political revues she co-wrote such as Going,

Going, Gone and On Stage Vietnam. These plays indicate her growing confidence in her ability as a satirist and demonstrate that the freedom to write without having to subordinate her talent to the prescriptive requirements of the CPA produced in her far superior results. The critical characterisation of the New Wave as radical in the late

1960s at the expense of acknowledgement of New Theatre’s contribution will be analysed through a focus on Brand’s collaboration on Going, Going, Gone and On

Stage Vietnam.

Chapter ten is entitled ‘Beyond New Theatre’ and chronicles some of New Theatre’s achievements throughout its long history and the many playwrights whose work dealt with important themes. This section will provide an overview of the work of writers

xxvi

whose contributions to New Theatre were not sufficient to justify an entire chapter on their own, except perhaps Jim Crawford. Along with Crawford, I will provide an overview of Christmas Bridge by Nance Wills, Solidarity and Forward One by K.S.

Prichard, and I’d Rather be Left by James McAuley and John Reid.

This thesis builds on work undertaken in Australia on left-wing writers and adds an important dimension by analysing works, several of which are unpublished, by New

Theatre playwrights and the influence of the CPA on their work. It is a contribution that aims to enrich our understanding and to provide a fuller picture of the development of

Australian drama.

xxvii

 

",*,-*-*.1

Charting the course of Australian theatre history can be complicated by many factors including the lack of published information about many aspects of this “ephemeral art form”.1 Casey provides a rather apt description of this history, noting that it is

 usually presented as a narrative with a neat and defined beginning that emerges from emptiness. There is nothing, and then from the desert, the dead heart, a shadow, a figure, a voice appears and a direction is established, until the next time we wipe the slate clean and then there is nothing.2

A tabula rasa of sorts, this familiar Australian trope ascribes to particular plays the status of being transformative, such as the plays of the New Wave in the 1970s. As such, the history of Australian theatre assumes a linear development: several patchy decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and then the sudden emergence of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1955, and an upward trajectory culminating in the wildly successful New Wave in the early 1970s.

The period between the 1920s and 1950s is unofficially referred to as the fallow years of Australian theatre, a wasteland where nothing much was produced until Summer of

1 Maryrose Casey, Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2004), xiv. 2 Maryrose Casey,Creating Frames, 3. 1

the Seventeenth Doll3 magically appeared. Long before Casey, Henrietta Drake-

Brockman said of this phenomenon “... one gets a bit fed up at hearing the Doll spoken of as if it were sprung adult from the head of Jove”.4

There are, therefore, lacunae in Australian theatre historiography. With the exception of a few publications that explore workers’ theatres in general in Australia, New Theatre’s contribution to Australian theatre, or its history as an organisation affiliated with the

CPA and their complex relationship have not been explored in depth. Connie Healy’s

Defiance: Political Theatre in Brisbane 1930–19625 goes some way to address this area with what is a historical overview of ‘Little Theatres’ in Brisbane, including New

Theatre. Healy traces the rise and development of theatre of social critique extending back to eighteenth century Europe, beginning in the aftermath of the French

Revolution, and continuing to the more popular political theatre in early twentieth century America. The origins of agitational-propaganda (agit-prop) theatre in the 1920s are traced to Moscow, where it began by targeting proletarian audiences rather than the traditional middle-class theatre-goers. Aiming at semi-literate and uneducated audiences, agit-prop theatre was infused with optimism about the building of socialism in Russia. Agit-prop performances are outside the traditional setting of a theatre, performing on the streets and at factory gates. This type of theatre has been described

3 Ray Lawler, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (New York: Random House, 1957). 4 15 May 1959, ‘Correspondence with and about Katharine Susannah Prichard, Vance and ’, Campbell Howard Collection672016/285/001. 5 Connie Healy, Defiance: Political Theatre in Brisbane 1930-1962 (Mount Nebo, Australia: Boombana Publications, 2000).

2

as a “phenomenal fusion of satire, music, jazz-gymnastics, acrobatics and propaganda”.6

Healy traces the development of workers’ theatre throughout Europe and America in the 1930s to its inception in Australia as the Workers’ Art Club in 1932, the forerunner to the New Theatre, which was established in Sydney in 1935. By the 1970s, Brisbane

New Theatre had collapsed and, feeling duty-bound to record the theatre’s contribution to Brisbane’s collective cultural consciousness, Healy notes that New Theatre was

“drifting into the oblivion of history until its memory was revived in these pages”.7

A more limited scope is provided by Paul Herlinger in his 1981 Masters’ thesis The

New Theatre: The Pre-War Years 1932–19398, which is confined to examining the productions staged within that period, yet with little if any historical analysis or aesthetic evaluation of the plays. Interestingly, but not unusual perhaps, is that Paul Herlinger’s name appears in ASIO files on New Theatre as a New Theatre member. Whether he was a CPA member is not clear, but, given the symbiotic relationship between the two organisations, it is very likely, especially given that New Theatre archival records of the minutes of a New Theatre Special Executive Meeting in March 1951 show that

Herlinger resigned from New Theatre and that the Management Committee were to see him to discuss his reasons for leaving.9 Herlinger makes only obliquely benign

6 Stuart Cosgrove, ‘Prolet Buehne: agit-prop in America’ in Performance and Politics in Popular Drama, eds. David Bradby et al., 202 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 7 Connie Healy, Defiance, 188. 8 Paul Herlinger, The New Theatre: The Pre-War Years 1932-1939, New Theatre Records, MA thesis, , 1981, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MLQ792.099441/16. 9 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 3

references to the CPA, without fully exploring the connection between it and New

Theatre. For example he states that two plays produced by New Theatre in the 1930s,

The Sword Sung10 and Albert Maltz’s play Season of Celebration11, which was adapted by Phillip Stevenson into Transit12, illustrate New Theatre policy of anti-militarism and anti-capitalism, but does not relate these to the policies of the CPA at that point in time.13 The anti-militarism and anti-fascist stance of the CPA in the early 1930s was discarded for the sake of political expediency when the Hitler–Stalin pact was signed in

1939 and when the USSR entered the war. Herlinger attributes the themes of plays and methods adopted by New Theatre to the “Leninist dogma ‘Art is a Weapon.’”14

However, Lenin wrote very little about art and literature and refused to make his conservative taste a law for everybody. Lenin, as discussion in Chapter Two will demonstrate, was referring to political or party literature as a weapon and while not hostile, he was nevertheless critical of literary groups such as Proletkult who promoted proletarian culture.

Elsewhere Herlinger notes that New Theatre and its audience favoured plays that were modelled on Soviet drama which he describes as “optimistic”.15 This type of Soviet drama usually has the requisite socialist realist optimistic resolutions, and idealised socialist characters such as the ‘positive hero.’ Katerina Clark postulates that the conventions for the ‘positive hero’, embodied usually in an authority figure, function in

10 Catherine Duncan, The Sword Sung, New Theatre Records MLMSS 6244, Box 115. 11 Albert Maltz, ‘Season of Celebration’, in The Way Things Are And Other Stories (New York: International Publishers, 1938). 12 Phillip Stevenson, Transit, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 117. 13 Paul Herlinger, The New Theatre: The Pre-War Years 1932-1939, 60. 14 Paul Herlinger, The New Theatre: The Pre-War Years 1932-1939, 1. 15 Paul Herlinger, The New Theatre: The Pre-War Years 1932-1939, 20. 4

socialist realism to distil the “enormous complexity of universal history as a normative progression from dark to light”.16 Clark also points out that in general the

‘positive hero’ needed to have the right credentials, such as a proletarian background.

The ‘positive hero’ in socialist realism is “not a hero in literary terms but rather a hero of the pantheonized National Memory” according to Regine Robin who argues that such a character is either “collective or disseminated”.17

Ronald Hingley claims that socialist realism was not as rigorously enforced in the

Soviet Union in the 1930s as it was in the post-World War Two period, when the No

Conflict Theory was imposed with harsh penalties. Hingley explains:

Typical of the period, and of the treatment of even so intimate a theme as love, were the portraits of ecstatic, norm-exceeding, handsome lathe-operators and milk-maids exchanging details on production statistics by the light of the moon in novels that won Stalin Prizes and accompanying privileges for their authors, while others attained comparable renown by accusing the USA of slaughtering North Korean babies through germ-impregnated spiders broadcast from the skies.18

Because socialist realism originated in the Soviet Union, much of the literature on the doctrine of socialist theory has dealt with its impact on the culture of those countries

16 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism with Shores: The Conventions for the Positive Hero’ in Socialist Realism without Shores, eds. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenko, 28 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997). 17 Regine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992), 231. 18 Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978 (London: Methuen & Co.Ltd, 1981), 45. 5

where it was adopted such as in the Eastern European Stalinist satellite states, as well as China and Vietnam. However, the existing body of work on socialist realism in relation to Australian left-wing writers is by no means exhaustive. For example, there are several theses on New Theatre and a number of articles and books on left-wing writers, but these do not deal at length with the relationship between the CPA and New

Theatre writers. One that examines the political context of New Theatre is The Road

Not Taken: Political and Performance Ideologies at Melbourne New Theatre 1935–

1960, a PhD thesis by Angela O’Brien. It is more detailed than Herlinger’s thesis but its analysis is confined to New Theatre in Melbourne. O’Brien argues for the significance of the substantial contribution made to the development of a “national dramatic and theatrical culture”19 by Melbourne New Theatre asserts that “the contribution of

Melbourne New Theatre to the development of a national dramatic and theatrical culture was significant” and maintains that it is “simplistic to argue that New Theatre was little more than a propagandist tool for the CPA”.20 O’Brien then points to the establishment of New Theatre in the 1930s as a progressive move because “It was founded during a period when the CPA espoused a United Front of all liberal to left groups in the fight against fascism”.21

However, New Theatre’s progressive ethos was dependent on the political line of the

CPA. For example, New Theatre and its playwrights, including Oriel Gray, threw all their efforts into the Popular Front, producing anti-fascist plays by Clifford Odets and

19 Angela, O'Brien, The Road Not Taken [microform]: Political and Performance Ideologies at Melbourne New Theatre 1935-1960, vii (Clayton, Victoria: Monash University, 1989). 20 Angela O’Brien, The Road Not Taken, iv. 21 Angela O’Brien, The Road Not Taken, iv. 6

others, but when Moscow abandoned the Popular Front policy upon signing the Stalin–

Hitler pact, New Theatre cancelled a performance of Odets’s play Till the Day I Die22 and tailored their productions to reflect the new political party line. When the USSR entered the war, the anti-militarist plays were shelved and instead plays glorifying the

‘people’s war’ were staged instead.

O’Brien claims it is “impossible to provide any absolute definitive picture of the development of a theatre company, in itself a complex, multifaceted activity because the ground keeps shifting, not only as new information arises, but as interpretation is complicated by the changing fashion of literary analysis”.23 This is true to a certain extent, but an objective assessment of a particular political tendency influencing a theatre group can be made, given the ideological genesis and development of New

Theatre as a CPA initiative and that New Theatre’s management and production committees were comprised of CPA members, and mostly excluded non-CPA members from meetings. In a similar, less academic vein is the booklet containing two essays and titled Against the Stream: 50 Years of New Theatre—Melbourne New

Theatre 1936–1986 by Angela Hillel and What New Theatre Means to Me by Dot

Thompson,24 who was a New Theatre director for many years. Against the Stream provides some insight into New Theatre’s early turbulent years and names some important figures in Australian radio and theatre that feature among some of New

22 Clifford Odets, ‘Till the Day I Die’, in Three Plays by Clifford Odets (London: Gollancz, 1936). 23 Angela O’Brien, The Road Not Taken, 5. 24 Angela Hillel and Dot Thomson, Against the Stream/What New Theatre Means to Me (Clifton Hill, Victoria: New Theatre Melbourne, 1987). The booklet contains Hillel’s and Thomson’s essays. Angela Hillel is Angela O’Brien’s maiden name and who is Head of Creative Arts at Melbourne University.

7

Theatre’s practitioners. Its five decade span does not permit an in-depth analysis of

New Theatre’s function and political relationship with the CPA, but it does provide some interesting empirical data. Dot Thompson also published a pamphlet in 2000, My

Method and a Little Madness—Stanislavsky Revisited25, outlining her perspective and approach to theatre practice. According to this publication, Thompson joined New

Theatre in 1938–39 and her directorial debut was with Melbourne New Theatre in 1957 with Deep Are the Roots26. The booklet provides guidelines for directing according to

Thompson’s interpretation of the Stanislavsky method and does not extend beyond the more formal aspects of acting, directing and stage production. Thompson’s directorial experience seems to have been confined exclusively to New Theatre.

A truncated history of New Theatre is The New Years 1932—The Plays, People and

Events of 75 Years of Sydney’s New Theatre27, written and published by Sydney New

Theatre. This is more of an insider’s appreciation than a scholarly work of any magnitude, and, as stated in the title, deals mostly with Sydney productions. Of the scholarly publications on left-wing writers in Australia, Carole Ferrier’s biography of

Jean Devanny, Romantic Revolutionary28, is an important source that examines

Devanny’s literary career and her fractious relationship with the CPA. Julie Wells notes that Devanny believed writers were workers just like the proletariat and their interests were the same. Writers should therefore produce literature that “would reflect and

25 Dot Thomson, My Method and a Little Madness: Stanislavsky Revisited (Clifton Hill, Victoria: New Theatre Publications, 2000). 26 Arnad d’Usseau and James Gow, Deep are the Roots (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1946). 27 The New Years 1932—The Plays, People and Events of 75 Years of Sydney’s New Theatre (Sydney, NSW: New Theatre Sydney, 2007). 28 Carole Ferrier, Romantic Revolutionary (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1999). 8

promote those interests while educating and inspiring workers about their part in class struggle”.29 Devanny and like-minded left-wing writers, Wells adds, “drew no distinction between literary and political activity, viewing both as manifestations of a commitment to working-class interests”.30 This attitude was prevalent in Writers’ League meetings.

The Writers’ League was affiliated with Writers’ International which was associated with the Comintern. Tabled for discussion at its first meeting in 1935 was Zhdanov’s elaboration of Stalin’s notion of writers being the “engineers of human souls”.31

According to Wells, “the notion of literature as a weapon in the class war dominated the

League’s activities”.32

Although analyses have been undertaken on working class literature by scholars such as John Docker33, Nathan Hollier34, Paul Adams35, Julie Wells, John McLaren36, Susan

29 Julie Wells, ‘The Writers’ League: A Study in Literary and Working-Class Politics’, Meanjn 46, no. 4 (1987): 528. 30 Julie Wells, ‘The Writers’ League’, 528. 31 Andrei Zhdanov, ‘Speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers’ in Art in Theory 1900-1990, Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds., (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1998), 411. 32 Julie Wells, ‘The Writers’ League’, 530. 33 John Docker, Australian Cultural Elites: Intellectual Traditions in Sydney and Melbourne (Sydney, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1974). 34 Nathan Hollier, ‘Racism, the Realist Writers’ Movement and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Award’, Australian Literary Studies 19, no. 2 (1999): 213-223; ‘The Critical Reception of Bobbin Up’, Hecate 25, no. 1 (1999): 152-164. 35 Paul Adams, ‘The Stranger from Melbourne: The Writing of Frank Hardy—A Literary Biography 1944-1975’, Tirra Lirra 8, no.2-3 (1998): 18-27; Paul Adams, Christopher Lee, eds. Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment (Carlton North, Victoria: The Vulgar Press, 2003). 36 John McLaren, ‘Stephen Murray-Smith: His Legacy’, The La Trobe Journal, no. 82 (2008): 19- 26; ‘Alan Marshall: Trapped in His Own Image’, Life Writing 1, no.2 (2004): 85-99; ‘Bad Tempered Democrats, Biased Australians: Socialist Realism, Overland and the Australian Legend’, in Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment (Carlton North, Victoria: The Vulgar Press, 2003), 53-69; ‘The End of the Affair: Intellectuals and the Communist Party, 1956-1959’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 78 (2003): 71-82. 9

Lever (now McKernan)37, Michael Wilding38, Carole Ferrier39 and several others, only

Hollier, Adams and Ferrier have made it their central focus, Ian Syson argues. Syson, who is one of the few who has made this literature central to his work, adds that

“working class culture and literature has received little positive attention from the majority of Australian academics, and even less theoretical consideration”.40 This has been partly addressed by several publications including Healy’s Defiance41 and

Michelle Arrow with Upstaged: Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last42 where several New Theatre writers’ lives and work are examined alongside the contributions of other women to the development of Australian drama. Arrow also provides a chapter on New Theatre and its significance as a theatre of protest. David

Carter’s A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary

37 Susan McKernan, A Question of Commitment: Australian Writing in theTwenty Years After the War (Sydney, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1989); ‘A Sensitive Soul in a World of Betrayers’, Australian Book Review, no. 126 (1990): 27-28. 38 Michael Wilding, ‘’s Socialist Vision’, Studies in Classic Australian Fiction (Sydney, NSW: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture, 1997),32-75; ‘Pioneering Social Realism: ’s The Workingman’s Paradise’, in Studies in Classic Australian Fiction (Sydney, NSW: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture, 1997), 76-108. 39 Carole Ferrier, ‘Jean Devanny as an ‘Australasian Woman of 1928’’, Hecate 35, nno.1-2 (2009):187-201; ‘Focus on Eleanor Dark: An Introduction’, Hecate 27, no.1 (2001): 6-10; ‘Women of Letters and the uses of Memory’, in Wallflowers and Witches: Women and Culture in Australia 1910-1945, Maryanne Dever, ed. (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1994), 73-90; Point of Departure: The Autobiography of Jean Devanny, ed. (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1987); Introduction to and ed. Paradise Flow (St Lucia, Queensland: Hecate Press, 1985); ‘Dorothy Hewett: Australian Dramatist’, Lip, (Oct.1976): 2-5; ‘Jean Devanny’s New Zealand Novels’, Hecate 6, no. 1 (1980): 37-47; ‘Jean Devanny’s Queensland Novels’, Linq 8, no. 3 (1980): 20-30; ‘’The ‘Working Class Novel’ in Australia: Katharine Susannah Prichard and Jean Devanny’, in Katharine Susannah Prichard: Centenary Essays, John Hay and Brenda Walker eds. (Nedlands, Western Australia: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and University of Western Australia, Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, 1984), 13-28; ‘Sugar Heaven and the Reception of Working Class Texts’, Hecate 11, no.1 (1985): 19-25; ‘Jean Devanny, Katharine Susannah Prichard and the “Really Proletarian Novel”, in Gender, Politics and Fiction: Twentieth Century Australian Women’s Novels (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1992), 101-117; As Good as a Yarn With You, Carole Ferrier ed. (Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge University press, 1996). 40 IanSyson, ‘It Just isn't Trendy at the Moment': Thinking about Working Class Literature through the 1990s’, 13. 41 Connie Healy, Defiance. 42 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged: Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last (Strawberry Hills, NSW: , 2002). 10

Career43 explores the work of Waten, a prominent member of CPA who was also a writer of several published works.

However, the theoretical questions Syson refers to are central to this thesis and go to the heart of what constitutes proletarian literature as an aesthetic doctrine: is it literature written by the working class or is about the working class? Is it necessary to always portray the working class in a positive light? What are the conventions for writing in this style? Does it preclude the irrational, the intuitive or the unconscious?

Like socialist realism, the debates about the definition of proletarian literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s and elsewhere, including in Australia up to the present, have never been satisfactorily resolved, primarily because it is difficult to separate the idea of proletarian literature from its political function and its association with Zhdanovism. Proletarian literature is synonymous with left-wing activity given that, historically, those who advocated such an approach in Australia, such as

Katharine Susannah Prichard and Jean Devanny, were either in the CPA or were influenced by left-wing views.

One of the implications of writing proletarian literature is that literary merit is not always the primary consideration, as Nathan Hollier demonstrates. He writes of a winner of the

Katherine Susannah Prichard Award in 1964 who wrote a story about a cattle station owner and a young, part-Aboriginal horseman. The qualities looked for by the Realist

Writer, according to Kylie Tennant, one of the three judges, are those which “belong, or

43 David Carter, A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary Career (Toowoomba, Queensland: Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1997). 11

should belong, to a school of writing in which social realism is a paramount consideration. I was looking for honesty, accurate observation, and knowledge of working-class conditions, rather than literary techniques”.44 Hollier notes also that the rural setting in the story is commensurate with the “magazine's political interest in folk culture, its belief or assertion that the true, egalitarian Australian spirit continued unbroken in the bush” and the realism he describes as didactic.45 Furthermore, there is no explanation by Tennant as to why technique in a work of art or literature is not a significant consideration. The proletarian literature advocated by the Realist Writer in many ways typifies the attitude of Zhdanovites, who disdained and rejected artists who professed concern about form or style, denouncing them as ‘formalists’. “Obscurity and conservatism”, according to Hollier, were the “central critical objections”46 to entries for the award. Such a stance can be interpreted in several ways: as an explicit left-wing policy that, because it oriented to the working class, required eschewing aesthetic considerations and required simplistic portrayals for presumably uneducated audiences; it could also have been a reaction to the political conservatism of the

Menzies era.

Having awarded the prize, the Realist Writer judges were surprised to discover that the author’s views about Aborigines would have been anathema to them. The author of the prize-winning story reveals in private correspondence with the wife of one of the judges that, having failed to get her novels published about the ‘colour problem’ in the

44 Nathan Hollier, ‘Racism, the Realist Writers’ movement and the Katherine Susannah Prichard Award’, 214. 45 Nathan Hollier, ‘Racism, the Realist Writers’ movement and the Katherine Susannah Prichard Award’, 214-215. 46 Nathan Hollier, ‘Racism, the Realist Writers’ movement and the Katherine Susannah Prichard Award’, 214. 12

Northern Territory, she decided to adopt a different approach for the Realist Writer.

Surprised at her own success, she explains:

I wrote that story because I was so fed up with getting notes back from editors sayings things like —'Well written, but we can't publish this sort of thing – the public wouldn't like it'. Or—'This story, though well-written, is unsuitable for our magazine; have you anything else to show us, on a less controversial theme?' Or even—'What's wrong with being part-coloured?' So, with tongue in cheek, and just for fun, I wrote 'The Boy From Coomb's Creek'; thinking meanwhile—'This is the sort of sop the mags would like.' It's the sort of story that would sicken most old Territorians. I don't think it's well written; and I was staggered when I realized it was THAT story which won the award. But I can see why. I'm convinced now that it is popular appeal which brings success to a writer, not literary merit.47

What is ironic is that the author, despite her abhorrent personal and political views (she opposed granting Aborigines citizenship and allowing them to purchase alcohol because she believed it would compound their problems and hasten their demise as a race) was perhaps right about the literary merits of her work despite it being acceptable to those who considered themselves politically progressive. It is evident that the judges viewed the literature as performing some type of social or political function, rather than awarding its literary merit.

This incident serves as an example of the attempts by left-wing and cultural groups affiliated with or within the orbit of the CPA such as New Theatre to engineer art

47 Nathan Hollier, ‘Racism, the Realist Writers’ Movement and the Katherine Susannah Prichard Award’, 216. 13

towards a particular socio-political objective by forcing a combination of “art and action, aesthetics and pragmatics”.48 John McLaren claims that the board of the Realist Writer, which included CPA members such as Frank Hardy, closely supervised its operations, even to the extent of asking writers to alter their work. He cites the example of Dorothy

Hewett who was asked to reverse her criticism of a left-wing poet. McLaren described the work published by the Realist Writer as “mainly of heavy polemic, realistic stories about working class men, and exhortatory poetry. The polemics were directed strongly against any type of formalism, and particularly Patrick White”.49

There are similar incidents involving other left-wing groups, including New Theatre, but the recurring problem in researching New Theatre is that the discourse, particularly in the case of New Theatre, is very much anecdotal, having been mostly directed and shaped by those who have contributed to its history and who were members of the

CPA. Casey comments on this aspect of Australian theatre history in general, explaining that:

The major sources in relation to any grouping or period are often individual anecdotal accounts. Accessing information depends on knowing who were involved. As an ephemeral art form, the social memory of theatre production is often the dominant source and frame for information. Then, of course, there is the question, what is the basis of that memory?50

48 Baz Kershaw, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (London: Routledge, 1992), 5. 49John McLaren, Writing in Hope and Fear: Literature as Politics in Postwar Australia (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1996), 54. 50 Maryrose Casey, Creating Frames, xiv. 14

The memory of New Theatre is very much inscribed in the autobiographies by CPA and New Theatre members. However, these are largely subjective accounts of personal experience, and with the exception of Brand, Roland and Gray, the focus of these is not New Theatre although they do provide some insight into New Theatre’s social, political and cultural history and practice. These are important works as they function as a social register of cultural discourse and development in Australia from the perspective and outlook of those who participated within the New Theatre movement.

For example, Oriel Gray’s Exit Left51 and Mona Brand’s Enough Blue Sky52 are two that place New Theatre as the locus of their artistic endeavours. Both Brand and Gray were

CPA members, joining at different periods in the 1930s and 1940s. Brand was better known abroad in the Stalinist states in Eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union, where her plays were frequently performed, than in Australia. Gray’s playwriting after she left the CPA was accorded some praise in mainstream theatre but, like other New

Theatre playwrights, popular success eluded her. Both autobiographies evince a feeling of camaraderie and shared passions, while the interference of the CPA in New

Theatre is alluded to more often in Gray’s account than in Brand’s.

Betty Roland is another New Theatre writer whose short history with the CPA and New

Theatre has nevertheless produced some interesting insights into CPA cultural activities. Roland was assigned the task of establishing the New Theatre in Melbourne as a CPA initiative upon her return from an eighteen month sojourn in the Soviet Union

51 Oriel Gray, Exit Left (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1985). 52 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky (Sydney, NSW: Tawny Pipit Press, 1995). 15

in 1935. In her later years, in an interview with Drusilla Modjeska, she dismisses the agit-prop plays she wrote for New Theatre as “literary cartooning”.53 Her development as a writer is important as she was one of the few writers who had achieved a modicum of critical success with her play The Touch of Silk54 in 1928, prior to her involvement with the CPA. The Bulletin praised the talent and dramatic flair of the young playwright and claimed to have witnessed the birth of “genuine Australian drama”. Her four autobiographies shed some light on her experiences with the New Theatre, but Roland generally emphasises her personal relationships.

Roland’s autobiographies, The Eye of the Beholder55, Caviar for Breakfast56, An

Improbable Life and The Devious Being57, trace her life and work with the CPA and

New Theatre, her disavowal of the CPA, her subsequent work abroad and her children’s books. The narrative strategies of these autobiographies have been critiqued by Nicole Moore, who also notes that Roland’s agit-prop sketches during her years in the CPA are “informed by an international agitational aesthetic, and employ standard allegory and international iconography”.58 These, according to Moore, belie Roland’s claim of political naiveté in her autobiographies.

53 Drusilla Modjeska, ‘Betty Roland talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, Australasian Drama Studies 8 (April 1986): 68. 54 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/Granite Peak (Brisbane: Currency Press Australia, 1988). 55 Betty Roland, The Eye of the Beholder (Sydney, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 1986). 56 Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast (Melbourne, Victoria: Quartet Books, 1979). 57 Betty Roland, The Devious Being (North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990). 58 Nicole Moore, ‘The Burdens Twain or not Forgetting Yourself: The Writing of Betty Roland’s Life’, Hecate 18, no.1 (1992): 11.

16

While there is a dearth of critical material on New Theatre, its female writers, including

Mona Brand, Oriel Gray and Betty Roland, have not been entirely neglected. Interviews usually provide more insights into the thoughts and ideas of these writers. This is perhaps because autobiographies in general deal with events and histories in a linear progression. Interviews, on the other hand, prompt responses that, on occasion, shed more light on writers’ attitude to art, literature and politics. Giulia Giuffre’s A Writing

Life—Interviews with Australian Women Writers59 is a series of interviews with female novelists and playwrights including Oriel Gray and Betty Roland. These interviews yield some useful information about the writers’ relationship with the CPA and New Theatre and confirm that aesthetic considerations at New Theatre were quite often subordinate to the political imperatives of the CPA.

Giuffre’s other interview with Roland appears in The Bulletin60 and Drusilla Modjeska’s in Australasian Drama Studies61. In ‘A Bit of Ingenuity’ Brand is interviewed by Iris

O’Loughlin62 and discusses her playwriting for New Theatre and political commitment to the CPA. Gaye Poole63 conducts a similar interview with Brand in ‘A Very Humanitarian

Type of Socialism’ and an online interview An Interview with the Author of Enough Blue

59 Giulia Giuffre, A Writing Life: Interviews with Australian Women Writers (Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1990). 60 Giulia Giuffre, ‘Reflections on a Literary Life: An Interview with Betty Roland’, The Bulletin (Literary Supplement) 106, no. 5439 (1984): 94-97, 100. 61 Drusilla Modjeska, ‘Betty Roland talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, Australasian Drama Studies 8 (April 1986): 68-69. 62 Iris O’Loughlin, ‘A Bit of Ingenuity : Mona Brand’, Performing Women, Performing Feminisms: Interviews with International Women Playwrights, Joanne Tompkins and Julie Holledge, eds. (Brisbane, Queensland: Australian Drama Studies Association, 1997). 63 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’, Australasian Drama Studies, no. 21 (October 1992): 3-22. 17

Sky: The Autobiography of an Unknown Well-Known Playwright64 also yields relevant information regarding Brand’s left-wing views and her writing.

Roland’s plays and children’s literature are discussed in John McCallum’s Belonging65, where he also discusses Brand’s and Gray’s New Theatre plays. McCallum also examines New Theatre plays in his essay ‘Rattling the Manacles: Genre and

Nationalism in the Neglected Plays of the Campbell Howard Collection 1920–1955.’66

Although McCallum accords New Theatre and its writers a more prominent role in

Australian theatre history, he is, however, largely uncritical of some of the plays he discusses, such as those of Mona Brand, and does not explore the impact of the relationship with the CPA these writers had and the possible influence this could have had on their writing. Nevertheless, McCallum points to the neglect of these writers who merit attention for their contributions to Australian drama, and in doing so establishes the need for more detailed research into New Theatre and its writers.

Analyses of themes of the bush and the city by Australian writers are the focus of

Gareth Griffith’s essay ‘City and Bush in the Australian theatre 1922–1988’67 in which

64 Interview, An Interview with the Author of Enough Blue Sky: The Autobiography of an Unknown Well-Known Playwright (http://www.fastbooks.com.au/intermb.html) unknown date. 65 John McCallum, Belonging: Australian Playwriting in the 20th Century (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2009). 66 John McCallum, ‘Rattling the Manacles: Genre and Nationalism in the Neglected Plays of the Campbell Howard Collection, 1920-1955’, in Unemployed at Last!: Essays on Australian Literature to 2002 for Julian Croft (Armidale, NSW: University of New England. Centre for Language and Literature Studies, 2002), 86-104. 67 Gareth Griffith, ‘City and Bush in the Australian Theatre 1922-1988’, in Populous Places: Australian Cities and Towns (Sydney, NSW: Dangaroo Press, 1992), 31-47. 18

he also discusses Prichard’s New Theatre play Women of Spain68 and Brand’s Here

Under Heaven69. Brand’s plays have been the subject of inquiry also for Peter

Fitzpatrick who examines Strangers in the Land70 in ‘Asian Stereotypes in Recent

Australian Plays’71. Christine Tilley’s essay ‘A Writer’s Thirty-Six Years in Radical

Theatre: Perspectives on Mona Brand’s Isolation from Mainstream Theatre’72 argues that Brand’s exclusion from the mainstream is a result of anti-communist bias, and New

Theatre playwright Jim Crawford offers a critique in The Realist73 of Strangers in the

Land, Better a Millstone74 and No Strings Attached75. The New Theatre and Oriel Gray feature in Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes76 by Terry Irving and

Rowan Cahill and Angela Hillel discusses social realism and Aboriginal Australians among several other concerns in Oriel Gray’s plays in the essay ‘Oriel Gray: A

Forgotten Playwright’ in Australian Drama 1920-1955.77

68 Katharine Susannah Prichard, Women of Spain, Manuscript held at University of New England, Dixson Library, NSW, Local ID: 331, Campbell Howard Collection. 69 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven: Three Plays (Sydney, NSW: The Wentworth Press, 1969). 70 Mona Brand, Strangers in the Land (London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., 1954). 71 Peter Fitzpatrick, ‘Asian Stereotypes in Recent Australian Plays’, Australian Literary Studies 12, no. 1 (1985): 35-46. 72 Christine Tilley, ‘A Writer’s Thirty-Six Years in Radical Theatre: Perspectives on Mona Brand’s Isolation from Mainstream Theatre’, in Australian Drama 1920-1955: Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September 1-4, 1984 (Armidale, NSW: University of New England. Department of Continuing Education, 1986), 9-16. 73 Jim Crawford, ‘Reflections on Three Plays by Mona Brand’, The Realist, no. 22 (1966):30-32. 74 Mona Brand, ‘Better a Millstone’ in Plays (Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, 1965). 75 Mona Brand, ‘’No Strings Attached’, in Plays (Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, 1965). 76 Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill, Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes (Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press, 2010). 77 Angela Hillel, ‘Oriel Gray: A Forgotten Playwright’, in Australian Drama 1920-1955: Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September 1-4, 1984 (Armidale, NSW: University of New England. Department of Continuing Education, 1986), 17- 27. 19

Because the fields relating to New Theatre as well as working class literature are relatively small and the literature rather disparate, consulting the autobiographies of those in the CPA complements the critical material written about New Theatre and

Gray, Brand and Roland. The autobiographies of CPA members are useful, to varying degrees. One of these is Simon Bracegirdle’s My Lucky Life78 which is useful from the standpoint of demonstrating the gaps in the literature in relation to the association of the CPA and New Theatre. For example, the influence of the CPA on New Theatre or their relationship is not discussed but is taken for granted, although no elaboration is made of this relationship. However, Bracegirdle is more forthcoming about CPA influence on New Theatre in an interview with Wendy Lowenstein where he recalls direct interference on a political basis by the CPA in New Theatre, as well as the necessity of scheduling branch meetings on nights when New Theatre members, particularly those in the production and management committees, could attend.

Bernie Taft in Crossing the Party Line79 discusses New Theatre briefly, and claims that the influence of the CPA on Australian culture was significant and underestimated by the official records and argues for an examination of the CPA’s contribution to

Australia’s cultural life. Some of this work has been undertaken, but there remain some areas where research is necessary to arrive at a richer and more profound understanding of the influence of the CPA on Australian culture and on theatre specifically. In What’s Left?80 Eric Aarons echoes Taft’s sentiments, in which he

78 Simon Bracegirdle, My Lucky Life (Kelvin Grove, Queensland: Simon Bracegirdle, 1997). 79 Bernie Taft, Memoirs of Bernie Taft: Crossing the Party Line (Newham, Australia: Scribe Publications, 1994). 80 Eric Aarons, What’s Left?: Memoirs of an Australian Communist (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin and Australia Council. Literature Board, 1993). 20

recounts his time as a leading figure in the CPA. However, he does not elaborate on the CPA’s cultural organisations. Shades of Red81 by Nance Macmillan (also known as

Nancy Wills) is a rambling account of her experiences as a member of the CPA and

New Theatre, to which she contributed two plays. Both plays—The Painter82 about the

Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira and Land of Morning Calm83, also known as

Christmas Bridge, a pacifist play about the Korean War—remain unpublished. She recounts her experiences and comments on the CPA influence on New Theatre but she does not consider these detrimental to her creative output. Wills/McMillan’s contributions to New Theatre as part of the coterie of CPA writers have not been thoroughly examined84 and point up the gaps in the existing literature in particular about the types of socially critical plays dealing with Australia’s indigenous population.

Frank Hardy, best known for his novel Power Without Glory85, was a CPA member for decades. Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment86 by Paul Adams and

Christopher Lee and ’s Politics, Literature and Life87 provide interesting insights into the machinations of the CPA and its influence on its cultural organisations such as Overland, Realist Writer, New Theatre, Fellowship of Australian Writers, Unity

81 Nancy Wills, Shades of Red (Lota, Queenlsand: Communist Art Group, 1980). 82 Nancy Wills, The Painter, Manuscript held in Mitchell Library, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 100. 83 Nancy Wills, Land of Morning Calm, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 87. The play is also known by the title Christmas Bridge, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 157. 84 An essay by me deals with some of New Theatre writers’ unpublished plays in ‘Voices Unheard: The Representation of Australian Aborigines by Left-Wing Playwrights 1940s-1960s’ Australasian Drama Studies 60 (2012): 42-55. 85 Frank Hardy, Power Without Glory: A Novel in Three Parts (Melbourne, Victoria: Realist Printing and Publishing Company, 1950). 86 Paul Adams, Christopher Lee, eds. Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment (Carlton North, Victoria: The Vulgar Press, 2003). 87 Jenny Hocking, Politics, Literature and Life (Melbourne, Victoria: Lothian Books, 2005). 21

Dance and Australasian Book Society. Hardy recalls several incidents, such as the suicide of party cultural theorist Paul Mortier, and the relationship between writers and the CPA. Hardy wrote several plays for New Theatre, some of which were criticised by

New Theatre as ideologically unsound and have not been subject to analysis outside of

New Theatre management and production committees. In Katharine Susannah

Prichard’s autobiography Child of the Hurricane88, the CPA is conspicuous only by its absence. Her account mentions nothing about her joining the CPA, nor her ideas about socialist realism or proletarian literature, ideas that she would later expound in CPA journals Tribune and Communist Review. Her son Ric Throssell’s biography of

Prichard, Wild Weeds and Windflowers89, downplays the CPA influence in Prichard’s writing from the 1930s onwards. Prichard contributed several propagandist plays to

New Theatre and these are informed by the notions of collective action typical of trade unions to which the CPA was heavily oriented.

A radical contrast to Prichard’s circumscribed account is Jean Devanny’s autobiography Point of Departure90, which is a no-holds-barred account of her tense and tumultuous relationship with the CPA. The book reinforces Ferrier’s characterisation of Devanny as a politically committed, yet vulnerable, cultural warrior.

Devanny is perhaps the most outspoken of former CPA members about party influence on New Theatre. Her antagonistic relationship with the CPA was inextricably linked with their attitude to art and artists, yet she herself uncritically espoused the theories of

88 Katharine Susannah Prichard, Child of the Hurricane: An Autobiography (Sydney, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1963). 89 Ric Throssell, Wild Weeds and Windflowers: The Life and Letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard (London: Angus and Robertson, 1975). 90 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1986). 22

socialist realism and proletarian culture and claimed to have written the “first really proletarian novel in Australia”,91 Sugar Heaven.92 A popular public speaker, she is renowned for her aggressive demagogic style on the soapbox. Devanny established the precursor to New Theatre, the Workers’ Art Club, and her struggle for the rights of artists within the CPA reveals a disoriented woman whose fight against what she perceived as the ingrained philistinism and dogma within the CPA was stymied at almost every point.

New Theatre is referred to in other autobiographies, usually in fleeting reference to the writers’ own experience with the organisation, such as in Leslie Rees’s Hold Fast to

Dreams93 where he notes that he abstained from joining the CPA because it granted no guarantees of artistic freedom to politically affiliated or sympathetic artists within its orbit or in the CPA’s cultural organisations. His critical analyses of Australian theatre

Towards an Australian Drama94, The Making of Australian Drama: From the 1830s to the Late 1960s95 and The Making of Australian Drama: A Historical and Critical Survey from the 1830s to the 1970s96 discuss New Theatre within the broader context of

Australian drama’s development. Rees’s two-volume History of Australian Drama is a seminal work which includes analyses and overviews of New Theatre productions. In these volumes Rees also examines the work of New Theatre writers such as Mona

91 Jean Devanny, ‘The Workers’ Contribution to Australian Literature’, Australian Writers Speak: Literature and Life in Australia (Sydney, Angus & Robertson1943), 61. 92 Jean Devanny, Sugar Heaven (Sydney, NSW: Modern Publishers, 1936). 93 Leslie Rees, Hold Fast to Dreams: Fifty Years in Theatre, Radio, Television and Books (Chippendale, NSW: Alternative Publishing Co-operative, 1982). 94 Leslie Rees, Towards an Australian Drama (Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1953). 95 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama: From the 1830s to the Late 1960s, Revised.ed. (Sydney, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1973). 96 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama: A Historical and Critical Survey from the 1830s to the 1970s (Sydney, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1973). 23

Brand, Oriel Gray and Betty Roland and their development subsequent to their departure from the CPA and New Theatre.

The history of the CPA is better documented than that of New Theatre, but it is still far from exhaustive and, for the most part, has been written by former members or sympathisers. However, New Theatre does not feature prominently in autobiographies by former CPA members such as Bernice Morris’s Between the Lines97, Dorothy

Hewett’s Wild Card,98 Zelda D'Aprano's Zelda,99 Amirah Inglis's Amirah: An Un-

Australian Childhood100 as well as The Hammer & Sickle and the Washing Up:

Memories of an Australian Woman Communist,101 Audrey Blake’s A Proletarian Life,102

Justina Williams’s Anger and Love,103 Betty Collins’s The Copper Crucible,104 Roger

Milliss’s Serpent’s Tooth: An Autobiographical Novel105 or in Denis Freney’s A Map of

Days: Life on the Left.106 Examined together these autobiographies provide a more detailed picture of the appeal of the CPA for so many, particularly writers and artists.

However, they generally omit discussions or examination of the attitude to cultural matters by the CPA.

97 Bernice Morris, Between the Lines (Collingwod, Victoria: Sybylla Co-operative Press and Publications, 1988). 98 Dorothy Hewett, Wild Card (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia, 2001). 99 Zelda D’Aprano, Zelda (North Melbourne, Victoria: Spinifex Press, 1995). 100 Amirah Inglis, Amirah: An Un-Australian Childhood (Richmond, Victoria: Heinemann, 1985). 101 Amirah Inglis, The Hammer & Sickle and the Washing Up: Memories of an Australian Woman Communist (South Melbourne, Victoria: Hyland House, 1995). 102 Audrey Blake, A Proletarian Life (Malmsbury, Victoria: Kibble Books, 1984). 103 Justina Williams, Anger and Love (South Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993). 104 Betty Collins, The Copper Crucible (Brisbane, Queensland: Jacaranda, 1966). 105 Roger Milliss, Serpent’s Tooth: An Autobiographical Novel (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1984). 106 Denis Freney, A Map of Days: Life on the Left (Port Melbourne, Victoria: Heinemann, 1991). 24

For example, , Mona Brand’s husband, wrote of his experiences in the CPA in his publication titled Broad Left, Narrow Left.107 Fox was editor for a number of years at the CPA journal Tribune and also contributed a few sketches to New Theatre. New

Theatre is mentioned as one of several organisations including as Unity Dance Group and Unity Singers in the context of the CPA’s increased interest in cultural matters in the post-World War Two period. What he does not elaborate is the pervasive siege mentality that developed during this Cold War period which found expression in many of the overly didactic and drab realist plays by New Theatre writers. Fox acknowledges some of the CPA’s shortcomings and dogmatism, but advances no analysis of the nature of the relationship between the CPA and its cultural bodies. Jack Beasley is also a former CPA member whose contributions include A Gallop of Fire—Katharine

Susannah Prichard: On Guard for Humanity,108 Red Letter Days: Notes from inside an

Era109 and Journal of an Era: Notes From the Red Letter Days.110 Beasley discusses the political life of the party but his main interest lay in the arts and he expounds on the

CPA’s attitude to culture and its role in developing its cultural organisations. Beasley— a trenchant Stalinist and a staunch socialist realist—vigorously defends the CPA approach to culture in his writings. Ralph Gibson’s The People Stand Up111 is less caustic than Beasley in his defence of socialist realism, and, as a former CPA member, he also laments the lack of appreciation for the CPA’s contribution to Australian culture.

107 Len Fox, Broad Left, Narrow Left (Chippendale, NSW: Len Fox, 1982). 108 Jack Beasley, A Gallop of Fire—Katharine Susannah Prichard: On Guard for Humanity (Earlwood, NSW: Wedgetail Press, 1993). 109 Jack Beasley, Red Letter Days: Notes From Inside an Era (Sydney, NSW: Australasian Book Society, 1979). 110 Jack Beasley, Journal of an Era: Notes From the Red Letter Days (Earlwood, NSW: Wedgetail Press, 1988). 111 Ralph Gibson, The People Stand Up (Ascot Vale, Victoria: Red Rooster, 1983). 25

One of the more engaging biographies of CPA individuals is Communism: A Love

Story112 by Jeff Sparrow about Guido Baracchi, who was a founding member of the

CPA but who was expelled in 1926 before applying for readmission in the 1930s. He spent almost two years in the Soviet Union with his partner, the playwright Betty

Roland. Disenchanted, both left the CPA in 1940 in opposition to the Stalin–Hitler pact.

Sparrow also notes several instances of CPA interference in New Theatre. The most authoritative scholarly account of the CPA is Stuart Macintyre’s The Reds: The

Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality.113 Macintyre, like others, notes that the CPA “engaged in a wide range of educational and cultural activities: party classes, workers’ art, literature, music and theatre”.114 However, he is categorical about the CPA’s adherence to Moscow dictates, stating that

Like all other sections of the Communist International, the Communist Party of Australia succumbed to Stalinism. After a first decade of improvised, enthusiastic and generally ineffective activity, it became an utterly faithful follower of the policies and practices laid down by the Soviet leader.115

Problematic as it is to draw parallels between CPA policies on political and economic issues and their attitudes to art and cultural production in general, the ‘Stalinisation’ of the CPA did nevertheless extend to carrying out the policies and practices of Moscow in relation to art and literature, albeit without the concomitant terrors inflicted by the

Moscow bureaucracy on recalcitrant writers and artists. Although useful for

112 Jeff Sparrow, Communism: A Love Story (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2007). 113 Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality (Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998). 114 Stuart Macintyre, The Reds, 4. 115 Stuart Macintyre, The Reds, 3. 26

contextualising the relationship between the CPA and New Theatre in its incipient years, The Reds’ analysis is limited to the period of the 1920s to the 1940s.

Furthermore, Macintyre does not elaborate on the CPA’s cultural bodies, focusing on the political issues and controversies marking its development up to this point.

To arrive at a greater understanding of New Theatre’s role as a theatre of social critique in Australian history, the literature dealing specifically with Australian theatre practice is perhaps more germane. One such type is Dennis Carroll’s Australian

Contemporary Drama.116 This overview of Australian drama takes into account the small theatres, including New Theatre, while Leonard Radic in The State of Play117 and

Contemporary Australian Drama118 has produced a collection of essays in which New

Theatre is mentioned just twice in the course of 586 pages. Only Betty Roland and

Mona Brand are mentioned: Roland for The Touch of Silk which launched her playwriting career prior to her involvement with the CPA, and Brand for a play that she wrote after she left the CPA.

There are many works from a feminist perspective about women writers, some who have coincidentally worked with New Theatre. However, the objective of these histories is to explore the life and work of politically radical women who have been marginalised by mainstream historians, both culturally and politically, rather than New Theatre itself

116 Dennis Carroll, Australian Contemporary Drama (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1995). 117 Leonard Radic, The State of Play: The Revolution in the Australian Theatre Since the 1960s (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1991). 118 Leonard Radic, Contemporary Australian Drama (Blackheath, NSW: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2006). 27

being the focus. One of the more comprehensive of these is Drusilla Modjeska’s Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925–1945.119 New Theatre is incidental to the accounts and analyses of these Australian women writers’ lives, as the focus of Exiles is primarily on the difficulties of sustaining a writing career as a woman during a period of intense political and social upheaval and how women’s political concerns shaped their approach to literature.

Women Come Rally—Socialism, Communism and Gender in Australia 1890-1955120 by

Joy Damousi explores the gendered relations within the Australian left-wing movement as well as the experiences of radical left-wing women who, contrary to popular belief, were participants not as appendages of men, but independently. It mentions occasionally the appeal of the CPA for writers but makes no detailed analysis of any plays or the relationship between New Theatre and the CPA.

Aside from the previously mentioned article on the Writers’ League, Julie Wells has written several reviews and articles on left-wing writers such as as well as the essay ‘Red Witches: Perceptions of Communist Women Writers’ that appears in

Wallflowers and Witches: Women and Culture in Australia 1910–1945.121 Here Wells examines the careers of Katharine Susannah Prichard, Betty Roland, Mona Brand and

Dorothy Hewett. Wells notes that the attempts of New Theatre writers to reconcile their

119 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 (Sydney, NSW: Sirius Books, 1984). 120 Joy Damousi, Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism and Gender in Australia 1890- 1955 (Melbourne, Victoria: Oxford University Press, 1994). 121 Julie Wells, Wallflowers and Witches: Women and Culture in Australia 1910-1945 ed. Maryann Dever (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1994). 28

literary and political activity were fraught with tensions. For example, while New

Theatre playwrights were marginalised by mainstream theatres who objected to the controversial themes of their plays, these same writers were subject to constraints of a different type within the CPA “where literary endeavour was often viewed with suspicion”.122 Susan Pfisterer’s essay ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women

Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’ in Departures: How Australia Reinvents

Itself123 expands on Wells’ analysis. The focus is on Mona Brand and Oriel Gray and

Pfisterer points out that New Theatres in Australia, while a vehicle for plays of social critique by writers such as Gray and Brand, also “played an important recruiting role for the CPA”.124 Like Wells, Pfisterer maintains that “being a ‘Brave Red Witch’ was a blessing and curse for the careers of these women” because although New Theatre provided immediate audiences for their plays, they were nevertheless “exposed to swifter and more obtuse censorship from within and without the party”.125

Pfisterer’s and Carolyn Pickett’s essay ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women,

Identity and the New Theatre’ in Playing with Ideas: Australian Women Playwrights

122 Julie Wells, ‘Red Witches: Perceptions of Communist Women Writers’ in Wallflowers and Witches, Maryanne Dever, ed. (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1994), 147. 123 Susan Pfisterer, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’, in Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself ed. Xavier Pons (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2002). 124 Susan Pfisterer and Carolyn Pickett, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’ in Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself, ed. Xavier Pons 168 (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2002). 125 Susan Pfisterer, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’, 168. 29

from the Suffragettes to the Sixties126 offers an insight into Australian theatre history but does not examine the impact of the CPA on New Theatre’s writers. Rather, it is an extensive foray that exposes the challenges confronted by Australian women dramatists through crucial periods in Australia’s history and extends and varies the work begun by Modjeska on women playwrights.

An interesting observation in relation to the literature on New Theatre writers is that it mostly focuses on the women writers. This is perhaps because they were the more prominent writers, but Jim Crawford, who wrote around seventeen plays for New

Theatre, has never been published or his plays professionally produced yet, and aside from Connie Healy and a brief mention by Maryrose Casey in her book, his work has not elicited much interest from scholars in the way Roland’s, Gray’s or Brand’s has. For instance, Tremendous Worlds—Australian Women’s Drama 1890–1960,127 edited by

Susan Pfisterer, is a scholarly publication of a collection of plays with succinct overviews of several playwrights. It includes Mona Brand’s play Here Under Heaven as well as works by several other writers such as Miles Franklin and Katharine Susannah

Prichard’s agit-prop piece Forward One.128 Male contributors to New Theatre such as

Leslie Rees, Len Fox, John Hepworth, David Williamson (the renowned Australian playwright contributed several sketches to New Theatre early in his career) and the

126 Susan Pfisterer and Carolyn Pickett, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women, Identity and the New Theatre’, in Playing with Ideas: Australian Women Playwrights From the Suffragettes to the Sixties (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1999). 127 Susan Pfisterer , ed., Tremendous Worlds: Australian Women’s Drama 1890-1960 (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1999). 128 Katharine Susannah Prichard, ‘Forward One’, in Tremendous Worlds: Australian Women’s Drama 1890-1960. 30

aforementioned Jim Crawford, among others, continue to be overlooked or under- examined.

While male writers for New Theatre have escaped much scrutiny of their work, novelists who depicted the working class from a left-wing perspective (as those who were CPA members or sympathisers were wont to do) were often subject to statist censorship or even criminal prosecution.129 ‘New Theatre and the State: The Ban on Till the Day I Die’ by Robert Darby130 is an interesting analysis of the imposition of the ban on the play from 1936 to 1941 that challenges prevalent conceptions about who imposed the ban and why it was imposed. Darby claims that it was neither Lyons nor

Menzies who imposed the ban, but Secretary of the Department of External Affairs,

Colonel W.R. Hodgson and Director of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch,

Colonel H.E Jones. The ban, Darby suggests, was motivated not by a desire to appease or “stifle criticism of Nazi Germany but was primarily intended to curb the activities of the New Theatre League and more generally to advance the Australian government’s domestic anti-communist agenda”.131

129 A few examples include Robert Close for his novel Love Me Sailor (Melbourne, Victoria: Georgian House, 1945); Dymphna Cusack and Florence James for Come in Spinner (Melbourne, Victoria: Heinemann, 1951) as well as Frank Hardy for Power Without Glory (Melbourne, Victoria: Realist Printing and Publishing Company, 1950).See Nicole Moore ‘Obscene and Over Here: National Sex and the Love Me Sailor Obscenity Case’, Australian Literary Studies, vol.20, no. 4 (2002): 316-329; John McLaren, ‘Prologue: The Trials of Robert Close and Frank Hardy’, in Writing in Hope and Fear: Literature as Politics in Postwar Australia, (Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 130 Robert Darby, ‘New Theatre and the State: The Ban on Till the Day I Die, 1936-1941’, Labour History, no. 80 (May 2001): 1-19. 131 Robert Darby, ‘New Theatre and the State: The Ban on Till the Day I Die, 1936-1941’, Labour History, 1. 31

New Theatre’s political history and its innovations in its incipient years are totally overlooked in the very recent Make it Australian—The Australian Performing Group,

The Pram Factory and New Wave132 Theatre by Gabrielle Wolf, which continues the trend of relegating New Theatre to a historical footnote, according it a cursory mention.

Wolf does not single out New Theatre female dramatists specifically but the book conforms to the prevalent conception about the radicalism and innovativeness of the

New Wave in an overview that reinforces the dominant discourse, omitting the experimentation of New Theatre and its origins within the CPA. Even more strikingly, in

The Doll’s Revolution133 New Theatre is entirely ignored. The study purports to explore the development of Australian theatre from a feminist position, its starting point being

The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Interestingly, the authors omit mentioning that

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll shared first prize in the Playwrights’ Advisory Board in

1955 with The Torrents, a romantic play in the realist mould set in the early twentieth century about environmental concerns and women’s emancipation, by New Theatre writer Oriel Gray.

Ken Harper’s essay, ‘The Useful Theatre—The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and

Melbourne 1935–1983’134 is concise and concrete in its exploration of the political underpinnings of New Theatre. Politically radicalised writers are the focus of Andrew

Milner’s ‘Radical Intellectuals: An Unacknowledged Legislature?’ in Constructing a

132 Gabrielle Woolf, Make it Australian: The Australian Performing Group, the Pram Factory and New Wave Theatre (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2008). 133 Rachel Fensham, Denise Varney, Maryrose Casey and Laura Ginters, The Doll’s Revolution: Australian Theatre and Cultural Imagination (Melbourne, Victoria: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2005). 134 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre—The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne 1935-1983’, Meanjin 43, no. 1 (1984): 56-71. 32

Culture: A People's History of Australia since 1788.135 Informative and insightful, he claims that Australian radicalism was expressed in socialism, feminism and nationalism and explores the role of the intelligentsia in these socially critical movements. He notes the “ambiguous legacy”136 of communism for Australian socialists and comments on the dichotomy of the proscriptive and authoritarian approach to culture by the CPA which simultaneously enabled the formation of various and alternative cultural institutions, mentioning New Theatre as one of many party organisations and refers to the “vital radical culture”137 produced by the intelligentsia involved with the CPA.

This radical culture was not unique to Australia, but was part of the international discourse of all parties affiliated with the Comintern. Discussions on aesthetics raged within the Soviet Union in the Communist Party and many schools and tendencies sought official recognition in the years immediately following the 1917 revolution. With the proletariat having taken power in Russia, the notion of a proletarian literature emerged and assumed significance. Uncertainty on the question incited much debate about the role of art in the new society, with many literary movements such as

Proletkult seeking official recognition as state mandated literature, an imprimatur few leaders were prepared to grant. So heated were the debates on this issue that Trotsky was prompted to write a series of articles on the matter to explain why art must remain an autonomous field of endeavour:

135 Andrew Milner, ‘Radical Intellectuals’ in Constructing a Culture: A People’s History of Australia since 1788, eds. Verity Bergman and Jenny Lee, 269 (Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia: McPhee/Gribble, 1988). 136 Andrew Milner, ‘Radical Intellectuals’, 269. 137 Andrew Milner, ‘Radical Intellectuals’, 269. 33

The Marxian method affords an opportunity to estimate the development of the new art, to trace all its sources, to help the most progressive tendencies by a critical illumination of the road, but it does no more than that. Art must make its own way and by its own means.138

However, since the thesis aims to show how the CPA influenced or intervened in New

Theatre and how this finds expression in the work of the three playwrights, the CPA’s own writings on socialist realism, proletarian literature and approach to culture in general are also utilised in this thesis. The Communist Review, the official organ of the

CPA, published reviews and articles on literary and artistic matters. It published most of

Betty Roland’s agit-prop material, and party intellectuals such as Jean Devanny and

Katharine Susannah Prichard used its pages to expound their theories on Marxist literature. Analyses of Shakespeare make their way in there as well as the doggerel of socialist realist poets and short story writers. The publication’s diatribes on modernism fuelled a heated debate between CPA artists and supporters of the modernist Angry

Penguins. The tenor of the disagreements is reflective of the growing hostility of the

CPA towards experimentation in form such as surrealism, which was denounced as formalism and condemned as symptomatic of petty-bourgeois decadence. For example, in the July 1944 edition of the Communist Review, ‘H.M’ criticises John

Reed’s views of socialist realist art as interpreted by H.M. Reed criticises H.M’s dogmatism and narrowness about his views on art and explains the futility of H.M’s example of the Soviet artist’s understanding of the important issues of the day, noting that “this may, or may not be true, but assuming it is, it is quite irrelevant for our purposes because we are not in the Soviet Union and our conditions are entirely

138 Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (London: RedWords, 1991), 246. 34

different from theirs”. H.M’s riposte is to reinforce the supposed superiority of socialist realist Soviet art, explaining that “my point was that Soviet Art is good—in the light of the responses it arouses in the Soviet people because it is helping to build the unbreakable morals of the Soviet people”.139 The Angry Penguins folded after a short life-span but the approach to cultural matters within the CPA set and hardened in the post-war period. These attitudes are recorded in the minutes of production and management committee meetings at New Theatre, held in the New Theatre archives at the State Library of NSW. Paul Mortier, a CPA member, also wrote Art—Its Origins and

Social Function,140 which is instructive from the standpoint that it epitomises the

Stalinist and CPA attitude to art as prescriptive and strictly utilitarian.

The New Theatre archives span around seven decades of the life of New Theatre and is the most informative and useful source holding playscripts, correspondence between

New Theatre members and the CPA as well as with fraternal organisations here and abroad, minutes of meetings and conferences, press clippings and photographs. The collection comprises material from where New Theatre had a branch: Queensland,

Western Australia, Adelaide, Newcastle, Sydney and Melbourne. The personal files of many of the New Theatre’s writers, directors and producers are also held at the State

Library in separate archives. For the purpose of this research the personal files accessed were those of Mona Brand, Betty Roland and James McAuley. It was

McAuley who with two other New Theatre writers created one of New Theatre’s most

139 H.M ‘A further reply to John Reed’s Views’, Communist Review (July 1944): 285-6. 140 Paul Mortier, Art—Its Origins and Social Function (Sydney, NSW: Current Book Distributors, 1955). 35

popular and critically and financially successful political satires, I’d Rather be Left,141 which remains unpublished.

Also held at the Mitchell Library are the CPA archives. These provide important information relating to the CPA’s relationship with Moscow. These are revealing in that, for much of the CPA’s early history, not much documented material relating to party approaches to art and literature are recorded. However, from the 1930s onwards, adapting to the Moscow line, there is discussion about the importance of developing cultural organisations as an important, although as yet not integral, component of party work and propaganda.

The ASIO files held by New Theatre in Newtown, Sydney, as well as in the Mitchell

Library contain intercepted correspondence between the CPA and New Theatre.

Although the intercepted correspondence points to the political activities of the CPA

‘fronts’, a large portion of the material gathered by ASIO includes press clippings, surveillance reports and informants’ letters to the authorities, and, despite some inane observations and some red-baiting, these tend to reinforce the Cold-War hysteria of

‘reds under the bed’. Because ASIO files are far from objective, they are necessarily used with caution in this thesis: they are not utilised to prove that New Theatre was affiliated with the CPA, but are used to demonstrate, to a limited extent, the nature of the relationship between the two. However, it is worth bearing in mind that “ASIO

141 James McAuley and John Reid, I’d Rather Be Left, New Theatre Records MLMSS 6244, Box 149. 36

penetration of the CPA was extensive and high-level and its sources authoritative”.142

Manuscripts are also held at Queensland’s Fryer Library, which has unpublished manuscripts of plays by New Theatre writers Mona Brand and Oriel Gray. Nic

Hepworth, Oriel Gray’s son, has also provided me with material relevant to the research on his mother.

Interviews with New Theatre members, past and present, provide vital insights into the workings of New Theatre. Jock Levy was, despite his advanced years,143 amenable to an interview with me. He joined New Theatre and the CPA in the 1930s and directed many productions before leaving, subsequently forming the Waterside Workers’ Film

Unit in 1949 which produced several films. Levy was awarded in 2009 an Order of

Australia Medal in the General Division ‘For service to the Australian film industry through the Waterside Workers' Federation Film Unit and as a producer, director and actor.’144 David Milliss and his wife Betty Milliss joined New Theatre in the 1950s and provide a fresh perspective on its workings, in particular on the latter-day history of

New Theatre post-Khrushchev’s speech. David Milliss and his brother Roger were both members of New Theatre and David is partially responsible for the existence and maintenance of the archives. He was heavily involved in designing posters and sets while Betty was an actress and performed in some of the plays by the writers discussed in this thesis.

142 Phillip Deery, ‘The Sickle and the Scythe: Jack Blake and Communist Party ‘Consolidation’, 1949-1956’, Labour History, no. 80 (May 2001): 220. 143 Levy was 93 when I interviewed him in 2008. 144 The Age, National, 13 June (2010), http://www.theage.com.au/national/queens-brithday- honours-20100613-y62o.html 37

Left-wing workers’ theatre internationally has also been the subject of several books, which provide further insights into the appeal of radical theatre for writers in given periods. For example, Candida Rifkind145 argues that “the workers’ theatre movement has been preserved and commemorated despite the erosion and failure of

Communism”. The Canadian Modernists Meet146 also examines Communist Workers’

Theatres and their contribution to Canada’s literary canon. Developments in

Communist Party affiliated workers’ theatres in Canada resemble in many ways those of the New Theatre in Australia, and these examples provide a context for apprehending the extent of the Communist Party’s appeal for the intelligentsia and how workers’ theatre groups functioned in relation to their affiliation with the party.

What New Theatre’s fragmented history, evidenced by the various discrete sources, demonstrates is that this vital aspect of Australian theatre history requires further investigation. This thesis builds on and contributes to the existing body of work on New

Theatre, its writers and the CPA and aims to enrich our understanding of politically- affiliated radical theatre, its impact on writers and, in doing so, attempts to close, even if only marginally, the gap in Australian theatre history.

145 Candida Rifkind, Comrades and Critics: Women, Literature and the Left in 1930s Canada (Toronto, Canada: Toronto University Press, 2007). 146 Dean Jay Irvine, ed., The Canadian Modernists Meet (Ottowa, Ontario: Ottowa University Press, 2005). 38

 



*(& !*$(.,(1'14 (//!,***"."'-+,*%"

No, you fools, no, you goitrous cretins, a book cannot be turned into gelatine soup, nor a novel into a pair of seamless boots...By the intestines of all the Popes, future, past and present: No, and a thousand times no! Theophile Gautier1

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the origins and developments of workers’ theatre and the theories of proletarian culture and socialist realism as they emerged in the

Soviet Union in the 1920s and how these informed the CPA’s and New Theatre’s approach to culture in Australia. The purpose is to contextualise New Theatre’s practice as a theatre of protest with a social mission and its relationship with the CPA as one of its many cultural organisations.

!')*(%,*"'-%,-*'+("%"+,*%"+&7

Rejecting the notion that no work of literature or art is devoid of ideas, Russian Marxist

Georgii Plekhanov nevertheless enunciated a clear distinction between literature as art and literature as a consciously utilitarian, ideological tool rather than as end in itself. He commented in his essay ‘Art and Social Life’:

1 Georgii Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. V (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981), 639. 39

The artist expresses his ideas in images; the publicist demonstrates his thoughts with the help of logical conclusions. And if a writer operates with logical conclusions instead of images, or if he invents images in order to demonstrate a definite theme, then he is not an artist but a publicist, even if he does not write essays or articles, but novels, stories or plays.2

His approach to aesthetics and literary criticism and his method of exposition influenced the development of Marxism in these fields. Plekhanov’s Marxist principles in aesthetics and literary criticism—whereby he sought to elucidate the development of art and literature historically as a specific field of human endeavour, its social role and the aesthetic questions related to literary and artistic works—influenced a generation of

Russian Marxists in their approach to questions of art and literature. In the aftermath of the revolution, there was a florescence, not only in Russia but everywhere, of literary and artistic movements. One of the more popular and radical in Russia was Proletkult, and, contrary to the positions of Plekhanov, their aim was to jettison what they considered to be the relics of bourgeois culture, as they sought to cultivate anew a culture predicated on the ideals of the revolution, ideals based on the proletariat.

However, the seeds for the idea of a proletarian culture were sown earlier than the

1920s or even 1917. Proletarian culture as an aesthetic doctrine was in fact advanced by Alexander Bogdanov, a former Russian Social-Democrat who left the party after the failed 1905 revolution in Russia.

In Bogdanov’s view, the failed 1905 revolution was evidence that the political struggle was doomed to failure and therefore “it was necessary to develop and systematize

2 Georgii Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. V., 648. 40

elements of the incipient culture”—what he called “elements of socialism in the present”,3 which involved “the creation of new elements of socialism in the proletariat itself, in the internal relations, and in its conditions of life: the development of a socialist proletarian culture”.4

Bogdanov’s ideas gained traction in sections of the intelligentsia and, just weeks prior to the 1917 October Revolution, he established Proletkult. Nikolai Bukharin was an enthusiastic supporter who praised the “crudeness” and “amateurism” of Proletkult’s theatre productions. Explaining what he outlines as the principles governing proletarian literature, Bogdanov analyses a poem entitled To a New Comrade and states that “It is not the artistry that interests us most in this poem. What is most striking is the purity of the contents. I doubt whether one could be more proletarian in feeling and thought”.5

The poem is rhetorical and exhortative, but with a sense of rhythm that conveys with varying degrees of success the forward march of the proletariat, the conquering of the means of production, and what Bogdanov claims is the “irresistible effort of the collective creative will”.6

By 1920 Proletkult had become a mass organisation, with around 400,000 members.

Bogdanov left Proletkult in 1921 to pursue scientific interests but his followers continued to propagate Proletkult’s ethos and were active in various literary organisations such as the All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, the Moscow

3 Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov–Lenin Controversy (London: Ithaca,1988), 31. 4 Zenovia A. Sochor, Revolution and Culture, 39. 5 Alexander Bogdanov, ‘Proletarian Poetry’, Marxist Writers, http://www.marxists.org/archive/bogdanov/1923/proletarian-poetry.htm (accessed November 2, 2011). 6 Alexander Bogdanov, ‘Proletarian Poetry’. 41

Association of Proletarian Writers, Kuznitsa, Young Guard and several other groups orbiting the journals October and On Guard.7 These, mostly young, writers made strident ideological demands. For example, Proletkult sought official recognition and competed with the Imaginists8 for political influence and state subsidies9, while simultaneously calling on the state to deny any support to non-communist ‘fellow traveller’ writers, arguing that their lack of political affiliation threatened to smuggle bourgeois ideology into the workers’ state. In 1918 at the first All-Russian Conference of proletarian-cultural organisations, the many delegates in favour of Proletkult expressed impatience with those who opposed their views and rejected the notion that the working class needed to master the bourgeois culture first:

They want to load us with another excessive burden—the achievements of bourgeois culture. In that case we will be like an overloaded camel, unable to go any further. Let us throw away bourgeois culture entirely as old rubbish.10

Proletkult’s demands were rejected and in 1921 the Central Committee subordinated

Proletkult to the direction of the Commissariat of Enlightenment, led by Lunacharsky.11

The debates that ensued around the question of proletarian art were complex and

7 Fred Choate, Foreword to Art as the Cognition of Life: Aleksandr Konstantinovich Voronsky, Selected Writings 1911-1936 (Oak Park, Michigan: Mehring Books Inc, 1998), x. 8 Imaginists, or Imagists as they were also known, were a Russian avant-garde group of poets. They were formed in 1918, broke up in 1925 and were officially disbanded in 1927. Their most famous adherent is Sergei Yesenin, who committed suicide in 1925. 9 Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978 (London: Methuen, 1979), 100. 10 Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organisation of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 95. 11 Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Oxford, England: University of California Press, Ltd., 1990), 248. Bogdanov was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1921 for encouraging Menshevist views which advocated the two-stage theory of socialism, by advancing his views about a proletarian culture. 42

lengthy. The inner-party discussions on the nexus of politics and art and the role of the party in relation to cultural development demonstrate the dynamics of cultural life in the revolution’s aftermath, yet at the same time there was a growing schism within the party on matters of party orthodoxy which came to assume greater importance when the Stalinist bureaucracy arrogated to itself greater powers. The latitude extended to writers decreased in inverse proportion to the increase of bureaucracy from 1925, and in 1932 all literary groupings were disbanded and writers were instructed to be incorporated in the newly-founded Union of Writers in the USSR.12

Internationally, the Moscow bureaucracy sought to bring under its authority renowned writers such as Romaine Rolland, Henri Barbusse and Louis Aragon, who were all either aligned with the French Communist Party or on its periphery. All were left-wing and sympathetic to the USSR. Most of these and other writers, except Rolland, abided by the decisions of the Kharkov Congress of Revolutionary Writers held in the Soviet

Union in 1930 in which non-revolutionary proletarian writers were condemned, along with the surrealist movement. According to Angela Kershaw, “Kharkov demonstrated the dominance of the dogmatic RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) in the Soviet debate on revolutionary literature”.13 As a surrealist, Aragon had to prove his adherence to and intention to abide by the resolutions of the Kharkov Congress and renounce his association with the surrealist movement. He and Georges Sadou, a writer and film critic, signed a document that is tantamount to a quasi-confession of their previous sins. They wrote “We consider it necessary to recognise certain errors

12 Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978, 192. 13 Angela Kershaw, Forgotten Engagements (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2007), 50. 43

that we committed previously in our literary activities, errors that we undertake not to repeat in future”.14

The Kharkov Congress marked a turning point in the Stalinist bureaucracy’s initiatives to regiment the themes and styles of literature and art through cultural organisations of communist parties internationally. However, bureaucratisation reached its apotheosis at the Soviet Writers Congress in 1934, where Zhdanov decreed socialist realism as the official artistic method of cultural production in all spheres: literature, music, painting and theatre in the USSR. A distinguishing feature of socialist realism is the similarity to the aesthetic ideals promulgated by the likes of Proletkult15, with some exceptions: several socialist realist ancillary concepts included partiynost, which obligated committed writers to write in accordance with the party’s teachings for the edification of the working class; and narodnost which essentially eschewed all avant- garde devices and experimentation with form and the encouragement of political and national chauvinism.16 The socialist realist method was also presumed to be the most egalitarian, as the non-literary proletarian masses would be less likely to be alienated by more sophisticated language and ideas.

Such measures meant that empirically perceived truths were to be dispensed with in any artistic depiction, and a portrayal in conformity with party policy or theory was demanded. For example, the Soviet peasant’s opposition to collectivisation in the

14 Ludmila Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union (London: Routledge, 2007), 79. 15 Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia, 250. 16 Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978, 199. 44

1930s could not be depicted truthfully, since such a portrayal would contradict party policy. Kulaks, the wealthy peasants, were suitable for such characterisation because they were “evil”.17 Language was required to be simple and comprehensible, and artists and writers were to avoid all stylistic experiments, such as those of the avant- garde or any modernist inspired style, then very popular throughout Europe and the

US, and even in Russia throughout the 1920s.18 Deviation from this highly circumscribed and prescriptive method was regarded with suspicion and considered political backsliding and dealt with politically by the party. The regimentation was enforced with redoubled vigour in the post-war period when a ‘left turn’ was taken. In

August 1946 Zhdanov censured two literary journals for publishing the work of pilloried authors and ushered an era of stricter regimentation in the field of art and literature that lasted until 1956.

Proletkult ceased to exist in 1932, and although their notions of cultural production in most cases included a rejection of professionalism, with most Proletkult forms of art expressing didacticism, they viewed proletarian culture as a means “to awaken creative independence and to express proletarian class consciousness”.19 Although socialist realism retained some of the precepts of Proletkult, the regime of Stalin set about formulating a didactic aesthetic that would serve a politically utilitarian function: to

“educate the toiling masses in the spirit of socialism” or, as Bukharin put it, socialist

17 Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978, 199. 18 Ronald Hingley, Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978, 199. 19 Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future, 250. 45

realism’s objective was to give “poetic shape to the spiritual experience of the socialist man who is now coming into being”.20

The political function of the utilitarian view of art is explained by Georgii Plekhanov in a lecture given in 1912 titled ‘Art and Social Life’ in which he juxtaposes art for art’s sake to its antithesis, the utilitarian view of art:

Political authority always prefers the utilitarian view of art, to the extent, of course, that it pays any attention to art at all. And this is understandable: it is to its interest to harness all ideologies to the service of the cause which it serves itself. And since political authority, although sometimes revolutionary, is most often conservative and even reactionary, it will be seen that it would be wrong to think that the utilitarian view of art is shared principally by revolutionaries, or by people of advanced mind generally.21

-%,-*%)(%""+"',!

Although in the 1920s the CPA had no firm policy on cultural matters, by 1929 a leadership struggle within the party saw J.B Miles and Lance Sharkey, two

“unquestioning adherents”22 of Stalin, assume leadership of the party and, as a corollary to the restructuring of the party, there was also greater control over cultural policies. Zhdanov’s decree of socialist realism in 1934 was unofficially adopted in the

Australian party. Enthusiasts of socialist realism included Australian novelist Katherine

Susannah Prichard. Her CPA membership constituted an integral aspect of her

20 Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future, 250. 21 Georgi Plekhanov, ‘Art and Social Life’, Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. V, 644. 22 Robin Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists (: ANU Press, 1975), 21. 46

creative work and, after her visit to the USSR in 1933, Modjeska asserts that Prichard

“returned committed to socialist realism”.23 Jack Beasley, a leading member of the CPA in later years, ridicules what became the prevalent conception about the impact of socialist realism on Prichard’s work after her return from the USSR:

What the negligent, or myopic, officers, no doubt anxious to get home to holiday gatherings, overlooked was to become a scourge, an introduced species that would overrun the land like the rabbit, sparrows and starlings, foxes, cane toads and literary critics. For there, ingeniously concealed in Mrs. Katharine Throssell's baggage, was a foreign literary curse, a chancre called socialist realism which all too soon would claim Katharine Susannah Prichard as its first victim.24

Opinions differ about the impact of socialist realism on the aesthetic quality of

Prichard’s writing, with criticisms revolving generally on the supposed unviability of commingling politics and literature, which in her case lends her later writing didactic tenor which was not evident prior to 1933. Ellis finds such arguments inadequate and emphasises that although socialist realism is “quite strictly defined in official policy documents” it has demonstrated to be a “malleable and mercurial theory”.25 Socialist realism and an emphasis on ‘proletarianism’ formed what in Australia was considered the avant-garde and taken up by writers such as Judah Waten and artist Herbert

McClintock, both editing the first and only edition of the magazine Strife in 1930. With fervent revolutionary rhetoric the magazine declares:

23 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home, 120. 24Jack Beasley, A Gallop of Fire—Katherine Susannah Prichard: On Guard for Humanity (Earlwood: Wedgetail Press, 1993), 142. 25 Cath Ellis, ‘Socialist Realism in the Australian Literary Context: With Specific Reference to the Writing of Katharine Susannah Prichard', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 54-55 (1997): 39. 47

STRIFE is another force added to the world-wide movement to uproot the existing social and economic order of chaotic and tragic individualism!

INSTITUTIONS that represent this must be destroyed, and on the newly-turned soil of free human aspiration, a nobler edifice erected.26

Avant-gardism is difficult to contextualise in the Australia of the 1930s but David Carter suggests that it is the “unprecedentedness”27 of the work of left-wing writers, such as the emphasis on proletarianism in agit-prop, which permits of such an identification.

Implicit in the ideas of ‘proletarianism’ is a rejection of art as autonomous as well as a rejection of the aestheticism of the nineteenth century when art “has altogether detached itself from the praxis of life”.28 The aim of the Australian left-wing avant- gardists, therefore, is to “reintegrate art and transform life”.29 However, the transforming of life was to be achieved through the depiction of life through socialist realism, in particular by those writers within the CPA. Modjeska makes some perceptive and insightful points about the benefits of belonging to the CPA and the appeal of socialist realism, not only as an aesthetic concern, but as a cogent symbol of international political and social solidarity:

There was comradeship, intellectual friendship and a certain mobility and freedom that were not common among women then. Furthermore, there was a lot that was seductive about socialist realism. To be a socialist realist writer placed one in a world-wide movement of historical significance; it gave worth to one’s writing as

26 David John Carter, A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary Career (Toowoomba, Queensland: Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1997), 3. 27 David Carter, A Career in Writing, 2. 28 Peter Bürger cited by David Carter, A Career in Writing, 5. 29 David Carter, A Career in Writing, 5. 48

part of a revolutionary movement that represented a glorious future; and it expunged the guilt of privilege”.30

To “expunge the guilt of privilege” and prove their loyalty to the working class, writers in the CPA and in New Theatre of middle-class backgrounds, such as Roland and Brand, had to forego some of the comforts associated with a middle-class lifestyle. Roland recalls that “for a Communist to travel ‘first’ was a disgrace, like wearing gloves—I had been guilty of that on a bitter Melbourne day and been soundly reprimanded for doing so. Only the bourgeoisie wore gloves”.31

Although many writers such as Marjorie Brand and Nettie Palmer had reservations about the possibility of , the growth of European fascism in the

1930s altered the political landscape and many writers and intellectuals flocked to the ranks of the CPA, either as members or as sympathetic ‘fellow travellers’, on the basis of anti-fascist sentiments. In Australia the Egon Kisch incident served to galvanise writers around the issue of freedom of speech as well as anti-fascism. Kisch, well- known Czech writer and communist, arrived in Australia to address the Movement

Against War and Fascism but was refused permission to disembark in Port Melbourne.

He jumped from the ship to the wharf, breaking his leg and was taken back on board, sailing to Sydney where he was again refused entry upon failing a dictation test in

30 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home, 123. 31 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 18. 49

Gaelic. The case went to court and Kisch, having won, went on to address a crowd of

20,000 in Sydney’s Domain.32

In this politically charged atmosphere, the CPA became the vehicle for the growing anti-fascist sentiment among the Australian intelligentsia. For example, Richard Haese claims that, between 1938 and 1942 in Australia, a large number of the leaders of the

Contemporary Art Society were either members of the CPA or had entertained the idea of joining.33 This was despite the fact that the CPA adhered closely to Moscow’s dictates, and in the 1930s Moscow asserted its authority by sending to Australia

Comintern emissary Harry M. Wicks, or Herbert Moore as he was known in Australia, where in March 1930 he assumed control of the CPA leadership for over a year.34

Wicks’s appointment was part of the restructuring that saw Australia follow Soviet policy in most matters, including forming ‘front’ organisations. According to Stern, many of these fronts were formed before the 1920s in the Soviet Union but had become in the 1930s more strident and doctrinaire in their methods of disseminating communist propaganda and in their demands of those in the intelligentsia who were either recalcitrant or reluctant to be dictated to by Moscow.35 The formation of fronts was also

32 Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home, 101. 33 Richard Haese, Rebels and Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art (Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books, 1982), 66. 34 Stuart Macintyre, The Reds, 170-78. 35 Ludmila Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 43-48. Henri Barbusse was subjected to intense pressure to conform to Moscow’s dictates in relation to his editorship of Monde, which published eclectically, including writers such as Victor Serge and Madeline Paz, for which he was upbraided publicly at the Kharkov Congress in absentia in 1930. According to Stern’s research, a concerted campaign was waged in the early 1930s by the Moscow bureaucracy, who instructed writers and sympathisers in the French Communist Party to bring Barbusse back into line. He wrote in his defence: “I think that in Madeleine Paz’s article on proletarian literature—quite a realistic and sensible one—there is nothing ‘scandalous’, just as there wasn’t in all the statements by Victor Serge (and just as I don’t consider scandalous, from 50

adopted by the CPA, Fiona Capp claims, and she names organisations in 1937 that were considered CPA ‘fronts’ such as Friends of the Soviet Union, Movement Against

War and Fascism, Militant Minority Movement, Unemployed and Relief Workers

Council, Women’s International Day Movement, Society for Cultural Relations with

Soviet Russia, Christian Socialist Movement, University Labour Club, Rationalist

Association, Writers’ League, Left Book Club, New Theatre and other groups and organisations associated with the Popular Front.36

/!,*4 ,+*" "'+3"&+'#,".+

Matters of culture did not preoccupy the CPA very much in its formative years but this changed, however, after the Moscow bureaucracy commenced a concerted campaign among the world’s intelligentsia to harness culture in the direction of serving the USSR bureaucracy’s interests through the formation of cultural fronts.37 In August 1931 the world congress of the Workers International Relief (WIR) was held in Berlin. The WIR was initiated in Berlin in 1921 as an adjunct of the Communist International to organize international relief for the victims of drought and famine in the Volga in the Soviet

Union. The WIR also provided relief to workers internationally who were on strike and victims of other social and political ills by distributing necessities such as clothes and

the revolutionary point of view, what was written in Monde on the issue of elections, on the issue of the USSR and on the issue of Doumer’s assassination)”, 62. 36 Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled (Victoria, Australia: McPhee/Gribble, 1993), 31.

37 For the most comprehensive accounts of the influence of the USSR during the Stalin years, see Ludmila Stern’s From West Bank to Red Square; David Caute, The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988); Michael Denning, The Cultural Front—The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Verso, 1998); Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba 1928-1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). 51

food as well as funds. Its activities from 1922 onwards included cinematic propaganda which enabled Soviet films to be screened in Germany for the first time.

The WIR had many adherents including writers Upton Sinclair, Maxim Gorki, George

Bernard Shaw, Henri Barbusse and painter and sculptor Kathe Kollwitz to name only a few. The WIR was dissolved in 1935 after the Nazi takeover in Germany. The 1931

Congress was attended by internationally renowned figures such as Clara Zetkin, advocate for women’s rights and member of the German Communist Party (KPD), and

Albert Einstein.38 Another who attended was Jean Devanny, member of the CPA who had been invited as the Australian delegate. Devanny brought back to Australia the idea of forming a WIR art and theatre group, which was approved by the CPA leadership. However, according to Devanny, members of the Australian Workers

International Relief were “out of sympathy with the artistic temperament” and she sought to separate the art and theatre group from the WIR. Persuading artists to form a proposal to the WIR committee, she supported it and was able to command a majority of votes. Devanny was elected director of the new art and theatre organisation, which she named the Workers’ Art Club (WAC). Its premises were in Pitt St, Sydney, near

Circular Quay.39

The ostensible purpose of WAC, according to Devanny, was to “activise progressive artists, and to win to such policies the politically backward—to which end, I and my fellow colleagues had tried to maintain the kind of balance between party educational

38 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure,144. 39 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 151. 52

work and what might have been termed neutral, that would hold the non-progressives to us”.40 In her absence, “undesirables” (usually those the CPA considered bohemian) were admitted to the WAC, but she maintained that “the influence of my fraction and their supporters was strong enough to keep the general line in correct perspective”.41

The WAC functioned in the same manner as other cultural organisations affiliated to the CPA: it was subordinate to CPA dictates and political expediency in the interests of promoting the USSR bureaucracy and its edicts on cultural methods and themes.

Reprimanded by the party hierarchy, she was told by Central Committee member Bob

Bessant that George Finey (the Australian artist who had volunteered his services to the artists at WAC) was to “be brought under proper control, the undesirables thrown out, the drama section was to confine its productions to leftist plays”.42 The sectarianism became intolerable and Devanny and Finey left the WAC, but with their departure the literature and art sections petered out and the theatre section assumed full control over the WAC and it continued on this basis for a number of years. The extent of the political function of the WAC is demonstrated in the CPA’s decision to order Devanny to keep away from it. A tersely worded letter to Devanny in 1932 from the CPA Central Committee articulates the political ambitions of the CPA for the WAC:

Comrade,

The decision of the C.C Secretariat that you withdraw from the W.A.C fraction still stands and under no circumstances must you interfere with their work.

The reasons for your withdrawal are—we consider that your lack of stability and failure to strictly adhere to discipline would seriously

40 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 151. 41 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 161. 42 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 162. 53

hamper the work of the fraction—particularly in its present weak stage. Until further instructed you must confine yourself to unit work and remain a member of the W.I.R fraction, making yourself available for lecture and other work determined on by the fraction.43

This characteristic letter makes clear the type of control the CPA exercised over the

WAC, who proved to be both energetic and influential on wider Australian cultural movements. By the end of 1935, the WAC had presented around thirty plays. Of these, seven new plays were by Australians, others were by George Bernard Shaw, Sergei

Tretyakov from Russia, Ernst Toller from Germany and the US’s Eugene O’Neill.44 CPA members, claims Devanny, gradually “took more and more the power of flexibility into their own hands” and in 1936 the WAC was renamed the New Theatre.45 The name originated in the United States where the political theatre that developed there was linked to increased trade union activity in the 1920s, passing through a series of stages before becoming the New Theatre League in 1935.46 The New Theatre in Sydney was established as the most “vital and provocative” theatre in Australia’s history when it produced Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty.47

New Theatres were soon established in every other state except Tasmania. The level of activity at New Theatre resembled that of worker bees in a hive: at Sydney New

Theatre alone over one hundred full-length plays or acts from plays were produced

43 ASIO file, Item Bun 89/pt2/Sf42/81, letter dated 19/12/1932. 44 Connie Healy, Defiance, 28. 45 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 163. 46 Connie Healy, Defiance, 31. 47 Connie Healy, Defiance, 34. 54

between 1936 and 1946.48 The enthusiasm for art by the CPA, however, was a relatively new phenomenon. There is no indication, either in historical accounts of the

CPA, or in its own records and archives, of any inclination towards the arts, let alone a firm policy on cultural matters, prior to the 1930s. In fact art and literature were regarded as weapons for propaganda rather than an autonomous field of activity.

It was an auspicious beginning for the WAC as it was able to muster support, including financial support, from artists, as this correspondence from the Melbourne branch of the CPA in 1932 on the function of fraternal organisations demonstrates. Of the WAC, the writer, who is not named, says:

As far as I could gather the club has about 100 members some of whom can give it good financial support. It is proposed to publish the first number of an official organ about the middle of August. The proposed name is ‘Masses’ to be published monthly at 6d. One of the two editors is a Party member and the District Agit-prop will be able to see the material. The plan is to have it well illustrated, the club has a number of fairly good artists and I was able to see some of the drawings which may appear.49

It was difficult to convince the CPA leadership, who considered art and literature as the fanciful pastime of the petty bourgeoisie, of the supposed necessity and potential of art as an ideological weapon as part of its political program. For instance, one year later a

Political Bureau letter to the District Committee of May 30, 1933 from the Central

48 These are my calculations based on the play listings in the New Years: 1932—The Plays, People and Events of 75 Years of Sydney’s New Theatre (Sydney: New Theatre, 2007), 73-77. 49 CPA files, CY3501 MLMSS5021 Add-on 1936, Box 4. 55

Commission of the CPA discusses the methods of work among the fraternals and fractions and the necessity of “political guidance” to develop these organisations along the correct party line, noting that “The mass fraternals are avenues to the factories, the unions and are reservoirs of recruits—if we organise the fraction work”.50

In an organisation report of the Fourth Plenary Session held in March 31 and April 1, 2 and 3 in 1934, George Bessant discusses the problems associated with the running of the WAC and the development of a correct party attitude towards it:

Other organisations which have developed during the year are the Workers’ Sports Federation and the W.A.C. here and in Melbourne. In regard to the W.A.C, here again we see an under-estimation [sic] in this district in this important field of work, we generally discovered that the W.A.C was considered a joke by some comrades, used to sneer at it, and talk about it as a booze club. It may have been, but W.A.C is an important channel which we have to work through. How can we make this an organisation to be of use to the working class? Some attempt has been made to correct the work of this organisation, owing to inability from artistic viewpoint to give correct political guidance in this work we are handicapped, but with correct work we are hopeful of overcoming the right opportunist tendencies. Make an attempt to set up every kind of organisation possible which we can work through and which will assist us in our work51

50 CY3501 MLMSS5021 Add-on, 1936, Box 4. 51 Communist Party of Australia Papers re National Congress 1987-91 and National Committee 1926-1935, MLMSS 5021/Add-on 1936/Box 3 (76), CY3381. 56

The forming of the WAC corresponded with the development of cultural fronts by all communist parties affiliated with the Comintern, and this is reinforced in the WAC magazine’s editorial of 1933. An elaboration of the tasks and programme of the WAC is provided, as is the decision to subscribe “wholeheartedly” to the 1930 Kharkov

Resolutions which are as follows:

Fight against Imperialist War: defend the Soviet Union against Capitalist aggression.

Fight against Fascism, whether open or concealed, like Social Fascism.

Fight for the developing and strengthening of the revolutionary labour movement.

Fight against race discrimination and the persecution of the foreign born.

Fight against the influence of middle-class ideas in the work of revolutionary artists and writers.

Fight against the imprisonment of revolutionary writers and artists, as well as other class-war prisoners, throughout the world.52

The Kharkov Congress was an initiative of the international left to “formulate a unified program for revolutionary artists and writers”.53 The congress was attended by

International Bureau of Revolutionary Writers delegates from around the world but policies and criticism of various capitalist countries (Germany and America were, in

52 Workers’ Art Magazine: The Official Organ of the Workers’ Art Club, Vol.1, no.1, April 1933, 5. Held at Mitchell Library, ML Q331.8506/1 53 Barbara Foley, Radical Representations: Politics and Form in US Proletarian Fiction 1929- 1941 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 73. 57

particular, singled out for censure) were articulated by the Soviet Union.54 Max Eastman in the mid-1930s claimed that Soviet hegemony in art and culture over left-wing and communist writers was established at Kharkov and asserted that Soviet cultural policy over the previous ten years needed to be seen as “a systematic effort of the bureaucratic political machine set up in Soviet Russia after Lenin died to whip all forms of human expression into line behind its Organisational plans and its dictatorship”.55

Commensurate with the Kharkov resolutions, the WAC magazine exhorts all those who are interested in ‘working class art’ or ‘working class literature’ to attend classes run by the WAC and invites them to the accompanying lecture. As a supposed added inducement for those undeterred by the club’s programme, a reminder is also included about a forthcoming lecture ominously titled ‘Cultural Progress under the Five Year

Plan.’56 The Melbourne group of the WAC in 1932 published Masses, a magazine dedicated to promoting art and literature that was “National in form, proletarian in content”.57

As an offshoot of the WAC, New Theatre was more trenchant in its political orientation and aims. New Theatre productions were promoted in the CPA’s organ the Communist

Review and at times included agit-prop sketches by Betty Roland and stories by

54 Barbara Foley, Radical Representations, 73. 55 Max Eastman, Writers in Uniform: A Study of Literature and Bureaucratism (New York: Knopf, 1934), 22. 56 Max Eastman, Writers in Uniform, 24. 57Masses, Reason in Revolt-Source Documents of Australian Radicalism, http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/images/image_viewer.html?d0141,13,1,S (Accessed 9 September 2009). 58

Australian writer Allan Marshall among others. Short stories and poetry by contributors were also included. These contributions were usually laudatory, featuring communist leaders as heroes, and most were politically themed, with the Spanish Civil War featuring prominently during the mid-1930s.

Victor Arnold was director of Sydney New Theatre and in the Australian Left News of

January 1939 he called on aspiring playwrights from all walks of life to contribute to

New Theatre’s playlist. Referring to Roland’s agit-prop sketch War on the Waterfront as an example of the politically utilitarian function of New Theatre, he says:

Much more can be done in this direction when the Australian theatre and its playwrights become more positive and social in their outlook. We will be glad to receive any suggestions in connection with developing a campaign around these questions and the possibility of organising a play-writing group associated with the ideals of the Left Book Club and the New Theatre Movement, who will be prepared to dramatise any progressive action or ideas held by the Australian people.58

Behind the scenes, the discussions regarding the political ideology of New Theatre were more explicit. Correspondence between the CPA District Committee and the New

Theatre Secretary in January 1939, which was acquired by ASIO, reveals the objectives of New Theatre as a CPA organisation. A New Theatre member, Barbara

Boles, asked the Secretary to submit “a rough report concerning our attitude towards

58Australian Left News (NSW: Left Book Club, 1938), 11. 59

the establishment of a Party branch within New Theatre, Melbourne”.59 The reply, which does not bear the writer’s name, serves to demonstrate the relationship between the CPA in the functioning of New Theatre:

We strongly support the idea. Since this was done in Sydney two years ago much better work has been done by both the comrades and the New Theatre Group, with the result that we have been of far greater value to the Communist Party.

The formation of a Branch would enable Party comrades within the Theatre to concentrate and specialise on specific tasks in which they are vitally interested.

It enables the Party to organise members and potential contacts on their fundamental interest, which is that of the theatre.

The Left Theatre can only function correctly along these lines, and the establishment of a Unit within the framework of the Group will give birth to greater creative activities.

The work of the New Theatre movement urgently demands consolidation, and this can only be achieved by a well organised highly trained and politically developed Branch, unfettered by any other obligations.

In addition to this, a Party Branch could act as a stimulus and a link between the Theatre, the Communist Party and all fraternal and progressive organisations.

The immediate task at the New Theatre, Melbourne, should be to throw more emphasis on Trade Union work and performances, and the encouragement of a mobile Group, which would get out and about, and prepare the way towards mass influence.

59 New Theatre League, Victoria, Vol.1, Series Number: A6122/XR 1, Control Symbol: 417, Location: Canberra, Contents date range: 1936-58, Barcode: 332885, Open with exception. Letter is dated 13 January 1939. 60

We have no doubt that this form of specialisation is highly desirable and will give theatrically minded Party comrades more scope and expression to their particular interest.60

Victoria’s New Theatre constitution ‘Objects and Principles’ make no mention of socialism, but include the rather amorphous formulation “To express through drama, based on the tradition of freedom and democracy, the progressive aspirations of the

Australian people”.61 However, those attending a performance in 1939 would have been left with few illusions about New Theatre’s political orientation, as the Sane

Democracy League (an anti-communist, right-wing organisation founded in 1925 by

Aubrey Barclay) noted. In a redacted extract from the Sane Democracy League Notes held by ASIO, they note that the League for Peace and Democracy (previously called

Movement Against War and Fascism and considered a communist front organisation) staged two sketches in conjunction with New Theatre. The writer describes a performance where “...blasphemy and vulgarisms, as well as highly immoral references, were freely used by those taking part. Derogatory and calumnious references were gibingly made to Britain and Chamberlain at every opportunity. At the conclusion of the performance the clenched fist salute of the Communist Party was given by all present”. This observer found disturbing also that “a notable feature of the audience was the presence of well dressed young men and women”.62

60 New Theatre League, Victoria, Vol.1, Series Number: A6122/XR 1, Control Symbol: 417, Location: Canberra, Contents date range: 1936-58, Barcode: 332885, Open with exception. Letter is dated 13 January, 1939. 61 Victorian New Theatre Constitution, State Library of Victoria, Australian Manuscript Collection, SLV, MS10040, MSB 131. 62 ASIO files, Melbourne New Theatre, Series A6122/XRI, Item 417, date range: August 1936– May 1958. 61

The extent of the priority given to political work in the New Theatre sections varied across the states. The contents of another letter held in ASIO files make evident some of the tensions between the New Theatre artists and the CPA’s perception of their lack of commitment to active political work in different states. Extracts from a letter by “Lil” refer cryptically to party members as “P.Ms” whose political level she describes as

“very poor” because they are too liberal in outlook. Conversely, referring to the Sydney branch, the interceptor of the letter writes that “Lil” considers Sydney too sectarian. “Lil” claims that Melbourne New Theatre members find it impossible to attend their branches and classes regularly “which means they’re not getting any stronger politically”.63

The question of literary style was of paramount concern and discussion of it became more pronounced during the 1950s within the CPA. Jack Beasley, a CPA member, novelist and critic, recalls that socialist realism only became party policy in 1952 when

J.D. Blake, a leading member of the CPA from the 1930s to the 1950s, addressed a meeting of “communist cultural workers” where he condemned trends in formalism and experimentation and reaffirmed the slogan ‘Art is a weapon’. Emphasising the political responsibilities of politically committed writers, Blake declared that the essence of socialist realism lay in its “ideology and party spirit” and advanced the view that the essential tasks for artists and writers were “to publicise the Party’s policies; to portray

63 ASIO files, A6122/XRI; Item 417, Melbourne New Theatre, August 1936–May 1958. The report is dated 27March 1944 and is from ‘Lil’ in South Yarra, Victoria, to Mr. Alan Herbert, Care of New Theatre League, in Castlereagh St., Sydney. 62

our Australian reality, our working people and the ideas of Communism in realistic, artistic imageryand to build a mass movement of cultural workers”.64

Beasley makes his assertion based on his recollection, or assumption, that prior to

1952 the calls for a socialist realist method were merely personal opinions advanced by certain people and leaders, such as J.B. Miles, within the CPA. However, as far back as the 1930s Jean Devanny recalls being admonished by Central Committee member Bob Bessant for permitting the WAC, forerunner of New Theatre, to produce

“non-leftist plays” such as G.B. Shaw’s Pygmalion, thereby “kowtowing to the right

[wing] element” of “undesirables” who were allowed membership of the WAC.65

Socialist realism had received the CPA’s imprimatur long before it became official policy and it was the vital element in the choice of New Theatre repertory even in its formative years. For instance, the seeking of approval from the CPA hierarchy for a

‘correct’ attitude to the cultural groups affiliated with the CPA began as early as 1933, as a CPA report to the District Committee written in September 1933 demonstrates.

The WAC was floundering, according to this report, because

Practically no activities are carried on despite attempts to rebuild, a short time ago. The chief reasons for present weaknesses is [sic] lack of energetic leadership and lack of attention by the D.C. [District

64 Jack Beasley, Red Letter Days—Notes From Inside an Era (Sydney, NSW: Australasian Book Society, 1979), 180-1. 65 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 144. 63

Committee]. The D.C. is faced with the responsibility of ensuring that the W.A.C. is revived and placed upon a sound footing.66

If a policy emanating from the upper echelons of the CPA was not officially forthcoming until 1952, the fact remains that what the leadership suggested was, in effect, to be interpreted as a command. According to Jean Devanny, the ‘suggestions’ made in relation to cultural production in Australia within the CPA prior to 1952 came from J.B.

Miles. Miles’s philistinism characterised his entire approach to artistic matters. An example of this is the experience of Devanny, who had conducted a long-standing romance with Miles, an autodidact with scant knowledge about matters aesthetic or literary. Devanny recalls how having asked him to comment on her book Cindie, Miles returned to her three foolscap pages of commentary, half of which, according to

Devanny, had a “sneering hostile tone” and was barbed with “personal jibes” aimed at her.67

A more regimented approach to the work of New Theatre developed in the 1950s during the Cold War, as evidenced in another ASIO report that contains information supplied by an informant, possibly a government infiltrator, noting that the policy of

New Theatre and its methods of operation were determined by CPA members within the theatre. As soon as New Theatre members join the CPA, the informant noted, they are “automatically elected to the governing committee of the theatre. The committee is restricted to CPA members and when they hold a meeting, no other members are

66 Report, District 4, CPA 9/10/1933, CY 3501 MLMSS5021/ADD-on 1936, Box 4. 67 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 298. 64

permitted into the area around the office or in the foyer”. According to the report, the

New Theatre committee comprised of CPA members “not only decides the policy of the theatre and what is to be done in the theatre, but also what Party duties are to be done by the theatre, just as an actual Party Branch would perform, such as lectures, classes, pasting up, etc”.68 Recollections of former CPA members such as Simon Bracegirdle

(discussed in the chapters on Betty Roland) confirm the veracity of the content of these reports.

To discourage political heterodoxy on the cultural front, Pat Bullen was replaced as

Secretary of New Theatre League—the Melbourne and Sydney New Theatre groups adopted this name in 1936 and shortened it to New Theatre in 194569—“following a

Party decision to clean up the NTL” and was replaced by Miriam Hampson70, aunt of

Laurence and Eric Aarons, both of whom were leading members of the CPA. In

Adelaide, a heavily redacted ASIO report reflects the growing Cold War tensions and the intense surveillance of the CPA and its organisations such as New Theatre.

Menacingly titled ‘A.S.I.O. War Book—Preparation for an Emergency—The Adelaide

New Theatre’, it reports on the election of New Theatre officers that took place in April

1952 when CPA members were elected as a provisional committee at Adelaide New

Theatre. It reports that CPA influence in Adelaide New Theatre is exercised through the New Theatre fraction of the CPA.71

68 ASIO files, Series no. A6122/XRI; Item no. 413; title: Association individual NTL, NSW, Vol.1; July 1936-March 1952. The report is dated 5April, 1951. 69 The New Years 1932—, 7. 70 ASIO report stamped 15th March 1955, A6122/XRI; item no. 414, Association individual NTL, Vol. 2, Sept. 1952–Dec. 1957. 71 ASIO files, Adelaide New Theatre League, A6122/XRI, item no. 416, Oct.1955–Oct. 1957. 65

ASIO reports cannot, on their own, be considered evidence of the relationship of the

CPA to New Theatre. Nevertheless, while ASIO found little that could be used against the CPA and New Theatre—which was the purpose of surveillance and infiltration— their reports of the connection between the CPA and New Theatre have been subsequently confirmed in the writings of former CPA and New Theatre members. The influence of the CPA over New Theatre is evident in the minutes of New Theatre meetings, which became more stridently regimented than in the past. For example, a discussion about the nature of the plays discussed in 1950 makes clear the political objectives behind the choice of play:

While we will continue to criticise Labour leaders we must never allow such criticisms to act as fetters on development of the mass movement. To be more explicit the Sydney revue, ‘Pot of Message’ was a very fine contribution to the general fight; but it did contain certain sectarianism which if repeated in the present period would be far more serious. Therefore in Sydney we are doing a revue this year—great care will have to be taken to see that our satire does not drive away potential allies.72

New Theatre’s artistic fortunes were very much affected by the political situation, and during the Cold War left-wing theatre was no longer popular and was regarded with suspicion. This prompted discussions within New Theatre management and production committees about the future direction of New Theatre. The minutes of a production committee meeting during the National Conference of New Theatres held in 1952 reveal these tensions. Norma Disher is quoted as saying that the theatre should

“definitely teach audiences more art of theatre and not politics” and that “people don’t

72 New Theatre Records 1914–1990, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 66

bring their friends because the propaganda is too prominent and not enough entertainment”.73 Miriam (presumably Miriam Hampson) disagrees and is noted as saying that New Theatre “has certain traditions”, arguing that altering the choice of plays may alienate their established audiences. Hampson notes that other theatres are experiencing similar problems and puts New Theatre’s plight down to a lack of publicity, noting that they don’t “even ‘sell’ our theatre to the Communist Party where a great deal of our support comes”.74

The small audiences may have been the result of a media boycott in Sydney between

1948 and 1963, but it was also the Cold War era and the commensurate ideology regarding communism would have contributed to the working class’s alienation from the theatre or their reluctance to attend or be associated with a left-wing theatre.

Another New Theatre member at the Conference, Keith Gow, stated that he did not advocate changing New Theatre’s policy, but claimed that during the war years they put on better plays and that since then “our choice has been declining”. He reiterated that New Theatre chooses “too many plays on a political basis and not artistic merit and this is the main cause of lack of audiences”.75

Another New Theatre management and general meeting report confirms Gow’s contention that New Theatre chose plays on the basis of political imperatives. The play in dispute is Frank Hardy’s Nail on the Wall, which was considered for production, but

73 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1, 19/05/1952. 74 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1, 19/05/1952. 75 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1, 19/05/1952. 67

ultimately rejected. The reasons for not staging the play are entirely political as the minutes of the General and Management Committee demonstrate:

Firstly, although an imaginary situation set at some time in the future, it envisages a situation in which the CP is smashed, denuded of all form of organisation and its leaders all in gaol or in panicked flight. The whole premise is one of utter defeat wherein the forces of reaction have proved too strong for the working class movement and yet at this time the working class is more militant, better organised and more capable of battling fascist legislation than ever before. Furthermore, a Communist leader, who shows such a lack of knowledge of illegal work as to seek refuge in his own home, immediately endangering his own liberty and the fate of the Party, is hardly an inspiration to the people.76

It is not yet certain whether plays were produced according to the critiques of the production or management committee, but the reports and minutes of New Theatre committees suggest that during certain periods, this was possibly the case. In any case, New Theatre sought to recover its dwindling audiences in this period by clinging to the trade unions. Its management committee sent letters to the Federated Clerks

Union, the Seamen’s Union, Painters and Dockers Union, Telegraph Union and even to the Soviet Embassy in Canberra. The letters sought permission from union secretaries for New Theatre members to address the union members to promote upcoming New Theatre productions and invite them to attend.77 Bill Hill’s recollections confirm the relationship between the CPA, New Theatre as well as other amateur theatres and the trade union movement, noting that:

76 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 13. 77 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 13. 68

Well, yes, the Communist Party did play a significant role in the theatre. In many ways it played a role in the establishment of the theatre...and in ensuring that the audience was there—the theatre was very well publicised by party organisations at that time and a lot of the sales went through that area and through the union movement.78

The political influence of the CPA over New Theatre waned after Khrushchev’s speech.

A state of demoralisation pervades New Theatre during this period, finding expression in a 1957 report, held by ASIO, titled ‘Meeting of Cadres of the C.P.A.’:

The main report began on the major political events in 1956 and the anticipation that there will be a stepping up of political activities in 1957. The ideological reasons for the improvement in the work of cultural cadres were listed with particular emphasis on the weaknesses in the work around the Peace Assembly and the small number of writers and artists who participated in discussion...The overall task for 1957 was to see that the Party and the progressive writers had more access to the mass media of propaganda for the propagation of more Peace propaganda and socialist propaganda. It was the duty of the cultural workers to pay particular attention to the forthcoming World Youth Festival to take place between 28th July and 11th August, 1957, in Moscow. Cultural workers must come to a real understanding of the tremendous assistance to the development of their work that has been afforded by the working class and particularly the Trade Union Movement.79

78 Connie Healy, Defiance, 196. 79 ASIO files, A6122 XRI, No. 414, Sydney, September 1952–December 1957. 69

These tensions were an indication of the troubles ahead for the CPA as it saw the splintering of the party into separate sections in the 1960s and early 1970s, which inadvertently afforded New Theatre writers an unprecedented measure of freedom.

Many of the political satires produced by New Theatre in the 1960s reflected the political radicalisation that was taking place. Youth and artists once again gravitated to

New Theatre as a political bulwark against capitalism. This was the period that saw the eruption of the Vietnam War, civil rights and national liberation movements and the concomitant social and political upheavals that politicised a whole generation. In this politically tumultuous period New Theatre was again at the forefront of these developments and became a beacon for left-wing artists such as John Hargreaves, who recalls the appeal of New Theatre during the 1960s:

I was always left leaning  brought up in a trade union family, my grandfather was a proud old lefty, and an old gentleman, so my natural leanings were certainly to the left. I wasn’t a communist particularly  I didn’t feel the need to embrace communismand after Stalin I don’t see how anybody really could. But I liked very much the atmosphere of that left theatre..80

New Theatre’s purpose was not only to bring culture to the working class. There is little question that the New Theatre was a means of recruiting to the CPA, as the example of Joyce Batterham demonstrates. Batterham says she “...was interested in amateur dramatics and a group of us in Newcastle formed a branch of the New Theatre League.

80 David Williamson, Genevieve Picot and Tony Watts, John Hargreaves—A Celebration (Newport, Victoria: Parrot Books, 2000), 21. 70

This was quite successful and involved me a lot”.81 Through New Theatre she became closely associated with political people and trade unions, links that influenced her decision to join the CPA in 1937.82 Wendy Lowenstein confirms that the New Theatre was usually a route to CPA membership, stating that “they became communists in the course of working with New Theatre”.83

New Theatre continued to stage plays with political themes and satires as well as promoting Australian writers well into the 1990s. Its influence over the development of

Australian theatre is yet to be examined in full within the context of its political and cultural heritage. The development of New Theatre is as much a political phenomenon as it is an important aspect of Australian theatre history. The following chapters will analyse the work of New Theatre writers, and will examine the relationship between the

CPA and New Theatre and how this is reflected in the work of New Theatre writers.

81 Joyce Stevens, Taking the Revolution Home: Work Among Women in the Communist Party of Australia, 1920-1945 (Fitzroy, Victoria: Sybylla Co-operative Press and Publications, 1987), 200. 82 Joyce Stevens, Taking the Revolution Home, 200. 83 Simon Bracegirdle and Wendy Lowenstein, Simon Bracegirdle interviewed by Wendy Lowenstein in the Communists and the Left in the Arts and Community Oral History Project [sound recording],1992. 71

  

,,1(%'

=D><+4!8"*,!9( -+,*%"'*&

Prescribing a temperament for the censor would be just as wrong as prescribing a style for the writer. If you wish to be logical in your aesthetic criticism, prohibit the pursuit of truth in too serious and too restrained a manner, for the greatest seriousness is the most ridiculous thing, and the greatest restraint is the bitterest irony.

Karl Marx, Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction.

The writer who came to be known as Betty Roland had enjoyed a privileged and somewhat sheltered upbringing in Kaniva, a small town in South Australia, as the daughter of a doctor, Ronald Maclean, who died when she was three years old.

Baptised Mary Isobel Maclean in 1903, she was nicknamed Betty and she later changed her name by deed poll, adopting her father’s first name as her surname, and becoming Betty Roland.

In 1933, in the process of leaving her husband and departing for England, a chance encounter with an unprepossessing man at a social gathering altered the life of Betty

Roland. Having achieved critical success with her play The Touch of Silk in 1928, and

72

written the story and script for Australia’s first talking film Spur of the Moment1, Roland looked to new horizons to distance herself from an unhappy marriage to Ellis Davies, a consultant engineer twenty-one years her senior, and to further her playwriting ambitions abroad. The new man she had met was Guido Baracchi, a founder of the

CPA and a controversial figure who fell in and out of favour with the CPA throughout his life. He persuaded her to accompany him to the USSR, where they lived and worked in 1933 and most of 1934 before returning to Australia. Roland’s life there seemed to be in stark contrast to the life she had led in Kaniva.

It would seem that it was a purely romantic impulse that provided the impetus for

Roland to travel to the USSR, since, as she records in her autobiography An

Improbable Life, her intention was to travel to London, before she was encouraged to alter her course by Baracchi.2 An Improbable Life is the first of four volumes of autobiography Roland published. To varying degrees, her subsequent involvement in the CPA has been—and continues to be—attributed to the coincidental encounter with

Baracchi at an emotional juncture in her life. While this scenario perpetuates the romantic image Roland may have of herself—one she has cultivated in her autobiographies and which has not gone unchallenged3—it is nevertheless at variance with the effects of the social polarisation and political upheavals that were fermenting in

1 According to Thelma Afford, Roland wrote the story and script for the film for Raymond Longford Productions and was produced by Longford himself. Thelma Afford, Dreamers and Visionaries: Adelaide’s Little Theatres from the 1920s to the early 1940s (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 2004), 188. 2 Roland, Betty, An Improbable Life, 143-150. 3 Roland’s autobiographies have attracted more critical analysis than most of her playwriting and fiction. Nicole Moore has elaborated an appraisal of Roland’s biographies which includes an overview of her literary output for New Theatre, but these plays are not Moore’s central focus. 73

Australia and radicalising the intelligentsia, to which Roland was clearly not impervious.4

In the fourth volume of her autobiography, The Eye of the Beholder5, Roland describes her growing sense of unease about the social ills produced by the Great Depression, and her discomfiture at leading a comfortable middle-class existence (her husband was financially secure) in the midst of general want and misery. She recalls her meeting with Baracchi and her subsequent political awakening:

It was not an immediate love affair. What we talked about that night at the party was politics and the Soviet Union. I had already been affected by the sight of the despairing men in dole queues and the public parks. I felt guilty when young men and girls knocked on the door and begged to be allowed to wash the cars—Ellis and I had one each—or clean the windows for whatever I cared to pay. Some of them had battered cardboard cases in which were cards of darning wool, safety-pins or elastic. I would buy and feel ashamed of my affluence. There was a bitter winter night when we had been to a concert at the Town Hall and drove up the hill as far as Russell Street. There we stopped to let the traffic pass and I could see two figures huddled in the doorway of a building. They had nothing but a newspaper to protect them from the cold while I had a fur rug wrapped around my legs. That something was wrong with the world was obvious. John Reed’s book had fired my imagination. Was the

4 A good overview of the impact of the Depression and the rise of fascism in compelling the intelligentsia to support the Moscow bureaucracy can be found in David Caute’s The Fellow Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988). 5 Betty, Roland, The Eye of the Beholder . This autobiography is an account of Roland’s stay at the artist’s colony established in Australia by painter Justus Jorgensen in Eltham, Victoria, in the 1930s. Roland stayed at Monsalvat with her daughter after her expulsion from the CPA and New Theatre and her rupture with Guido Baracchi. 74

solution to be found in that mysterious unknown, the USSR? That was the question scores of thousands were asking and, in my case, Guido seemed to be the one to answer it.6

In these sentiments Roland expresses the process of radicalisation among the international intelligentsia: a deep disillusionment about the viability of capitalism. Paul

Hollander succinctly explains this process and the concomitant attraction the Soviet

Union had for the intelligentsia in America during the 1930s:

The Depression beginning in 1929 suddenly dramatized all the ills and evils of capitalism and politicized the estrangement of intellectuals and artists. The defects of the capitalist system ceased to be abstract or primarily aesthetic when people lost their jobs, savings or investments, as the case may be. The sight of the unemployed silenced the apologists of the status quo. The “contradictions of capitalism” became palpable and undeniable when one could contrast the spectacle of American farmers destroying food with the Hunger Marchers or those lined up at the charities. Not only did many become impoverished, but poverty also became all too visible.7

The 1920s were significant for Roland also in that it was the period in which she not only achieved critical acclaim for her play The Touch of Silk, but when she also produced two other one-act plays that demonstrate a genuine theatrical talent that was later detrimentally affected by her association with the CPA. The plays show a tendency towards the melodramatic and sentimental, yet they nevertheless express uncontrived warmth and passion, and an acute understanding of some of the

6 Betty Roland, The Eye of the Beholder, 119 7 Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims, 77-78 75

characters who find themselves alienated or disenfranchised from society or their environment.

Roland dreamed of becoming Australia’s Eugene O’Neill8, but when she returned to

Australia from the Soviet Union she devoted her talent to writing topical political propaganda. One of the first tasks imposed on her upon arriving in Melbourne in 1935 and becoming a member of the CPA was to establish a workers’ theatre there. She joined the Workers’ Theatre Group under the auspices of Friends of the Soviet Union

(FOSU) as writer and director with some of the members of the disbanded Workers’ Art

Club which eventually became the New Theatre.9 Roland describes establishing the

New Theatre as

...a clear case of making bricks without straw, as there was neither money nor venue, nor actors nor suitable plays with which to carry out this praiseworthy project. There was no lack of eager volunteers, especially for leading roles; the difficulty lay in the fact that few had any acting experience, and most had voices that were barely audible and suffered from stage fright. But it was my first assignment as a Party member and I was determined not to fail.10

The theatre group used the FOSU premises for rehearsals and for their first productions of short sketches, which were written by Roland. They also produced an extract from Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole and some other “rough and ready

8 Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg, eds., Playing the Past: Three Plays by Australian Women (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1995), viii. 9 Angela Hillel, Against the Stream: 50 Years of New Theatre—Melbourne New Theatre 1936- 1986 (Clifton Hill, Victoria: New Theatre Melbourne, 1986), 7. 10 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 7. 76

productions”.11 Their most ambitious project, and one which thrust them into their first of many political battles with the authorities, was Clifford Odet’s Waiting for Lefty.

Catherine Duncan took over from Roland on Lefty when Roland was rushed to hospital with appendicitis in the middle of rehearsals. According to Roland, Duncan was “an extremely gifted actress and a writer of considerable talent” who “welded” Roland’s

“stumbling group of amateurs into something like professionals”. When Waiting for

Lefty was banned from Collingwood Town Hall, Duncan “made history” when she had the play performed on the back of a truck to a crowd of several thousand sympathisers.

The performance and its banning made press headlines and according to Roland,

“...the modest company formed in the FOSU rooms was soon to blossom into the New

Theatre League, later the New Theatre”.12

Roland, unlike other playwrights who became New Theatre writers, had experienced critical success prior to her association with New Theatre, and her prestige and talent as an established writer was put to use by writing sketches and plays for New Theatre.

Her plays prior to joining New Theatre are a stark contrast to the utilitarianism and propaganda of the agit-prop plays for New Theatre such as War on the Waterfront, Are you ready, Comrade? and The Miners Speak written during the 1930s. Discussed in this chapter will be Roland’s plays prior to her involvement with the CPA and New

Theatre and include Feet of Clay and Morning. I will not elaborate on The Touch of Silk as this play is familiar to theatre historians and has been critically appraised on several occasions, but will briefly touch upon some of the praise it received by way of further

11 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 7. 12 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 8. 77

contrasting her writing in this period with her strictly propagandist work for New

Theatre.

Granite Peak, runner up in the Commonwealth Jubilee Literary Competition in 1951, will also be discussed in this chapter as she wrote this, her last play, after breaking her association with the CPA and New Theatre. Her creative output can be divided into three periods: pre-CPA, CPA, and post-CPA. This chapter will also demonstrate that whatever merits Roland’s New Theatre plays possessed, they were considered inappropriate once she publicly denounced the CPA for the Hitler-Stalin pact, whereupon New Theatre also expelled her from their ranks.

!)*6*+4%1"' /",!1,!;,( %1

Roland was only 21 when she wrote Feet of Clay. Apparently she subsequently forgot she had written this play; it was rediscovered by Queensland University’s Richard

Fotheringham in the Australian National Archives.13 The subject matter seems to reflect a young amateur dramatist’s enthusiasm for exploring subjectivity and the nature of artistic creation. It has a quality of youthful vigour and is modernist in its orientation.

The themes Roland deals with here would later become antithetical to the propagandist plays that she wrote during her years with the New Theatre. Feet of Clay was written in

1924 and has never been produced. Based on the Pygmalion and Galatea myths, it consists of one act and draws not so much from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion

(1912) but from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which Pygmalion falls in love with a statue of

13 Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg, eds., Playing the Past, xvii. 78

his own creation, as well as Robert Browning’s poem of the same theme ‘The Last

Duchess’(1842). The main protagonist in Feet of Clay is Phillip Strong, a sculptor who has sculpted the perfect woman. Though it was commissioned by an art gallery, so enraptured is Strong by the perfect beauty of the statue that he cannot bear to hand it over, nor will he allow anyone to look at it. His fiancée, Peggy, is a typical modern girl who becomes anxious about his growing isolation and his increasingly disturbed state of mind. His obsession with his own creation has caused him to lose interest in socialising and he neglects Peggy. He decides to stay home, craving the unsullied beauty of art, rather than attend a party in honour of their engagement. To add to his torment, the statue, called simply The Woman, has come to life and desires nothing more than to make love indefinitely. She is too beautiful to resist, yet Phillip is torn between reality in the form of Peggy and the world outside his studio and the perfection of an insatiable statue come to life in the form of a beautiful woman. The dramatic tension is developed through a series of callers to Phillip’s studio who apply pressure to temporarily abandon his work and to enjoy himself:

Ronnie: Look here, old chap. You’ve been working too hard. You say you never got tired when you were doing this—but it must have half killed you. It’s marvellous. No wonder you’re suffering a reaction now it’s done. Get away from it. Forget it. Let the gallery have it and go away for a good holiday.

Phillip: [Ronnie might have suggested murder] Let the gallery have her? Never!

Ronnie: Why not?

Phillip: Let them put her up among the curios and exhibits? Good lord, do you think I’d consent to have her set up where every bally

79

rate-payer with a wet Saturday to fill in can come in and gape at her?14

Feet of Clay has a sense of experimental Lawrentian modernism about it, with its exploration of sexuality, a preoccupation with myth and the act of artistic creation, which characterise many typically modernist novels and plays of the early twentieth century. In many ways it also reflects Roland’s own romantic and erotic impulses in a rather playful manner. Phillip’s reply touches also on the perceived philistinism pervasive in Australia at the time, which many artists sought to escape from by travelling to Europe, hoping for a more receptive and cultured environment.

The technique Roland employs in this play is relatively straightforward and hardly revolutionary, especially in the twentieth century, with Phillip Parsons describing it as

“old as the morality play, which likewise deals in symbolic rather than psychological characterisation”.15 Nevertheless, there is expressed in the play an acute and playful sensibility to the process of artistic creativity. The play is very unlike the bush dramas that were being revived by the likes of the Pioneer Players that included Louis Esson and Katharine Susannah Prichard. Unlike the Players, Roland sought to express the psychological landscape of her characters through the symbolism of myth in Feet of

Clay.

14 Kerry Kilner and Sue Tweg, eds., Playing the Past, 40. 15 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/ Granite Peak, ix. 80

This approach is successful in Feet of Clay in exposing the young urban man’s sensitivity and creativity: two qualities antithetical to and largely absent from the stereotypical portrayals of the virile, robust male of the bush ballads and stories of the

‘native’ dramas of the Pioneer Players. Roland’s depiction of Phillip’s capacity to appreciate the confident sensuality and beauty of the statue as intrinsic to the creative spirit demonstrates an ability to find drama in the inner life of her subjects and bring it to life, rather than confine herself to representations or depictions of Australian life mediated largely through external factors, such as the rural workers’ subjugation of nature.

The play’s denouement is brought about by Phillip’s destruction of the statue when she insists that he must keep her. In frenzy, he smashes the statue: he then salvages a piece, sees the time, and decides that he can attend the dance with Peggy. He gulps a glass of whisky and calls for a taxi, asking the porter to also send someone to clean up the mess. Browning’s poem ‘My Last Duchess’ whose death at the hands of her husband is alluded to in the final act of destruction:

She thanked men good! but thanked

Somehow I know not how as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this

“Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

“Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let 81

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and make excuse,

—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!16

By marrying his young wife, the Duke has elevated her status. However, her conduct is deemed unworthy of the “nine-hundred-years-old-name” he bestows on her and so he kills her, but her beauty is immortalised in a portrait. Phillip, after almost succumbing to the temptation of the statue, also exercises his power by destroying it, while salvaging a piece. In both instances, the destruction, or exorcism of beauty, embodied in the

16 Robert Browning, The Complete Works of Robert Browning, Vol. III (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1971), 201. 82

statue and in a beautiful young wife, is depicted in triumphant terms, subverting the

Ovidian rendition in which Pygmalion and his bride marry and have children.17 In the case of Browning’s poem and Roland’s play, the power of art, and therefore of the artist, is greater than that of the gods of antiquity upon which Ovid’s tale is based.

Feet of Clay has an endearing quality in its high-spiritedness and Roland’s youthful, instinctive and intuitive feeling for her characters and the creative process itself becomes more refined and reaches maturation in her critically acclaimed play The

Touch of Silk, several years later.

Feet of Clay reveals a genuine talent which seems to have ultimately been subordinated, in the 1930s, to strictly utilitarian political rules. Roland’s inspiration in her pre-CPA period is drawn from her own life experiences and interest in literary trends; she claims to have suffered periods of intense loneliness and alienation while at boarding school and in her marriage, and cites Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and others in the theatrical canon as her literary influences.18 Her flair for dramaturgy she attributes to a volume of Shakespeare found in her grandfather’s library that had bits of dialogue beneath the engravings and which she says influenced her to always think in theatrical terms:

I always thought in terms of pictures. I thought in theatrical terms. I never wanted to be anything but a writer. I’d never written plays, except at school. I was out of time as a wild country girl in a

17 Ovid, Metamorphoses (Bloomington, USA: Indiana University Press, 1983). 18 Betty Roland, Interview with Suzanne Hayes [sound recording] Adelaide TAFE, 1977. 83

fashionable girls’ boarding school. I became hostile, anti-social— didn’t like tennis, horse-riding, I’d sit in a shed scribbling.19

There is a similarity between Roland’s artistic inclinations and experiences and Phillip’s own social and creative tendencies in Feet of Clay. When Roland was older she

“absolutely devoured Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels; I loved Ethel Turner, and

Mary Grant Bruce. And there was a book of Greek myth and legends: I took to those very readily. I liked romantic sorts of things”.20The interest in Greek myth finds expression in Feet of Clay. These are elements that demonstrate the talent requiring artistic nurturing and which contributed to an artistic texture and depth evident in the work written in her pre-CPA days, which she abandoned for agit-prop in the 1930s.

*","%%"& (*!(-!( "%$4!"*,!( 8'-"'9-+,*%"' *&

Her affinity with the social outcast is given expression in her early plays and is a prevalent theme in Roland’s writing in her pre-Stalinist period. During her formative years living in rural areas, she experienced terrible droughts and witnessed the carnage it wrought on farmers and their stock. She would ride past sheep lying dead in the fields, where she would cover their eyes with bark to prevent the crows, constantly hovering, from plucking their eyes out.21 The harshness of rural life with its attendant parochialism, and what she claims is a universal theme—the story of the alien, the exile—forms the basis for the plot and characterisation in The Touch of Silk.

19 Betty Roland, Interview with Suzanne Hayes, 1977. 20 Giulia Giuffre, A Writing Life: Interviews with Australian Women Writers, 2. 21 ‘Interview with Suzanne Hayes’, 1977. 84

In this play, she seems to have achieved the emotional maturity to bring her talent to dramatic fruition, and, although it portended signs of better work in the future, Roland never quite recaptured the freshness or emotional intensity that she achieved here.

The unequivocal praise given to The Touch of Silk would have been the source of much envy of every aspiring writer in an epoch in which Australian literature was still trying to establish an independent, national tradition in a nation with a very short history of literary development. The praise accorded to the efforts of the Pioneer Players, for example, was distinctly guarded, unlike the critical accolades that were heaped upon

Roland for her first production of The Touch of Silk in 1928. Leslie Rees praises the

Pioneer Players for having “made history by their attempt” and for introducing some plays that have since entered into the permanent repertory of Australian drama, but of their artistic merit he says they “...just lacked the necessary high distinction, particularly on the side of rich and arresting ‘theatre’, or a quantitative sufficiency of it”.22 This is in stark contrast to the effusiveness of the Melbourne Herald’s critic on November 5, 1928 when reviewing The Touch of Silk. The headline boomed AUSTRALIAN DRAMA AT

LAST:

There are times when a critic must take his courage in both hands, when he must be as bold of his rare enthusiasm as he is of his customary carping; when he must make rash and sweeping statements on no surer foundation than his own hastily formed opinion. Here is such a timethe first Australian play written by a real dramatist. I do not say The Touch of Silk is a great play, but I do say that plain as a pike staff, written all over the face of it, is real dramatic genius. And that is what we have never yet seen in an

22 Leslie Rees, Towards an Australian Drama, 71. 85

Australian play. We have had two major and a few minor box office successes but here is the real grip—the real life of dramatic power and inspiration.23

In The Bulletin of 7 November 1928, just as enthusiastically, Mervyn Skipper announced:

The birth of poor old Australian Drama has been placed in diverse times and places by various authorities, but the event actually took place at Melbourne Playhouse on Saturday night with the Repertory Society’s production of The Touch of Silk, by Betty M. Davies. Who Betty M. Davies is present commentator wotteth not, but that she is gifted with an uncannily mature and subtle theatrical intelligence, as well as a smiling insight into the follies, weaknesses and strengths of the human heart, is sure. That she has here written a beautiful and abiding piece is likewise evident.24

The Touch of Silk is by no means unique in its themes of isolation or exile, but it does demonstrate a clear artistic sensibility regarding the anxieties of the ‘foreigner’ in the

Australian outback. It also subverts the traditional pastoral elegiac representations of the seemingly indomitable Australian bush as the locus for the development of a formidable national identity forged through a perpetual challenge with the harsh, natural elements typical of rural Australia. The townspeople of the play are, for the most part, bigoted, narrow-minded and parochial, while Jeanne is the epitome of the

Parisian exile, a war bride attempting to create a new life with her emotionally unstable

23 Betty Roland, An Improbable Life. This reference is not paginated as it is a copy of The Herald article and is between pages 90 and 91 in this autobiography. 24 Betty Roland, An Improbable Life, between pages 90 and 91. 86

husband Jim (a World War One veteran who suffered from shell-shock) in a town where, as a foreigner, she is treated with suspicion. Her every utterance and deed is wilfully misconstrued by her bigoted mother-in-law who laments the fact that her son has not married “one of our girls”.25

In a review of the 1988 production of The Touch of Silk, Jennifer Ellison indentifies the sociological aspects of Silk when considering the play’s themes of xenophobia, alienation and non-conformism, and concludes that “Her [Roland’s] play provides a clue as to why so many intellectuals, artists and people who resented conformity fled to

Britain and Europe”.26

The play seems to have stood the test of time. In a 1975 review Brian Hoad comments that “today, despite its period manners, its content is too elemental, its structure too well crafted to be anything but an absorbing piece of drama”.27 The Australian Quarterly’s Joan Morgan comments that:

While accepting the Australian background one cannot feel so vividly the reality of the Paris Jeanne evokes in her conversations with Osborne. It is a little too conventionally romantic. Because of this the play seems to lose the full force of place and time contrast which should be its key-note. But there is true pathos in Jeanne’s lines and, as a play of situation, The Touch of Silk is gripping.28

25 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/ Granite Peak, 62. 26 Jennifer Ellison, ‘Telling Touch’, The Bulletin 10, no. 5639 (11 October 1988): 140. 27 Brian Hoad, ‘More Than a Touch of Class’, The Bulletin 97, no. 4978 (11 October 1975): 59. 28 Joan Morgan, Australian Quarterly 14, no.4 (December 1942): 10-111. 87

Judith Barbour criticises the play, claiming that it

does not sustain the idea of Jeanne in opposition to the values of the rest. She stands for civilization and those finer things than meanness and grudging of which “silk” is one. But in the denouement Jeanne is carried away by a tide of primitivist (not primitive) emotion which affirms a reality of bonds, ties and rigidly simplifying nemesis.29

The criticism has some merit, insofar as it seems easy to cast Jeanne in the role of outsider because she is a foreigner, while her primitivist emotions conform to the societal viewpoints of which she is herself the victim. However, the criticism is made from the perspective of a feminist reading of the play in which Barbour defines the social context in The Touch of Silk as one of cultural difference, with that of the woman as outsider by virtue of her sex in a patriarchal society, and not as a critique of parochialism and philistinism, which seems to be more the case. Noted Australian literary critic H.M. Green questions the melodrama of the entire third act but, as Rees points out, paraphrasing G.B. Shaw, a play with a single strong character, such as

Jeanne, has a more enduring quality than plays with topical themes.30

Roland claims that the inspiration for The Touch of Silk came from an experience she had while living with her aunt when young at Port Wakefield in a town: “Surrounded by saltbush plains where an oily tide oozed in and out and giant crabs scuttled across the mud between the mangrove roots”. The town’s livelihood depended on the

29 Judith Barbour, ‘Privileged, Authentic, Transcendent, Arcane: Limits of Naturalism in Some Contemporary Australian Plays’, Southerly 37, no.1 (1977): 84-85. 30Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 188. 88

salt that was harvested from the lakes a few miles away and dried and processed in the mill that thumped and grumbled all day. Roland went to the local dance, attended by about twenty couples dancing to music from a “cracked piano” and a “wheezy accordion”.31 A woman appeared whose beautiful long gown and long white kid gloves marked her out immediately as an outsider, a sophisticated and beautiful creature utterly out of place in Port Wakefield. She danced with her husband, a “surly young man”.32 The woman was an English girl he had met during the war. According to

Roland the diggers were notorious liars, who impressed English girls with stories about life on cattle stations, emu farms or goanna parks. Whatever tales the digger may have told her, the English girl was now the wife of a butcher’s son “and was expected to live in a room at the back of the shop, along with the smell, the flies, and the rest of his numerous family. I looked at the unfortunate girl with a feeling close to horror. To be doomed to spend one’s life in Port Wakefield was my idea of hell”.33

The Touch of Silk’s origins may have been in Roland’s experience in Wakefield, but the inspiration for playwriting was her disillusionment and disappointment with the material

Katharine Susannah Prichard and Louis Esson wrote for the Pioneer Players. She recalls:

I went to read their stuff or see their stuff, feeling a sense of awe, that here I’m going to learn something! But they were so bad, that I

31 Betty Roland, An Improbable Life, 50. 32 Betty Roland, An Improbable Life, 50 33 Betty Roland, An Improbable Life, 51. 89

thought, good heavens, I can do better than that!...And I sat down, and I wrote The Touch of Silk.34

The well-crafted themes of isolation and exile in The Touch of Silk ensured that the play would resonate with audiences outside Australia, despite it being described by the

Turret Theatre magazine writer in 1929 “as indigenous as the landscapes of Heysen and the tales of Lawson”.35 It was produced a year or two later in London and, while

Roland was in the Soviet Union, the Alexandrinsky Theatre purchased the rights to The

Touch of Silk but it was never produced, although Roland was paid a thousand roubles advance in royalties. While it was published by Melbourne University Press, staged by amateur productions and broadcast on the ABC, The Touch of Silk brought Roland prestige more than financial benefit.36

34 Nicole Moore, ‘An Interview with Betty Roland’, Southerly 67, no. 1-2(2007): 372. 35 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 186. 36 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 186. 90

"+,(*1'%"+&48(*'"' 9;'6,%1

Following the critical success of The Touch of Silk, Roland wrote Morning37 in 1929.

This one-act play is a brooding, sombre evocative piece, reminiscent of Barbara

Baynton’s best work. It is set in a hut hidden in a valley in the Blue Mountains, not long after the first discovery of gold in NSW in 1835, and focuses on three characters:

George Burton, a ticket-of-leave man; Lucy, his wife; and a prospector. Morning is starkly realist in its evocation of the loneliness and vastness of the Blue Mountains landscape in that era and, while little background information is divulged either through dialogue or plot, there is an ominous and menacing atmosphere that prevails, which endows the play with a psychological tension that remains unresolved.

Morning begins in “the shadowy hour that just precedes the rising of the sun”. The little light reveals the inside of a rough-hewn hut made of logs and clay, with the bare minimum of domestic accoutrement in a remote and inaccessible area of the Blue

Mountains. A woman, Lucy, lies on a crude bed. She has evidently just given birth and the baby lies sleeping in the cradle near the hearth. The man is tall and strongly built, with a thick beard and a “shaggy head of hair” and a surprisingly gentle, cultured voice: he is clearly an educated man. The scene of contented domesticity continues in this quiet tone. The couple’s relationship and the man’s quiet joy at the birth of their son are conveyed more through his interaction with the baby. The promise of a better future expressed in the birth of a baby boy is soon overshadowed by the reality of their situation. Their solitude and isolation are revealed in the course of their dialogue. She

37 Betty Roland, ‘Morning’, in Best Australian One-Act Plays, William Moore and T. Inglis Moore, eds., (Sydney, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1937). 91

is a former teacher and he a farm worker who had been forced to carry out some crime, a “dirty job”.38 In consequence, they are fugitives from the law, living on what he can steal. Presently a prospector, who has literally struck gold, drunkenly stumbles upon their hideaway. The prospector is an unsavoury character who asks for food before becoming lewd and obnoxious, boasting about his bag of gold. For Burton, the reality of their situation becomes too unbearable when he realises that this uncouth and insolent man not only carries in his bag the prospect of a prosperous future denied them, but he also has a horse, a vital necessity for the fugitive couple with a baby.

Morning ends with Burton taking a violent course of action:

Burton: A horse too!

[There is silence. Lucy raises herself and watches with frightened eyes. Slowly his hand goes down and reaches for the gun. Without a backward glance he steps swiftly out. She stares after him, then with a little whimper of distress and fear she turns and gathers the child up into her arms. Tense with anticipation she waits for what she knows will come. Two shots ring out and there is silence. She cowers over the child, rocking gently to and fro.]

Lucy: It’s better him than us, baby. Better him than us!39

The sombre mood permeating the atmosphere in Morning is conveyed not so much through a highly evolved or developed plot, but through a finely synthesised portrayal of the emotional and psychological impact of isolation as a result of poverty. The couple’s misfortune is suggestive of larger forces at work: the brutality inherent in the social organisation of a colonial outpost is vividly suggested. The characters are

38 Betty Roland, ‘Morning’, 320. 39 Betty Roland, ‘Morning’, 333. 92

concretely depicted, and their circumstances convey a sense of inevitability, with the murderous crisis flowing organically from the play’s trajectory. John McCallum remarks that it reads like the first act of a “pioneering family saga”40, which well may have been the case as apparently Roland intended Morning to be a full-length play.41

Morning is a departure from the vivacious and audacious Feet of Clay, and from the melodrama of The Touch of Silk. The brooding and reflective realism expresses a turn towards the history of the pioneers and their struggle with nature, perhaps as a means of apprehending the social evolution of Australian society, showing how this is manifested in the rather brusque and unsophisticated characteristics forged in that struggle and which shaped the national identity to a large extent. In any case, the dramatic tension that is built up in the short play is indicative of a more mature dramatic talent that seems to be harnessed, at this point, towards exploring broader social and historical themes. Roland has synthesised quite well the historical and social with the subjective: her characters have distinct personalities which are revealed through the course of a tightly woven, yet minimal, dialogue. By focusing so concretely on the particular, Roland has brought out the general aspects of her characters’ situation without elaboration. Restricting the action to the hut emphasises the protagonists’ fugitive status, as well as conveying a sense of physical and psychological isolation.

The 1930 edition of All About Books for Australian and New Zealand Readers notes that Morning won first prize in the annual drama night of the Australian Literature

Society in Melbourne in the one-act play competition, calling it “the best stage

40 John McCallum, Belonging (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press: 2009), 57. 41 Jack Bedson and Julian Croft, eds., The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920-1955 (Armidale, NSW: Centre for Australian Language and Literature Studies, University of New England, 1993), 356. 93

production of the evening” and remarking that it is “...poignant and powerful from beginning to end...”42 “You are conditioned by outside circumstances”43, Roland says of her development and this growing social awareness seems to be at work in Morning.

Roland’s talent as a playwright would be used in the 1930s to raise political consciousness among the proletariat through agit-prop. Her talent as a playwright made the strictly propagandist sketches effective, nevertheless.

42 Hattie Knight, ‘Four Australian Plays’, All About Books for Australian and New Zealand Readers 2, no.11 (November 18 1930): 300. 43 Betty Roland, Interview with Suzanne Hayes. 94

 

,,1(%'

=D??'1('4 ",6)*()%1+'(+,6"+"%%-+"('&',

What skill I may have as a writer must be used to serve the Party line. Farewell ART! Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast.

Roland says of her plays written in the 1930s for New Theatre: “I was writing propaganda—articles and playlets—political agit-prop. No artWell, there’s a certain skill in them, but they had no artistic merit”.1 Roland, romantic in temperament and with aspirations to become a great playwright, had to work twice as hard as a CPA and New

Theatre member to overcome party prejudices about her middle-class background. To prove herself worthy of communist party respect, her efforts included smuggling documents from the Communist Party of Great Britain through Nazi Germany, back to the Soviet Union in 1934. She writes of this mission in Caviar for Breakfast that

“member of the despised petty bourgeoisie though I might be, no party member could have carried out the mission more successfully. I felt that I had won my spurs and was entitled to respect”.2

1 Giulia Giuffre, A Writing Life, 2. 2 Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast,130. 95

Upon returning to Australia, her partner Guido Baracchi conducted Marxist classes and she was assigned the task of running the Workers’ Theatre (later the New Theatre), but less exalted party work was also called for: Roland and Baracchi dutifully sold copies of

Workers Voice at factory gates and street corners and delivered “incendiary leaflets” to a military camp near Seymour, running the risk, if caught, of a prison sentence for

“spreading sedition among His Majesty’s forces”.3 Thus were her party credentials established.

During the period of her CPA membership, Roland authored several playlets and agit- prop material, much of which was published in the Communist Review, where she also wrote book reviews. Most of the material Roland wrote for New Theatre had few or no props and could be performed on the back of trucks to audiences at factories, in parks or the street. These performances were in large part inspired by some of the plays she had seen in the Soviet Union where the Living Newspaper style was prominent and popular there, as at the time of her stay “literacy was not very widespread”.4 Living

Newspaper style involves the presenting of facts on contemporary issues or events to an audience. It was an experimental form, rejecting the conventions of naturalism and realism in theatre, preferring instead agit-prop techniques and multimedia. This style originated in Russia during the 1917 revolution but is more commonly associated with the Federal Theatre Project in the United States. The Federal Theatre Project was established in 1935 and was part of the New Deal project to fund theatre and other art practices during the Depression years. Actors and writers involved with the Federal

3 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 8. 4 ‘Interview: Betty Roland talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, 66. 96

Theatre Project included Elmer Rice, Orson Welles, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, John

Houseman and Joseph Losey. These short sketches were usually one-act plays and had little characterisation to speak of, consisting mostly of agitation for collective industrial action. Their extreme topicality and prescribed style severely limit their ability to stand the test of time: they remain interesting mostly as sociological artefacts of

Australia’s radical left-wing cultural and political history.

One of these agit-prop pieces is The Miners Speak. There is no dialogue, no action and no plot. The cast is comprised of eight speakers reciting speeches calling for strikes:

All: Murder! Murder! Murder! Murder!

1st: In every State, in every mine, death stalks.

20,000 miners face death every day. Swift death, slow death,

Agony and mutilation.

Down in the darkness, down in the dirt,

Down in the filth and the foulness of the pit,

Where the gases lurk, and the timbers rot,

And the cunning, noiseless dust saps out our lives.5

The play continues in this vein with each speaker taking a turn. They include an Old

Man, a Youth and a Woman. The woman’s recitation in the middle of this very short play is the longest, to which Nicole Moore attributes Roland’s “association of socialism

5 Communist Review, vol. V, no. 11 (November 1938): 32-36. 97

and women’s rights”.6 The play’s exhortation is an undisguised call for syndicalist solidarity, expressed forcibly in the last line where eight speakers, fists clenched high, shout in unison “BECAUSE WE’LL WIN! STRIKE! STRIKE!”

The agit-prop is a sharp contrast to the character—and plot—driven plays of the 1920s and early 1930s. The aim of agit-prop theatre, however, was different: it aimed to incite the audience to action, to galvanise, disseminate ideology and use dramatic impact as an impetus to political action outside of the theatre.7 In her later writing, Roland clearly seeks to downplay her work written in this period, referring to it as “literary cartooning”8 and distinguishing it from her earlier plays, such as The Touch of Silk or Granite Peak, which she considers to have greatly superior literary merit. The aim of The Miners

Speak is not to sensitise aesthetically through traditional dramatic conventions of action and interaction, dialogue or plot or even individual character development, but is purely functional in terms of its underlying political ideology in its exhortations for collective action or insurgency.

Vote No!9 is another agit-prop piece dealing with anti-conscription. Allegorical in its use of communist propagandist caricature of ‘fat cat’ industrialists and bourgeois politicians, its orientation towards the as a concomitant element for a fight

6 Moore, ‘The Burdens Twain or Not Forgetting Yourself: The Writing of Betty Roland’s Life’, Hecate, vol.18, no.1, 1992, 15. 7 Richard Scharine, From Class to Caste in American Drama: Political and Social Themes Since the 1930s (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991). 8 Betty Roland, interview with Nicole Moore in Woman by Herself: The Writing of Betty Roland’s Life, Nicole Moore B.A. (Hons.) thesis, University of Sydney, 1991, 26, MLMSS 4648 Add-On 2018, Box 7, Betty Roland, Further Papers 1933-1993, Microfilm copy CY 4558. 9 ‘Vote No!’, Communist Review, vol. V, no. 12 (December, 1938): 17. 98

for socialism in Australia expresses the perspective of the Comintern’s Popular Front policy of class collaboration, to which the CPA subscribed in this period. Robert

Menzies is the archetypal figure of the bloated capitalist representative and all others are characterised by the use of synecdoche, such as ‘the Press,’ ‘Democracy,’

‘Woman’. Both these agit-prop pieces borrow heavily from Clifford Odets’s style of dramaturgy in the 1930s in which the plight of workers is intercut with vignettes of their personal lives, ending in a defiant call for union solidarity and strikes. These plays are styled to be performed anywhere.

In similar agit-prop style to The Miners Speak and Vote No! is War on the Waterfront10 which was written at the height of the pig-iron dispute in 1938. Because Japan had invaded Manchuria in 1931, striking workers at Port Kembla refused to load a ship after the maritime unions had placed an embargo on the export of pig-iron to Japan. ‘Pig iron Bob’ (Robert Menzies), in his capacity as attorney-general, invoked the Transport

Workers Act, offered licences to volunteer labour and closed down 2KY, the radio station owned by the ALP, for its criticisms of the government.11 Roland’s one-act sketch, also published in the Communist Review in 1939, is about the striking workers in Port Kembla. Absent from this play also are props and other theatrical conventions typical of stage theatre productions.

10 ‘War on the Waterfront’, Communist Review, vol. 6, no. 2 (February 1939): 110-114. 11 Stuart MacIntyre, The Succeeding Age 1901-1942: The Oxford History of Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986), 310. 99

The propagandist, agit-prop style corresponds with Roland’s ambition for the play, which Arrow claims was “functional and ideological, not aesthetic”.12 The play consists of a dialogue between two waterside workers, Bill and Joe, and a seaman off the

Dalfram on the one hand, and, on the other, the shipping agent, as a sycophantic lackey to B.H.P., who embodies and represents rapacious capitalists. The scene is the wharf at Port Kembla. The political context is immediately apparent in the dialogue, which, in similar fashion to other agit-prop plays, ends on a note of proletarian triumphalism, the necessary formula of prescriptive socialist realist ideology:

B.H.P.: You’ll find what it means to try your puny strength in international affairs. I’ll break you and I’ll cripple you for years. Joe: Perhaps you will, but by God, not before I’ve made things pretty hot for you. There won’t be a single man or woman in Australia who won’t know all about the dirty game you’re up to. Iron ore is banned, so you turn it into pig-iron and you ship it out and dodge the law that way, Mister B.H.P., the fattest hog in Australia. Got your belly full of Chinese corpses, haven’t you? B.H.P.: By God

Joe: Now, by God, I’ve had my say and everybody’s heard me. Bring out your Lyons and your Menzies, and your Transport Workers’ Act, and your scabs. I’m ready for ‘em.

[He advances right up to B.H.P., who backs away in alarm. Joe holds his finger against his chest and drives home every point.]

And don’t forget I’m not alone in this. There’s not a union, not a member of the working class who won’t support me. Maybe you’ll be biting off more than you can chew.

[He begins to turn away]

And now I’m going back to call out every watersider on the wharves, and if I have my way, there won’t be a single ship on the waterfront

12 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 2002), 134. 100

that will load your dirty iron. That’ll show you what we think of selling war materials to the Japs. So long! See you in hell sometime. [He spits neatly on the other’s boot and strolls off.]

B.H.P.: [Shouting.] Joe! Bob! Mr. Lyons! Mr. Menzies! Help! Help! Where’s the dog-collar? Can’t you hear me? Help! Help!13

The play, which has a rough-hewn persuasive power, was banned, and although New

Theatre was refused permission to produce it in the Domain, they staged it regardless, with all the participants incurring a fine of five pounds each, a hefty sum in those days not long after the Depression. War on the Waterfront was popular with audiences, and with police who “stopped performances and arrested actors”.14 The sketch was also taken to Port Kembla and Wollongong where it was staged on the back of trucks and on footpaths.15

Workers Beware!16 was published in the Communist Review in January 1939 and is a

similar agit-prop sketch dealing with industrial disputes in which class antagonisms

are articulated. Its theme is, again, the travails of waterside workers, featuring the

perennial villain representative of rapacious capitalism, B.H.P. who with King Coal

and the Shipowner, fulminates against the Seaman and Waterside Worker:

13 Betty Roland, ‘War on the Waterfront!’, Communist Review, vol. VI, no. 2 (February 1939): 113-4. 14 Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill, Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Persons (Sydney, NSW: UNSW Press, 2010), 276. 15 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged, 169. 16 ‘Workers Beware!’, Communist Review, vol. VI, no. I (January 1939): 39-42. 101

B.H.P.: What do you think I mean? I won’t have these red-raggers, these Bolsheviks, these trade union busy-bodies poking their nose into my affairs.

Worker: You won’t, eh? Well, poke your nose into this: we’re behind those blokes, every one of us, and you don’t get us back to work until they come too.

B.H.P.: How dare you talk to me like that? You bounder, you vulgarian, you common, low-born thug!17

As is evident from this dialogue, all the characters in all the agit-prop plays are devoid of any inner subjective life: they are mouthpieces through which collective consciousness is represented. It would be a simple matter, therefore, to dismiss the plays as “literary cartooning” as Roland does, yet they contributed to the political and social consciousness of an increasingly radicalised working class on the eve of the

Second World War, a class which was mobilised against the escalating fascist threat.

The problem with Roland’s agit-prop is not that it was propaganda, which in and of itself is not necessarily bad if it is done well, as Roland’s is, but that this is the extent of

Roland’s creative output during her time in the CPA and New Theatre.

A slight departure from the steady stream of agit-prop Roland was producing is the more critically successful play she wrote for New Theatre, Are You Ready Comrade?

This full-length political drama won the Western Australian Drama Competition in 1938.

17 ‘Workers Beware!’, Communist Review, vol. VI, no. I (January 1939): 39. 102

However, a precise aesthetic appraisal is not possible because only one act of the play remains, the rest having been lost when Roland’s car, with her plays in the boot, was stolen in Europe in the 1950s. The surviving act is entitled Prosperity Around the

Corner. It is Act 1, Scene 3 and appears in The Communist Review in April 1938.18

Roland regards this play as different to agit-prop, and “meant to be taken seriously. It was written when I was deeply involved in the Communist movement. It was slightly autobiographical too”.19

The main difference between this and her other New Theatre plays is the theme and setting as well as developed characters. The act treats the type of relationship that has developed between the white-collar worker Henderson and the manager, Martin, within the hierarchy of company politics. The true nature of the boss and worker relationship is revealed in the course of the discussion in which Henderson faces retrenchment.

Martin is sympathetic, but the best he can console Henderson with is the fact that at least he can rely on his son to support him, an idea Henderson is in principle opposed to as he values his independence and does not want to burden his son, soon to be married, with such a responsibility.

Henderson: Do you think we old ones should live on our young? Where’s the next generation to come from if the young can’t marry?

Martin: Have you found this place such a wonderful place that you want to bring others into it?

Henderson: How many children have you got, Mr. Boyd?

Martin: Three.

18 ‘Are You Ready Comrade?’, Communist Review, vol. V, no. 4 (April, 1938): 45-49. 19 ‘Interview: Betty Roland Talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, 67. 103

Henderson: And why is it all right for you to have children and wrong for Bill?

Martin: I don’t know that it is right. I don’t know that I’m any better off than you are, Henderson.

Henderson: Oh, yes you are, Mr Boyd. This firm may go broke. I know that. I’ve been keeping the books. But even that won’t leave you with nothing to face but the dole. You’ve got a house, a motor car, your wife’s got jewellery, you’ve got some money in the bank. All I’ll have when I walk out of here is your polite regrets and the worthless scrip for two hundred pounds. [outside the five o’clock whistle blows.] There she goes. I’ve been answering that whistle for thirty years. All the best years of my life. Eight hours a day every day and in return I got enough to feed and clothe my family and a little over if we saved and did without. And now I’m not so useful as I used to be, the firm can’t get its money’s worth, so it’s not going to feed and clothe me any more to keep my family.

Martin: Oh come, it’s not so crude as that!

Henderson: Isn’t it? That’s what you like to tell yourself, Mr. Boyd. You keep on thinking that I’m old. I’d have to go soon anyway, I’ve got Bill to live on, he won’t see me starve, so that lets you out. But it doesn’t. You can’t kick me out and make a mess of Bill’s life without the backlash coming somewhere.20

Although the stridently propagandist aspect of the playlets is absent in this act, there is still clearly an element of political agitation underpinning it, informed as it is by Roland’s political outlook, but it is made subtler by the characters placed in a particular context and with developed personalities rather than archetypes. The play is informed by class politics, but the characterisation has not been entirely subjugated to the rigid

20 ‘Interview: Betty Roland Talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, 73. 104

archetypes found in Roland’s agit-prop of the same period. In The Australian Quarterly of June 1939, the reviewer claims that “...it is a powerful piece dramatically; in fact—if I may be excused a quantitative judgement—I should rank Act II, scene I as the tensest in Australian drama”.21 According to Rees, the play

told of a Melbourne woman’s rejection of her disease-ridden husband— surely representing outworn capitalist society—and escape with her socialist lover for a period of rejuvenation in the up- and-coming experimental Russia that was so generally stimulating to Western intellectuals in the thirties.22

The parallels with Roland’s life are evident. As she records in one of her autobiographies, An Improbable Life23, her own husband Ellis Davies had, unbeknown to Roland, contracted a venereal disease which caused their son to be born with cerebral meningitis from which he died at the age of seven. Her separation from

Davies, her romance with Baracchi and their departure together for the Soviet Union in

1933 is documented also in An Improbable Life, and their experience while there is recounted in another autobiography, Caviar for Breakfast. Rees, who claims to have seen Are You Ready Comrade? produced by Sydney New Theatre in the 1930s with

Roland in the main role, says that the play has “individual scenes as electrifying and urgent as any so far written in Australian drama; but regarded as an entity it was confusing, because indigestible and too rabidly propagandist”.24

21 R.O McG, Untitled Review, The Australian Quarterly 11, no. 2 (June 1939): 119. 22 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama,188. 23 Betty Roland, An Improbable Life, 104. 24 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 188. 105

Despite Roland’s ability as a playwright, which was evident even when writing under the circumscribed parameters of the CPA and New Theatre, it’s an interesting phenomenon that her propagandistic plays during this period probably reached wider audiences than those she rightly considers as having greater artistic merit, such as The

Touch of Silk and Granite Peak. So identified had Roland become as a left-wing playwright in the theatre of protest, that her earlier critical success was occasionally overshadowed, even years after she broke ranks with both the CPA and New Theatre.

For example, her ASIO files, which record that she describes her occupation as playwright on her passport application, list only the plays she wrote for New Theatre and which appeared in the Communist Review as verification of her playwright status, and confirmation of her political leanings, but no mention is made of The Touch of Silk,

Granite Peak or Morning.25

The popularity of Roland’s politically influenced agit-prop material was undoubtedly bound up with the extreme topicality of the subject matter that resonated with audiences, even if only fleetingly, and which itself was bound up with the prevalent social atmosphere and political tensions that the plays unambiguously express, albeit in the most tendentious and didactic forms. In any case, she claims that they “were fun to do” and she enjoyed writing them.26Her reasons for discontinuing writing propagandist material are, however, as political as her decision was to channel her talent to the political requirements of the CPA. Increasingly at odds with the party line,

25 Betty A. Roland, ASIO file, Series Number: A6126, Control Symbol: 77, Contents date range: 1935-1956, Barcode: 12012493, Location: Canberra, Access Status: open with exception; Betty nee MacLean Roland, Series Number: A6126, Control symbol: 347/Reference Copy, Series Accession Number: A6126/25, Barcode: 12012494, Contents date range: 1935-1962, Location: Canberra, Access status: open with exception. 26 Drusilla Modjeska, ‘Interview: Betty Roland talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, 66. 106

she cites the 1939 Stalin–Hitler non-aggression pact as the catalyst for her complete disillusionment with the CPA.27 This was, in Roland’s eyes, a colossal betrayal difficult to justify and which led to her departure from the CPA and New Theatre.

(%","%)* "1'-%,-*%!"%"+,"'"+&4)*,-* *(&,!' %+,,,&),,*"(-+*&/",!*'",$

Roland’s disenchantment with the CPA was not necessarily bound up with the type of writing she was churning out for New Theatre. For as long as she held socialist ideals, the agit-prop was a means to an end. She explains to Moore: “at that time I was quite convinced that the revolution was going to come, and I was dedicated to it”.28

Both she and Baracchi had begun to question the CPA’s dogmatic adherence to the

Moscow line, in particular to the reports of the Moscow trials. Her growing alienation from the CPA was based on disturbing reports from friends in the Soviet Union who claimed that the persecution of suspected dissidents had begun in earnest. Freda

Utley, with whom Baracchi and Roland stayed in the USSR, wrote to Roland in 1938 that she had gone back to England with her young son because her husband Arcadi

Berdichevski, had been arrested “with no trial and no charge, beyond having ‘been friendly or acquainted with a Trotskyist’the brutes won’t even allow me a word from him to let me know if he is dead or alive”29 This incident was one of several that reinforced Roland’s increasing alienation from and mistrust of the CPA before publicly

27 Giulia Giuffre, A Writing Life, 3. 28 Nicole Moore, ‘An Interview with Betty Roland’, Southerly 67, no.1-2 (2007): 378. 29 Freda Utley to Betty Roland, 1938, Guido Baracchi Papers, NLA MS 5241, Addition, 3.12.91, Box 13, Betty Roland folder. Berdichevsky perished in the purges of 1935-39. 107

breaking with and denouncing the CPA in an open letter to the Central Committee, published in the Trotskyist paper The Militant in March 1940.30 She wrote:

My only sign of political life has been the agit-prop plays I have written from time to time which dealt with immediate working-class issues and in which I refrained, in every case, from making any mention whatever of the CP or its membersNo doubt it will be said that I am ‘deserting the revolution.’ Such is the opposite of the truth. I repudiate the Third International because it is NO LONGER a revolutionary party and can only play a reactionary part in future events. If a miracle took place and the Comintern put forward a genuinely militant, working class MARXIST policy, I would be the first to rejoice and ask to be allowed to help, the same as I will do all in my power to defend the Soviet Union against all enemies, within and without, because despite all my former associates may say or think, the triumph of the working class and the ultimate achievement of Socialism are the first considerations in my life. Therefore Stalin and his kind are an abomination.31

The categorical rejection of the CPA and the simultaneous affirmation of her commitment to socialist politics demonstrate that Roland’s writing for New Theatre was of an entirely political nature. However, as Moore notes, there is nonetheless verve and vigour evident in some of Roland’s sketches, which provide a glimpse of the talent that survives beneath the strictly political utilitarian material. However, the rupture was clearly not amicable, and Roland’s name in the CPA, and concomitantly in New

Theatre, became anathema.

30 Betty Roland, ‘Betty Roland Breaks With Stalinism’, The Militant (Sydney, NSW) March 1940, 2. 31 ‘Betty Roland Breaks With Stalinism’, The Militant, 2. 108

Politically Roland became persona non grata and her New Theatre plays suffered the same fate. Simon Bracegirdle, a CPA member from the 1930s until 1991, recalls in an interview with Wendy Lowenstein that they were rehearsing a Roland play at the time that Baracchi was questioning the party line over the Stalin–Hitler pact in 1939.

Because Baracchi was Roland’s partner, her play was dropped in the spirit of CPA solidarity. Bracegirdle claims that they managed to stack the meeting to ensure that every loyal member voted to drop the play.32 The Trotskyist paper The Militant commented on the “pretensions” of New Theatre and noted Roland’s dedication to the struggles of the working class through her plays. On her treatment by New Theatre they write, in April 1940:

Recently Betty Roland broke with the ‘Communist’ Party. Immediately, the ‘non-party’ New Theatre League placed a ban on her plays. Presumably we are supposed to believe that the same plays previously endorsed and performed by the New Theatre League are now anti-working class. The truth is that the New Theatre League is just another ‘stooge’ outfit of the ‘Communist’ party whose puppets dance to the tune called by Miles, Dixon and Sharkey.33

Roland’s denunciation was an unpardonable sin and her plays were never again performed by New Theatre. Lowenstein refers to the Roland incident cited by

Bracegirdle as “the dead hand of the Party” and “the bad side of the party in the arts”.

Bracegirdle also claims to “remember rather hazily that at times we would get someone from the Central Committee, to in effect, vet any play to see that it would be approved

32Simon Bracegirdle and Wendy Lowenstein, Simon Bracegirdle interviewed by Wendy Lowenstein in the Communists and the Left in the Arts and Community Oral History Project [sound recording],1992. 33 The Militant (Sydney, NSW) April1940, 9. 109

by the brains trust—by the Central Committee”.34 The charade of democratic procedure is branded by Bracegirdle as “A real piece of heavy-handed bureaucracy”.35 The New

Theatre leadership was entirely comprised of CPA members, according to Bracegirdle and, therefore, according to Lowenstein, no rehearsals were held on Tuesdays because that was when CPA branch meetings were held.36

However, these were not isolated incidents, or the result of a fledgling theatre struggling to steer a course in a hostile environment. The practice of vetting plays and subjecting writers to withering political dressing-downs for any real or perceived deviation from accepted party doctrine or ideology in their work was even more vigorously reinforced in the early years of the Cold War and continued right up to the

1960s. Jean Devanny, CPA member and founder of the Workers’ Art Club in 1932, who was involved with several cultural groups around the CPA, was frequently at loggerheads with the party over its “disruptive left-sectarianism in cultural spheres”37 and, in a damning critique of CPA attitudes to cultural matters, she explains her views about CPA criteria for assessing and reviewing literature:

Inevitably reflecting the left-sectarianism of those in control of cultural matters, reviewing was of a nature to make the Party a laughing stock in the eyes of established writers, and a cock-shy for the shafts of its enemies. What was judged to be communist content, juggled at times to square with nepotism and sycophancy, was put forward as

34 Simon Bracegirdle and Wendy Lowenstein, Simon Bracegirdle Interviewed by Wendy Lowenstein. 35 Simon Bracegirdle and Wendy Lowenstein, Simon Bracegirdle Interviewed by Wendy Lowenstein. 36 Simon Bracegirdle and Wendy Lowenstein, Simon Bracegirdle Interviewed by Wendy Lowenstein. 37 Carole Ferrier, Romantic Revolutionary (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 247. 110

the sole criterion of all that constitutes literature. The implication was that, to be a writer, one only had to hold the ‘right’ ideas. Poor lines were hailed as great poetry, even the veriest doggerel lauded, if the writer was a communist and their content ‘merited’ official sanction. In reviewing the work of non-Party writers, appreciation of progressive content was rationed out in proportion to the support given by the writer to the Party.38

Perhaps for Devanny, who visited the USSR prior to the Zhdanov decree of socialist realism, but who nevertheless adhered to the doctrine of socialist realism and proletarian culture in principle, bureaucratic interference in cultural matters was interpreted as a national peculiarity, afflicting only the Australian section of the

Comintern. Roland, however, recalls her experience at the theatre in the Soviet Union and views the CPA attitude as an extension of the Soviet policy of political imprimatur granted to a given play, although admittedly with far less sinister implications. The event Roland refers to was the premiere of An Optimistic Tragedy at the Kamerny theatre in Moscow, but is typical of the general atmosphere in the cultural arena in the

Soviet Union in the 1930s:

Every member of the cast, the director, the stage manager, even the humblest usher and stagehand, is aware of certain ominous figures seated in a box, on whose yea or nay the future of the play depends. They are members of the Politburo, the most powerful and feared sect in the entire bureaucracy, and in them is invested the power to approve or condemn, to demand changes in the text, and, on occasions, suppress it altogether.39

38 Jean Devanny, Point of Departure, 295-6.

39 Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast, 28. 111

Roland attended many productions in Moscow, where she claims there was a theatre group in almost every collective or factory that produced plays with titles such as

Victory on the Collective Farm or The Struggle Will Go On. These plays functioned as

Living Newspapers, providing topical news and political propaganda to enthusiastic audiences who were, throughout most of Russia at the time, mostly illiterate.40

Uncritical of much of what she saw in Soviet theatre, she accepted their methods as part of a political struggle and continued the practice with New Theatre upon her return to Australia. The agit-prop she wrote for New Theatre in the 1930s was influenced by some performances she attended in Saratov in the USSR where she recalls that neither props not scenery were used, with the players “relying on nothing but their skill and intensity in their beliefs”.41

Evidently, her experience in the Soviet Union informed her attitude to CPA strictures on art and culture, and she was happy to subscribe to these methods for as long as she retained a belief in the perspective of socialism. In her literary reviews in the

Communist Review, Roland adopts a less strident attitude unlike her cohorts Prichard and Devanny who used the journal as a platform for propagating socialist realism.42 It is interesting nevertheless to note that, although she dismisses as “literary cartooning” her work for New Theatre, she has nowhere elaborated either a critique or a defence of socialist realism or proletarian culture. Once conscious of the real nature of Stalinism,

40 Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast, 31. 41 Betty Roland, Caviar for Breakfast, 143. 42 Roland and Gordon Grant, for example, wrote reviews on Sir Peter Chalmer’s book My House in Malaga about the Spanish civil war in 1937 and E.R. Hughes’s China, Body and Soul in which they exhort the reader to purchase a copy both for the quality of its essays and because proceeds from the book sales were directed to providing relief in China. Communist Review, vol. V, no. 7 (July 1938): 54. 112

she broke ranks politically with the CPA but not with New Theatre, stating that it

“withdrew from me when I was expelled from the Communist Party in 1940”.43 This is a frank and revealing statement about the artist’s role as a politically committed individual. If the artist’s role is to create art that sensitises rather than instructs, then there are certain implications in Roland’s admission of the strictly utilitarian function of art as she practiced it with New Theatre. Cath Ellis for instance comments on

the complex existence which socialist realism enjoyed in Australia from the time of its introduction in 1933. While it was undoubtedly a theory which, in the end, served to stifle and discourage more writers than it nourished and encouraged, it was, for some, an exciting and stimulating new development in literary and aesthetic theory.44

Such arguments fail to address why such a ‘trend’ or ‘theory’ produced few, if any, enduring literary works of high artistic merit, either here or in the USSR. The limited perspective and extreme topicality of the agit-prop material diminishes its capacity to resonate beyond the period in which it was written, a fact that Roland herself notes in later years: “Topical for the time and then finished and then gone. What use would it be writing about the wharf labourers’ strike now?”45

The paucity of clarification or definition of socialist realism is perhaps best expressed by Theodore Adorno of the Frankfurt School. His view is the extreme opposite of the utilitarian view of art of the CPA and New Theatre, where he would be regarded as a

43Drusilla Modjeska, ‘Interview: Betty Roland talks to Drusilla Modjeska’, 68. 44 Cath Ellis, ‘Socialist Realism in the Australian Literary Context: With Specific Reference to the Writing of Katharine Susannah Prichard’, 44. 45 Nicole Moore, ‘An Interview with Betty Roland’, 371. 113

formalist. Adorno dismisses socialist realism as “simply childish”46 and advances a supposed antithesis to socialist realism, emphasising form as a means of expressing content, arguing that “In all art that is still possible, social critique must be raised to the level of form, to the point that it wipes out all manifestly social content”.47 If one is to adopt Adorno’s framework, then the basis for analysing Roland’s work in the 1930s in comparison with her earlier plays and her work subsequent to departure from the CPA is rendered obsolete: each period is autonomous, the notion of progress or regression, of aesthetic development, is merely another quotidian element in an artist’s life.

Roland’s development as a writer is inextricably intertwined with the social developments of her time and her political outlook and perspective, which she strove to develop further after her break with the CPA and New Theatre.

After her departure from the CPA and New Theatre, Roland, in 1940, apparently attempted to establish the Partisan Theatre, although no record of this has been found other than references by Roland in her autobiography to staging some plays on the back verandah of her Castlecrag home. Thelma Afford, in her study of Adelaide’s little theatres in the first decades of the twentieth century, states that the Metropolitan

Theatre’s May Hollinworth presented several of Roland’s plays at Castlecrag in the early 1940s48, but she cites no sources for this. With a young child to support, Roland wrote radio plays throughout the 1940s right through to the 1950s and a serial strip,

The Conways, for the Sydney Morning Herald. Her most successful radio play was

46 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 250. 47 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 250. 48 Thelma Afford, Dreamers and Visionaries, 189. 114

Daddy Was Asleep in 1945, for the ABC.49 Although she applied herself, the Muse had apparently deserted her. Her hopes surged when Doris Fitton of the Independent

Theatre in Sydney sought her out and asked her to revise a dramatised version of

Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Roland agreed but she was vilified in the press for her

“temerity” in “desecrating a masterpiece”.50 But the tide was about to turn for her. News of the Commonwealth Jubilee stage-play competition in 1951 inspired Roland to return to a work she had begun (Granite Peak) and she strengthened those parts that had seemed feeble to her.

*'",$

A three-act play, Granite Peak explores the relationships of the inhabitants of Granite

Peak, a large homestead in the Northern Territory. The elderly Carmichaels own

Granite Peak and live there with their grand-daughter Kate and her brother Roger. Kate is in love with Charlie, who has an Aboriginal grandmother but was adopted by the

Carmichaels as a baby and is now planning to study medicine in London. Their affection for each other is marred by the racial barriers in Australian society. Charlie wants to return to the Northern Territory after he has proved himself abroad, away from the prejudices and preconceived notions related to his Aboriginality. Kate believes a future for them is possible only if they leave the Northern Territory where she says

49Richard Lane, The Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama 1923-1960—A History Through Biography (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1994), 118. Ironically, Lane makes no mention of Roland’s history with the CPA or New Theatre. Richard Lane is presumably the same Richard Lane who is mentioned by Oriel Gray in her autobiography Exit Left as someone who frequented New Theatre. This is discussed further in this thesis in Chapter Ten. 50 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 109. 115

“He’ll never be able to hide what he is up here. Anywhere else, nobody would guess”.51

This is an option he is averse to because, as Kate says to Mrs Carmichael, “His whole idea is to show the whites up here what a ‘boong’ can do”.52 The play is infused with the dominant discourse of assimilationist assumptions, expressed in the dialogue between Mrs Carmichaels and Kate. The elder Mrs Carmichaels has begun to doubt whether removing Charlie from the camp and educating him was a wise thing, but Kate rejects this, saying that he would be “...nothing but a stockman or a roustabout on someone’s station if you hadn’t”.53 Kate’s position, while granting legitimacy to Charlie’s removal from his people on the basis of the opportunities afforded to him as a

Carmichael (including inheritance of Granite Peak), is nevertheless a tacit acknowledgement of the inferior status of Australia’s indigenous population, who when

‘removed’ or stolen were usually in positions of domestic servitude and subject to appalling conditions and all manner of abuse. Without recourse to political rhetoric or invoking communist ideology, Roland subverts the dominant ideology of assimilation through the plight of the characters themselves: she generalises without necessarily elaborating on these racial tensions, but they are clearly enunciated nonetheless.

A second theme running through the play is a focus on ethics, which influences the entire relationship structure of the Carmichael clan, but is brought into sharp relief by

Kate’s brother Roger. A twenty-three year old who has no interest in the property,

Roger is a regular at Moody’s pub. He is less attuned than Kate to the wonders of

Granite Peak, and is eager to escape. He considers an offer to visit his mother, who

51 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/Granite Peak, 91. 52 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/Granite Peak, 92. 53 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/Granite Peak, 91. 116

had left them when young and now lives in London. Kate maintains her outrage at their mother’s desertion of them, “I can still hear her moaning about the loneliness, the heat and the dust and the hard life she had”, whereas Roger, who shares his mothers’ sensibilities, is more sympathetic.54 Roger is in love with Rosie, a barmaid at Moody’s, and when she reveals she is pregnant he proposes to her. The possibility of producing an heir to Granite Peak poses a moral and ethical dilemma for Rosie as the child is not

Roger’s. She confesses this to Roger because she is in love with him and all is resolved satisfactorily when Roger accepts Rosie and the baby. It is “A romantic and sentimental play” according to John McCallum55, and this is unarguable, although it does have moments of social insight typical of Roland that elevate it above the standard melodrama genre.

Roland borrows from much of her own life experiences in the characterisation and plot, borrowing which is evident in the moral dilemmas that pervade this play, although not as ostentatiously as in The Touch of Silk. Roland worked on Granite Peak for years before submitting it for the Jubilee Prize, and it is significant that the character of

Charlie was only introduced after Roland visited the Northern territory in 1950 where she claims that “The rabid propaganda against Aborigines got me very stirred up.

That’s why I added the character of Charlie to Granite Peak”.56

54 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/ Granite Peak, 102. 55 John McCallum, Belonging, 56. 56 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/ Granite Peak, xxii. 117

Issues of racism which were not generally discussed in Australian writing, much less in dramatic form at the time, are brought to the fore in Roland’s play. The very few playwrights who were dealing with the vital issue of the indigenous population and their plight, prior to the onset of the New Wave in the 1960s and 1970s, were all, at one point or another, directly involved with the CPA and New Theatre. Oriel Gray and Mona

Brand, who will be discussed in other chapters, both treated the theme of racism against Aborigines in some of their plays, but few of these, if any, have been produced.

Confident of winning the Jubilee Prize, Roland submitted Granite Peak, but was disappointed to be runner-up to Kylie Tennant’s Tether a Dragon, about Australia’s second Prime Minister Alfred Deakin. Roland, who claimed to have been disgusted at the “rubbish” she had been “churning out”, was at first disappointed, then indignant after she read Tennant’s play:

It reminded me of the Madame Bovary play in its initial form—a mishmash of scenes and characters. What made it worse, it was about Henry Parkes [sic], a pompous old politician, not a beautiful woman who loved unwisely and met with a tragic fate and was never a crashing bore. That Granite Peak should be judged inferior to this non-play seemed like a personal insult, and my anger mounted steadily. I had given Australia two good plays. One had been forgotten, the other had been ignored and so far as I was concerned, that was the end. I would never write another play again. I would leave Australia to the philistines and seek recognition overseas.57

57 Betty Roland, The Devious Being, 121. 118

It is quite feasible that the plight of Aborigines was considered unsuitable material until around the 1960s and may have prevented Roland from winning the coveted prize that she believes would have re-established her reputation as a serious playwright.58

Phillip Parsons provides an apt description of Granite Peak as a “...difficult play, uncompromising in its simple characterisation and plotting. It is romantic myth stripped to its essentials”.59 Never produced for the stage, it was nevertheless broadcast as a television play by Associated–Rediffusion in April 1957 in Britain, where Roland lived for several years. Roland went on to write several children’s books for which she won the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award in 1962, 1964 and 1965, and her popular radio serial from the 1950s A Woman Scorned was the inspiration for Return to

Eden, a popular television series in 1985. She also wrote a stage play of Cervantes’s

Don Quixote as well several works of romantic fiction. Writing novels perhaps partially salved her yearning for artistic fulfilment, but her first love was always the theatre, and after her disappointment with Granite Peak she never wrote another play.

There is a significant contrast between the plays produced in Roland’s pre- and post-

Stalinist era, and those she wrote in the 1930s. Although characterised by a sentimental strain, her most enduring plays are those written before and after her association with the CPA and New Theatre. These have much more dramatic impact,

58 Roland says of the award: “It is possible that Kylie needed the five hundred pounds more than I did but she did not need the boost to her reputation as a writer in the way that I did...I wanted to be recognised as a serious playwright, and had hoped that, by winning the award for Granite Peak, I might be restored to the position I had occupied in 1928. Had the critic on the Bulletin not hailed me as Australia’s first genuine playwright?” The Devious Being, 121. 59 Betty Roland, The Touch of Silk/ Granite Peak, xx. 119

speaking far more eloquently (on the themes of alienation, parochialism, xenophobia and sexism) than the overtly politically motivated propagandist works written during her politically active period in the 1930s.

Roland’s literary career, despite the awards for the children’s books, is still very much associated with her attempts at dramaturgy, and in that sense The Touch of Silk and

Granite Peak assume the role of bookends: the nascent artistic potential embodied in one, The Touch of Silk, was hailed as “the birth of Australian drama”, and at the other end of her writing output comes the far more mature Granite Peak. In between, sits the agit-prop material, the product of a talented writer whose sense of injustice about social life propelled her into the CPA and New Theatre for a brief, but significant period.

120

  

*"%*14!8('60"+,',9%1/*" !,;/(.-+

After winning the Playwright’s Advisory Board competition in 1955, Summer of the

Seventeenth Doll has been recorded in the annals of Australian theatre as representing the birth of aesthetically accomplished ‘real’ Australian drama. What is usually overlooked is that Lawler’s play actually shared first prize with The Torrents by Oriel

Gray, who wrote for New Theatre while a member of the CPA from 1938 to 1950.1

In addition to writing for New Theatre she also wrote scripts once a week for three years for New Theatre’s radio plays on 2KY in the 1930s and 40s, a programme sponsored by “another face of the Communist Party”, Current Book Distributors.2 In the

1960s Gray worked on the popular television series Bellbird, for which she wrote scripts for ten years. What Andrew Milner aptly terms an “unacknowledged legislature” in reference to the history of Australian left-wing radical intellectuals in his 1988 essay3 has been gradually addressed over the last two decades. Contemporary historians such as Michelle Arrow and Connie Healy are carrying out the process of challenging hitherto universally held conceptions about the development of Australian theatre.4Jill

Lyons notes that Lawler himself was not so remiss as to disregard the work of the ‘little’

1 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged: Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last. 2 Oriel Gray, Exit Lef, 57. 3Andrew Milner, ‘Radical Intellectuals: an unacknowledged legislature?’, 259-84. 4 Connie Healy, Defiance. 121

theatres that paved the way for his own success: Ray Lawler has pointed out the absurdity of the belief that The Doll suddenly popped up out of nowhere:

Throughout the whole of the twentieth century, writers such as Louis Esson, , Betty Roland, Oriel Gray, George Landen Dann, Dymphna Cusack, Lynn Foster and Catherine Shepherd, to name a few, have been laying those stepping stones on the path from the little theatres to the professional box-office successes of 1956–57.5

This chapter will seek to redress the imbalance, and to demonstrate the influence of the CPA on New Theatre in relation to Gray’s plays. I will examine how closely her plays, especially her revues, conformed to party ideology throughout her association with both the New Theatre and the CPA in the 1930s and early 1940s, and also look at her post-New Theatre and CPA work in the late 1940s onwards to demonstrate the political concerns inherent in New Theatre decisions regarding play productions.

Gray’s autobiography Exit Left reveals some of the tensions between New Theatre writers and the CPA and provides a glimpse of the extent of party influence on her work and on New Theatre in general. A textual analysis of Gray’s output for New

Theatre in the 1940s, from her sombre dramas such as Had We But World Enough through to the comic musical revue Marx of Time, will demonstrate that the party exercised a measure of authority over New Theatre writers. Interviews with Gray and

New Theatre archives reveal more clearly the inter-relationship between the CPA and the New Theatre. Gray’s later work from the 1950s, such as The Torrents, Sky Without

5 Jill Lyons, ‘The Doll and the Umbrella’, Bulletin 78, no. 4056 (6 November 1957): 26. 122

Birds and Burst of Summer, are less concerned with the ‘positive hero’ and are therefore less tendentious. Burst of Summer was considered antithetical to party doctrine and therefore was the only one of Gray’s plays not to be produced by New

Theatre. Oriel Gray’s own memoirs and New Theatre production minutes of New

Theatre committee meetings where Gray’s plays were discussed are held in the State

Library of NSW archives. The records of these meetings demonstrate the tension between the need for freedom of expression of the writer, and the insistence of the

CPA on fidelity to party ideology and a dogmatic attitude towards literature.

Although the characters and their situations are less constrained in the plays written towards the end of Gray’s political involvement, the political subtexts are nevertheless overly contrived and make the works seem artificial or forced. This is clearly, particularly in the facile resolutions, a hangover of the obligatory optimism that characterises CPA-influenced drama. These later plays display (in their themes of alienation, racism, sexism and bigotry) a less politically strident or ideologically-driven social critique than those written at the outset of Gray’s involvement with New Theatre where the political requirements of the CPA sometimes overrode aesthetic concerns.

This chapter will demonstrate that the CPA wielded some influence on Gray’s literary development as a New Theatre writer. She was very young (a teenager) when she joined New Theatre in 1938, having no firm political affiliations and full of romantic notions about acting and theatre: her ardour was soon channelled into the CPA ideological framework to which New Theatre confined itself.

123

Born Oriel Bennett in Sydney 1920, she was influenced by her journalist father’s socialist ideals. Ben Bennett had political ambitions and in 1912 he achieved them briefly when he was elected to the House of Representatives for the New South Wales

Division of Werriwa. He was a member of the Labor Party but did not re-contest

Werriwa in the 1913 elections. Gray recalls her older sister Grayce, an aspiring actress who would become a staunchly loyal member of the CPA, saying that he “was too honest for Parliament”, but, when pressed for more information, Grayce admitted having heard the comment from others.6 According to Gray, she was told as a young woman that her father was also selected to go to the Soviet Union with the first

Australian delegation of trade unionists.7

Gray’s first experience in writing for the theatre was a play she wrote for a gala night at the Kursaal, an amateur theatre in Kent Street in Sydney in 1937, where her sister acted. It was at the Kursaal that she first heard of New Theatre when Noble Yeghi, a colleague at the theatre who was regarded as a “Bolshie” recommended it.8It was a

1937 New Theatre production at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music of Irwin Shaw’s

Bury the Dead, an expressionist anti-war drama about six soldiers killed in war and who refuse to be buried because they have been cheated of their lives and love, which propelled Gray towards New Theatre and the CPA. Of New Theatre’s production of

Bury the Dead, she recalls that “we had seen, if not a new heaven and a new earth, at least a New Theatre”.9 Her enthusiasm was encouraged by her father who informed

6 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 10. 7 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 14. 8 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 26. 9 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 4. 124

Oriel and her sister Grayce that New Theatre “have a little theatre somewhereThey put on an anti-Nazi play called Till the Day I Die. The German Consul tried to have it taken off”.10 Clifford Odets’s Till The Day I Die is set in Berlin in 1935 and tells of the fight against the Nazis by underground communists. Propagandist in style, it was written as an opener to another of Odets’s plays, Waiting For Lefty, and was a unique phenomenon on Broadway at the time.

Although it was the New Theatre that infused her with enthusiasm for playwriting, it was also an attractive young man in the cast who caught her eye. She says, “Not only was he dedicated to Art with a Message, he was much more available than any of my movie heroes”.11 Gray wrote the young man a letter in which she spoke of her enthusiasm for the type of plays New Theatre was producing, how she admired his performance and also mentioned her father’s long involvement in the “Labor

Movement” as well as of her playwriting ambitions. His reply, she notes “was probably a model of how he thought a member of the Moscow Arts Theatre would reply. I think he called me ‘comrade’ and gave me a statement about the aims of New

Theatre”.12

Undaunted, Oriel sought out the theatre, and one of her first jobs was as an usher. She then helped with a fund-raising rally for the Spanish civil war. Like others who had joined the CPA and New Theatre on the basis of anti-fascism, Gray experienced news

10 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 4. 11 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 5. 12 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 5. 125

of the Spanish civil war as the impetus towards political activity. She later wrote, “Spain was an awakening and a challenge to many people of my generation”.13 While at the

New Theatre she met and married one of the actors, John Gray, with whom she had a son. Both their lives revolved around New Theatre and the CPA. Yet despite sharing similar interests and political beliefs, their relationship was stormy, with Oriel commenting that John was rather a difficult man, given to introspection. However, they remained friends after they divorced and her subsequent children with John Hepworth, her sister’s husband whom Oriel later married, held John Gray in high esteem.

John Gray was highly regarded at New Theatre and, according to Oriel Gray, was rather more outspoken than Oriel about CPA interference regarding his acting, directing or choice of production. John Gray also enjoyed a commercial career in mainstream films and television. In order to avoid the impact on his commercial career of his association with New Theatre or the CPA, he adopted the stage name of Eric

Grayson for New Theatre performances.

Encouraged by her husband, Oriel Gray’s literary output with New Theatre began with a production of Marx of Time (1942),14 a comic musical revue, which remains unpublished: a copy exists in the Mitchell library archives in fragile typescript. Gray has the distinction, paradoxical though it is, given her exclusion from the canon of

13 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 33. 14 Fryer Library, Hanger Collection, University of Queensland, Call number HO691. A typescript is also held by New Theatre Records 1914-1990, MLMSS6244, Box 130. 126

Australian theatre historiography, of being the first “resident writer in Australian theatre”, which she claims is “another record for the left theatre”15.

Gray’s plays reveal the extent of the influence—at times direct—of the CPA on her writing for New Theatre. This is borne out in most of the early sketches and plays, in which political tendentiousness dominates, while others such as Lawson express the nationalist ethos of the CPA commensurate both with the nationalist ideology of

‘socialism in one country’ and the revived cultural ‘nationalism’ and patriotism of

Australia’s entry into World War Two upon the invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany.

*0( "&' ,9+ '+"., " !,6!*,(%","%,"*

Marx of Time, produced in Sydney in 1942, is a jumbled, yet at times witty, attempt to satirise the incompetence, cowardice and philistinism of the ‘powers that be.’ To date, no critical aesthetic evaluation of the revue exists, so the analysis that follows will attempt to demonstrate how the revue is commensurate with the Popular Front policy of the CPA at that point in time.

The Comintern’s Third Period introduced policies that politically characterised social democrats as Social Fascists. But as European fascism grew apace, so did the

Comintern’s political zig-zags in policies. The anti-fascist line of the Popular Front remained a major and constant animating factor in New Theatre and the CPA

15 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 105. 127

throughout the 1930s until the 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact. This event hit the party and New Theatre members like a thunderbolt, disorienting many and compelling them to resign from the CPA. Adherents to the policy of the Popular Front within the CPA as well as those on the periphery and other sympathisers of the CPA were also outraged. Gray recalls walking into New Theatre where news of the pact reverberated. Stunned, everyone there put it down to a “capitalist ploy” and refused to believe the veracity of the announcement. When no explanation was forthcoming from the Comintern or the CPA, some of the New Theatre crew tried to explain away the new Soviet policy as tactical manoeuvring by the Kremlin. A dilemma immediately presented itself to New Theatre as a result of this new policy: Odets's anti-Nazi play, which had offended the German Consul, was to be staged that night. Gray recalls her bewilderment at the time: “Out there in the theatre tonight we’ll be playing Till the Day I

Die!”.Victor Arnold, CPA member and New Theatre secretary (and subsequent head of the Actors Guild) responded that they would have to call a management committee meeting about it. Oriel’s husband’s response to what she considered an incomprehensible act of betrayal was a sharp rebuke: “For Christ’s sake, lovedo you think you know better than Stalin?”16 The nature of the relationship between the CPA and New Theatres unambiguous in this instance and, while many may have had reservations about the course the party was taking, it is patent that criticism of the party line was sternly repressed even within the confines of New Theatre itself.

Gray claims that no further references to either Hitler or fascism appeared in the pages of the official CPA organ The Tribune after the signing of the Soviet-German pact: the

16 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 48. 128

war was now declared an imperialist war and all anti-fascist rhetoric was abandoned.

However, articles denouncing fascism did appear in the Communist Review of October

1939 in an article by E.W. Campbell titled ‘We Must Defeat Fascism.’17 Another article about fascism is by J.B. Miles in the Communist Review of November 1939 in which he states that “fascism stirs up national hatreds for its own predatory ends, conducts the most ferocious pogroms against the Jews and enslaves small nations”.18 According to

Gray, New Theatre’s season of Till the Day I Die ended abruptly. New Theatre began staging anti-war plays instead (although few referred directly to World War Two) such as Angels of War, which was about women ambulance drivers in World War One.19

The decision, whoever made it, to end the season of Odets’s play has necessarily to be seen in light of the objectives of the CPA, which were those emanating from

Moscow. Staging the play corresponded with the ideological anti-fascist line of Popular

Frontism. Abandoning the play conformed to the shift in policy of the CPA, affecting not to notice the USSR’s participation in the annihilation of Poland, and thereby highlighting further the fact that artistic integrity was not the dominating principle in any situation. The New Theatre writers were not always certain of their purpose, given the rapidity with which the party line could change. Yet the war provided the opportunity for

New Theatre to stage Odets’s Golden Boy and Rocket to the Moon. But these Odets plays were not loyal enough to the party line, according to Gray, who claimed that

“some of the more rampant party members found them lacking in ‘direct political

17 E.W. Campbell, ‘We Must Defeat Fascism, Communist Review, vol. VI, no.10 (October, 1939): 577. 18J. B. Miles, ‘Socialism Brings Peace, Progress and Plenty’, Communist Review, vol. VI, no. 11 (November, 1939): 650 19 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 50. 129

action.’ I liked them for their emphasis on personal commitment and decision, although

I did not say so too loudly”.20

The party line soon changed again. No criticism was forthcoming from the Comintern or the CPA about the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, Poland or France almost before the ink had dried on the Soviet-German pact. The war was declared the ‘people’s war’ by the Kremlin only two years later, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

Once again, a new line and policy was issued from Moscow, CPA forces were mobilised and galvanised in support of the war, and New Theatre fell, once more, into lockstep. This is borne out by a letter, dated 15th September 1941, which came to the attention of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch (ASIO’s forerunner) from “D” in

Melbourne to Victor Arnold at Adelaide New Theatre about preparations for agit-prop plays:

(c) Re “Till the Day” Alterations are simple. References to Germany are brought up to date. Popular Front position in France (recall where Ernst welcomes news?) changed to Pledge of America and Britain to support S.U. Also call to action in present position. Well [sic] send you a script with other as soon as typed. Best of luck and keep up good work.21

Dusted off and revived as an anti-fascist play, Till the Day I Die is altered to reflect the

CPA’s new-found opposition to the Nazis. Gray joined the new push. Support, or rather comic propaganda, for the war underlies Gray’s attempt to satirise rations, shortages,

20 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 44. 21 ASIO files, A6122/XRI 415, Adelaide New Theatre League, June 1941-May 1955. 130

bureaucratic incompetence, parochialism, consumerism and myriad other issues which are referred to in Marx of Time as well as war-profiteering. No one escapes ridicule, not even the Four Hollywood Bolshies or Father Time himself who is presented as lascivious and complacent. The CPA, however, is sacrosanct, with not a derogatory comment or aside in reference to this bureaucratic, colonialist rump of the Comintern.

Stalin, who planned and organised the purges of 1936–37, also authorised the liquidation of the best generals in the Red Army. Consequently, when the Germans reneged on the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin found himself without experienced military leaders and the Germans were able to make rapid headway before they were gradually fought to a standstill by the Red Army, which was mobilised to defend the workers’ state—despite Stalin’s incompetence. It stands to reason that a man capable of authorising not only the purges, but of such gross miscalculations, theoretical bankruptcy, and of being delusional enough to believe that an intractable fascist regime would honour a pact, warrants satirical representation or ridicule. Chaplin did it with great success with The Great Dictator in which he satirised both Hitler and Mussolini. Although Chaplin did not include Stalin in his satire, he enjoyed the freedom to write and create as he chose without having to submit to political authority. The film, therefore, conveys a sense of artistic spontaneity without losing its sense of purpose—its anti-fascist and anti-war message—and it is lacking also in the self-censorship evident in many politically affiliated writers’ work. To treat the Soviet bureaucracy and its leaders with anything other than reverence, however, was anathema to the CPA, and any Australian playwright who attempted to depict them in other than heroic terms would not have had a lasting relationship with New

Theatre. Gray recalls that Kylie Tennant severed her association with both the CPA

131

and New Theatre after her skit on then CPA secretary Lance Sharkey in her novel Ride on Stranger made everyone “very upset”.22

This incident explains why there are virtually no plays, sketches, revues or comedies in the entire New Theatre archives where Stalin, the Kremlin or the CPA are depicted in a critical light, in the rare occasions they do feature in a play. The party as an entity, however, is evoked in these plays usually in the form of sententious rhetoric or in direct reference to the party as the unconquerable ally of the proletariat. Katerina Clark claims that a defining feature of socialist realist novels is their “parabolic structure” and she argues that the “rhetorical component”23 is significant to this structure and style.

Such style is evident in many of the New Theatre writers’ more serious plays.

Although it is difficult to establish whether the CPA demanded writers extol the virtues of the CPA or the Moscow bureaucracy in the manner of their Moscow counterparts with their saccharine and sentimental depictions of officials and bureaucrats, it is clear that criticism of the CPA, even if alluded to in a New Theatre play, was impermissible and, as such, reinforces this thesis’s contention that the CPA had some influence on the artistic development of New Theatre. Gray’s Marx of Time is weakened by the self- censorship as a result. The play consists of two acts, with five scenes in the first and four in the second. The usual suspects are paraded for ridicule as thinly disguised caricatures: Mr Ku Klux Klameron, General Flamey, Mr Robert Benzies, Hitler,

22 Transcript of interview with Oriel Gray by Barbara Ann Harding at Gray’s home in West Heidelberg, Melbourne, Sept 3,1995, 8. Transcript provided to me by Gray’s son Nicholas Hepworth. 23 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism with Shores: The Conventions for the Positive Hero’, 33. 132

Mussolini, Tojo and Pooh Bah Goering, as well as mindless bureaucrats and wealthy parasitic ladies of leisure or memsahibs. Many of the songs accompanying the scenes are set to popular tunes.

The third scene is an NES Post, featuring an ARP Warden, Rob Benzies, Mr Ku Klux

Klameron, General Flamey and a bevy of young beauties. Rations, war profiteering, cowardice and stupidity feature prominently here with some very funny exchanges between the three antagonists and the hapless Warden. The Women’s Auxiliary departs, to the Warden’s dismay, as general Flamey enters, declaring they’ll return

“When they arm the Ladies Auxiliary”. Flamey, Benzies and Klameron are there to inspect the equipment, which the Warden produces.

Warden: (banging it out) One steel helmet, one respirator, one map of district 42

Flamey: A very fine clear one, too.

Warden: Yes, general, but we’re district 59. A torch case with no batteries.

Asked why he’s not in the army, the Warden answers that he works in an aircraft factory, to which Flamey responds with stereotypical military bombast and ignorance:

Flamey: Aircraft! What do we want with aircraft? Mr Churchill said that they’d defend London to the last iron pike. Are we to play the coward? Never. We can defend Australia to the last boomerang and nullah-nullah.

The parody and satire are sharp if not subtle:

133

Benzies: Let me investigate this. You have one steel helmet, one map, one respirator, etc. And I see only one warden.

Warden: But we need more wardens.

Benzies: If you had more wardens you couldn’t equip them.

Warden: But give us more equip

Benzies: For one warden only? Are you trying to defraud the state?

Klux: Deliberate sabotage, Rob. That man’s a Red!24

The scene entitled ‘More on Evacuation’ features Four Hollywood Bolshies. We’re

Bolsheviks from Hollywood is set to the tune of There’s Another Angel Playing in the

Sky and satirises Hollywood and its portrayals of the ‘Red’ menace, a depiction that lost credibility once Russia entered the war as an ally of the British and Americans. In another scene, set in a radio station, a bored and cynical young man, Mr Swayne, works as announcer and makes no attempt to conceal his disdain for the products he is supposed to be promoting, including that of Hollywood ‘culture’:

Swayne: For Movie fansa mystery thriller “One Dreadful Night”— my sentiments exactly. Or if you prefer a “Yank in the Red Air Force,” I can’t say that I admire your taste. This stars Mr. Cyclone Flower, who goes to Moscow and does incredible things to the Germans from amazing distances. He is only prevented from taking Berlin single handed by the thought that it wouldn’t be “School” spirit to show up the rest of the Red Air Force. He and Betsy Gragall put up a great fight to win the award for the worst performance of the year. Don’t see it.25

24 Hanger Collection HO692, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. The manuscript is not paginated. 25 Hanger Collection HO692, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. 134

Act Two has a scene called ‘Three Drips’, a parody of the Water Board. The Directors are Cloudo, Drippo and Hailo, an obvious allusion to the Marx Brothers, who also had a radio show called Marx of Time. The bungling bureaucrats face a water shortage and their inventive solution is to ration water and build a dam where it does not rain: a ruse to foil nature which always seems to pour rain where it is least needed. The satire here, although limited in its deliberately bumbling comic mode, manages to transcend the topicality of the other scenes to resonate with contemporary audiences, as water management in Australia, six decades later, remains remarkably similar in its bureaucratic ineptitude. The revue continues in a series of mishaps and innuendos with the Russians towards the end, rescuing Father Time from the Tripartite Alliance of

German, Italian and Japanese fascism in the form of Pooh Bah Goering, Hitler,

Mussolini and Tojo. The play comes to a close with the full cast singing ‘You must be a full-time, war-time worker’:

So be a full time war-time worker,

And start making the most of your time,

You’ve got to join the workers chorus and sing,

Get into the swing

Till victory bells ring,

For those who use this war for profit,

There’ll be a doleful ding-dong chime,

So be a full-time war-time worker

And start making the most of your time.

Stop hesitating,

Start making the most of your time,

135

Our show is ending,

Start making the most of your time.

This is the finish,

Start making the most of your time!26

All the vaudeville conventions were utilised in Marx of Time, such as chorus girls and slapstick humour along with song and parody, but it is, above all, a political satire. New

Theatre’s promotion of the revue made grand claims, drawing on satire’s antecedents in ancient Greece and Rome where “it was a weapon in the hands of the dramatist to direct attention at the anomalies in their civilisation, and played a potent part as factor in impending change”. Impressing upon the reader this historical analogy, they explain how it is made cogent by New Theatre:

That is our aim in employing this form. Our aim, as always, is not mere entertainment, but the arousing of our audiences to action. We take the musical comedy and imbue it with a new content, so that when your laughter dies away there is left a deep-rooted determination to add your effort to secure change.27

If all that art requires to fulfill its supposed sociological and utilitarian function is the filling up of established forms with the ‘correct’ content, then a great swathe of theatre throughout history, from Aeschylus to Shakespeare, would be relegated to the scrapheap.

26 Hanger Collection, HO692, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. 27 Minutes of General and Management committee meetings 1951, New Theatre Records MLMSS 6244, Box 149. 136

Does Marx of Time live up to its historic mission? Not quite, although the message is explicit enough. Its topicality at the time notwithstanding, the revue lacks the visceral wit and sardonic humour of I’d Rather be Left28, upon which Gray modelled Marx of

Time. Gray herself acknowledges the limitations of her revue. One of New Theatre’s most financially and critically successful comedy revues, I’d Rather be Left also remains unpublished. It was a collaborative effort between two CPA and New Theatre members John Reed and Alan Crawford, with James McAuley credited with writing most of the lyrics. New Theatre holds a copy of the revue’s lyrics, but the pianist’s copy of the entire revue script is in the James McAuley files, which remain uncatalogued.

Claiming to love and to write comedy “reasonably well”, she also professes to admire satire but confesses to “flinch” from it because it cuts too close to the bone, adding that lyrics from Marx of Time “sounded like infant school stuff compared to James

McAuley’s in his radical days”.29This is a laudably frank admission and one she alludes to on the imposition of optimism as a requirement of most New Theatre plays, considered essential for animating the proletarian and to counter ‘petty-bourgeois’ pessimism. She says:

Satire can be constructive if it leads to change. In the short term, it must be destructive and vitriolic. Writing an optimistic satirical revue is like trying to make a good whisky sour with strawberry syrup. But our audiences loved them. It might have been better for us if we had not had so much uncritical approval.30

28 Location of script is James MacAuley papers in the Mitchell Library NSW, SB Bay 61, ML147/97, Box 20. 29 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 105. 30 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 105. 137

Gray is correct in her assessment of Marx of Time. The play is at times incoherent, with the scenes seeming to have no organic relationship. The revue attempts too many things: it seeks to reinforce the party line through propaganda for a patriotic war effort, as well as to satirise incompetence at the official level, coupled with the infantile depictions of the fascists. In the absence of complete artistic freedom of expression, the satire fires in all directions, but misses its multiple targets. The fact that Marx of

Time presents the fascists as the only enemies is evidence of the shift in policy in the

CPA. This may be considered inconsequential in the final analysis, but it mars the spontaneous and imaginative artistic representation of the entire political establishment by circumscribing criticism of a section of it to which the artist is politically and ideologically aligned. A significant aspect of her inability to write more compelling satire is the fact that the Comintern, and correspondingly the CPA, never elaborated a thorough theoretical appraisal of fascism and its rise to power: doing so would have compelled them to address their own collaboration with them after denouncing them for years. What they did was resort to simplistic political epithets and caricatures, thereby limiting a more incisive appraisal of fascism, its methods, the psychology of its proponents and many other salient facts. The shallow and simplistic political evaluation of fascism by the Comintern and the CPA limits the insight that might have led to much more incisive humour.

Attempting to reinforce the party line by satirising fascism—to which the party was ostensibly opposed—was artistically feasible under the circumstances. But then, in an abrupt volte face, Stalin formed an ‘unbreakable’ alliance with Nazism in 1939, causing huge confusion among the communist faithful for two full years, during which Russia faithfully supplied the Nazi war-machine with war material from steel to oil. And it was

138

not Stalin who broke the pact, but Hitler: overnight the party faithful had to repudiate their former ally after the Nazi attack of June 1941. Such dramatic flip-flops would sorely test the talents of the most flexible writer. An incisive attack on these political backflips could only emerge from a rejection of the prevalent political ideologies—

Stalinism, Nazism and capitalism—to expose the extent of the hypocrisy, stupidity, ignorance and war-mongering of their representatives. Naturally, war-mongers are absent from Marx of Time because that would contradict the CPA’s political imperatives of support for the war at that point in time, adding yet another ideological hurdle for writers. The CPA never mounted an offensive against the dictates of the

Kremlin, and the party ideology filters down to its cultural organisations such as New

Theatre, where they are given artistic, but limited expression. Marx of Time is too light- hearted and politically self-censored to achieve the inherent subversiveness of truly critical, visceral satire. Its artistic depictions are, therefore, informed by crude, one- dimensional political characterisation.

The same ideological premise, according to Gray, inhibits her other revue, Let’s Be

Offensive, produced by Sydney New Theatre in 1943. It is based on Australian General

Gordon Bennett’s apparent abandonment of his troops when he escaped from their

Japanese captors in Malaya during World War Two: Gray admits she sought to ridicule

Bennett because “To us on the left, generals were automatically suspect unless they were Russian generals”.31 One very effective section is entitled ‘On Evacuation’, a duologue which satirises the ‘white man’s burden’ of the colonials who are incensed by the local population’s distinct lack of appreciation for their efforts. Two memsahibs, Iris

31 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 94. 139

and Elsie, in a colonial outpost identified as Sydney, dressed in light tropical frocks and sipping long drinks, are recalling their contributions to empire building. The dialogue flows easily in the form of light verse, and there is a pleasant rhyme and rhythm throughout the whole scene:

Iris: So here we sit in Sydneya beastly sort of place.

Elsie: Though the Carlton lounge is not too bad, you know.

Iris: We’re penned up in a ghastly little nine room Vaucluse flat

And my daily help votes Labourand says so.

Elsie: Who got the empiah where it is today?

Both: We memsahibs, of course.

Iris: Who doesn’t trust the Reds, no matter what the papers say?

Both: We memsahibs, of course.

Elsie: Who rides Centennial Park each day correctly dressed and horsed?

Iris: Who kept the Japs off the front page the week they got divorced?

Both: And who will not degrade themselves to work until they’re forced?

Both: We memsahibs, of course.32

According to Gray, an allusion to Bennett’s desertion evoked the most laughter from audiences, when one of the memsahibs coyly asks “Who met a famous general also getting out that way? We memsahibs, of course”.33Lets Be Offensive’s basic premise is the Soviet demands at the time for the Western allies to open a second front. The CPA,

32 New Theatre Records 1914-1990, MLMSS6244, Box 130. 33 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 94. 140

Gray recalls, “kept a strict eye on our morals” and was suspicious of light-hearted political satire. She was questioned by Wally Clayton who headed the Control

Commission when applying for a job it was thought she suited.34 The Control

Commission was established in 1927 for the purpose of ensuring political integrity, to investigate those suspected of political heresy, sabotage or spying, and expelling those found guilty. In the 1930s and under the leadership of Herbert Moore, also known as

Harry Wicks, the Control Commission was strengthened and utilised to stop dissent.35Clayton queried her about the “blue material” in her revues which he said were “unsuitable to a left-wing theatre”.36 A 1930 internal party circular from the Central

Committee to all District secretaries, District committees and District Control

Commission outlines the functions of the Control Commission which includes “to enforce Party discipline on individual members who do not carry out their party duties”.

Light-hearted political satire and “blue” jokes were obviously considered issues of political rather than artistic significance. Gray remarks that the CPA’s attitude to morality, as to everything else, was determined by the Soviet bureaucracy: “The turnabout in Soviet morality had spread throughout the world’s communist parties. Free

34 ASIO files document in National Archives of Australia, Communist Party of Australia Central Executive Committee reports (1) General; (2) Agrarian Department; (3) Fraternal Organisations; (4) Fascism, Series number A8911, Control Symbol 41, contents date range 1928-1933, Open status, Canberra, Barcode 821411. Paragraph 4 of the document explains the role of the Control Commission in fraternal and labour organisations in which CPA members held positions of authority: “The Control Commission must, at regular intervals, examine the books, accounts, etc of the District Committee, and of all Party members holding responsible positions involving the handling of finances in labor and fraternal organisations, and report on same to District Committee”. New Theatre, as a fraction of the CPA, was possibly included as only party members were able to hold positions of authority, such as in the management and production committees in New Theatre, and were therefore accountable to a higher party body. 35 David Lovell and Kevin Windle, ‘Moscow takes Command: 1929-1937’, Document 3, Our Unswerving Loyalty-A Documentary Survey of Relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow 1920-1940, http://epress.anu.edu.au/oul/mobile_devices/ch03.html, (accessed 11January, 2011). 36 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 136. 141

love and abortion were out. Marriage and motherhood were in”.37 The progressive social policies relating to marriage, divorce, child-care and abortion implemented in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution were reversed in the early 1940s. As moral guardians of the party and New Theatre members, interference by the CPA at higher levels was usually reserved for extreme cases but was ruthlessly imposed.38 Influence on writers whose work was to “arouse the audience” to action were just as invasive, prescriptive and artistically stultifying. The mere suggestion of immorality, subject to the interpretation of Moscow adopted by the CPA, was justification for rejecting a potential candidate for membership of the CPA. Gray cites the example of a couple of New

Theatre set designers who clashed with John “Jack” Fegan.39 The exchange of words escalated into a physical altercation, whereupon, according to Gray, the designers denounced the theatre “as a stifler of creative talent”, and they “swept out, hand in hand”. Following this incident, Gray claims that “a homily on the correctness of the

Communist Party in refusing admission to deviates” was delivered.40 It is a fair assumption, therefore, that issues of morality depicted in New Theatre plays were subject to the same political scrutiny and vetted to ensure they corresponded with the party line. This could be problematic as Soviet policies varied from one day to the next, according to political expediency and without much discussion. A change in policy was

37Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 133. 38 As Good As A Yarn With You: Correspondence between Flora Eldershaw, Marjorie Barnard, Eleanor Dark, Jean Devanny, Miles Franklin and Katharine Susannah Prichard between 1930 and 1957, Carole Ferrier, ed., (Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 67. Devanny writes about her expulsion on ‘moral grounds’ from the CPA in 1941 after a decade of membership, after unfounded rumours of her supposed promiscuity with party members were brought to the attention of the CPA leadership. The hypocrisy behind her expulsion is breathtaking considering her longstanding relationship with ‘leader’ who is believed to have been the very married J.B. Miles, head of the CPA, at the time. 39 Fegan became a well known television and film actor throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He starred in police dramas such as Homicide, The Link Men and Division 4. Movie credits include The Overlanders (1946) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). 40 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 42. 142

usually followed by the rapid revision of Soviet history in all published materials and documents. This would be sprung upon an unsuspecting membership who invariably found themselves on the wrong side of the party line and subjected to political reprimands, a process George Orwell aptly characterised in his novel 1984.41 In an interview with Giulia Giuffre, Gray recalls how the CPA, in its isolation, sought to maintain the Moscow party line in all instances, not always successfully:

Apparently, there had been a period when free love and abortion and all that was OK in the Soviet Union, but by the time all the Party journals got to us, we found we were doing all the wrong things, so we had to change in one hell of a big hurry, and then by the time the next Party journal came, we were likely to be wrong again.42

The CPA’s control over New Theatre productions was also bound up with their suspicions about the supposedly inherent bohemianism of artists, who are apparently less amenable to authority and therefore required stricter ideological vigilance by the party. “An open schism” erupted between the CPA and New Theatre when the CPA removed New Theatre secretary Pat Flower from her position. It was a decision that

Gray recalls was made by someone in the party who was conversant in political theory but knew nothing about the theatre.43

Gray intimates that the New Theatre’s prescriptive methods circumscribed her own writing: “The CPA looked on us as bohemian. We were a Party front. No doubt about it”

41 George Orwell, Animal Farm/1984 (Orlando: Harcourt, 2003). 42 Giulia Giuffre, A Writing Life, 173. 43 Gray interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 143

and adding “you were supposed to be one with the proletariat. The unions were our basic audience and they were very conventional. Some people have said what stopped me being a good writer was my devotion to the Theatre and the Party. I was too narrow”.44 Gray attempted to overcome the didacticism and conservatism expected of

New Theatre writers, with varying degrees of success, as the next chapter will demonstrate.

44 Michelle Rayner interviews Oriel Gray on Verbatim, ABC Radio National, 13 December 2003. 144

  

*"% *14 ."'  ,"* !"';(/*+  ,"('%"+, ,!(+ ' .*,*() '

While most of Gray’s plays in the 1940s dealt with war and anti-fascism, the nationalist nostrums of the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in a single country’ were finding expression in the CPA in the form of a reinforcement of nationalist mythology. The

Eureka Stockade was invoked as a symbol of resistance synonymous with anti- establishment sentiments. In this context Henry Lawson and his stories of union men, struggles against oppression and the harsh Australian landscape were celebrated within the CPA as the national larrikin archetypes, the Australian working class. Gray’s plays Lawson and Milestones typify the nationalist ethos of the CPA while Sur le Pont attempts to draw on cinematic influences as well as bearing slight resemblance to the work of playwright Lillian Hellman in its theme of anti-fascist resistance.

/+('48 *("9%

By 1943, all New Theatre groups were suspended due to a lack of manpower as many men had enlisted in the war. Sydney and Melbourne were the exceptions, with both working with reduced numbers as a result of members entering the services in support

145

of the war.1 Official tolerance towards left-wing organisations in this period was a result of the USSR’s involvement in the war, and this was reflected in the extent of praise given to New Theatre by critics of mainstream newspapers.2 The ‘Red Menace’ had become the ‘heroic Red Army’ and Gray’s plays assume a more dourly serious tone during this period, lacking the sparkle and wit evident in the revues.

Intended as entertainment for a New Theatre fraternal organisation—Gray does not provide a name for this organisation—Lawson evolved into a play as Gray read more of Lawson’s work, with which she had been unfamiliar. However, Jerome Levy, who directed many of Gray’s plays during the 1940s and Sky Without Birds in 1952, claims that the idea for Lawson originated with him and evolved from there.3 Gray’s husband

John Gray directed, and although the play was meant for a workshop night it went on in

1943 as stand-in for a major production. Its success led to many more productions in

Sydney and Melbourne where it was produced by Hilda Esson, wife of Pioneers

1 The New Theatre was not the only theatre affected this way during the war years. Doris Fitton, founder of the Independent Theatre (1939-1977), which also began as an amateur theatre, recalls in her autobiography how the Independent experienced a shortage of ‘manpower’ but after two years into the war they had enough contacts to establish which actors were still available for casting in Sydney. Doris Fitton, Not Without Dust and Heat (Sydney, NSW: Harper & Row, 198), 50.The productions by the Independent in the 1930s and 1940s stand in stark contrast to those of New Theatre: nothing by Odets, Maltz or Shaw, but plays by Noel Coward, Thorton Wilder, Oscar Wilde and even a fantasy play by Australian poet Hugh McRae called The Ship of Heaven which Fitton claims was the most ‘unusual’ play produced by the Independent. Their patrons’ names were almost all prefixed with ‘Sir’ or ‘Lady’ and their audiences comprised the wealthier strata of Sydney. Ironically, the New Theatre in Sydney outlived the Independent as a theatre company. 2 The New Years 1932—, 11. 3 My interview with Jerome Levy at his home in Centennial Park, Sydney on 9 October 2008. 146

playwright Louis Esson. In Melbourne it was staged with Esson’s The Drovers, a source of pride for Oriel.4

Lawson is one of the more critically successful of Gray’s plays, being subsequently produced many times by different producers with different directors, actors and stage designers. It was a play popular with war-time audiences, in particular with American soldiers. It introduced many entirely new audiences to New Theatre and critics enthused that Lawson presented “real and accessible Australian characters”.5 Another critic wrote that “scores of people had to be turned away. Everyone should make a special point of seeing this play; it is one of the most important in our Australian history”.6

The politically conciliatory atmosphere at the time, though it proved short-lived, saw

Lawson enjoy a review in the Sydney Morning Herald where the high standard of the production was acclaimed, and one of the actors, Stanley Polonski, was praised in his role as Lawson. The successful role of Mrs Spicer subsequently won actress Jean Blue the part of the pioneer wife in Harry Watt’s film The Overlanders.7

4 Oriel Gray, Foreword, Lawson (Montmorency, Victoria: Yackandandah Playscripts, 1989), np. This is the revised 1955 version. 5 Barbara Ann Harding, The Torrents (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press in Association with the State Theatre Company of South Australia, 1996). xi. 6 Cited in The Torrents, xi from Progress, 4/10/1943. 7 Oriel Gray, Lawson, Foreword. 147

The idea for the play is one Gray claims to have been considering for a while: that of dramatising two of Lawson’s stories, spoken by their author and linked by his own narration. Once she began writing, Gray recalls, “the stories took control and the

‘entertainment’ began to look like a play”.8 The choice of Henry Lawson as subject matter by Gray is not surprising. Recognised as a nationalist and something of a socialist, Lawson was lauded as epitomising the quintessential Australian spirit of

“mateship” and was praised for capturing the sentiments of egalitarianism through his depictions of Australian life in the bush, the mines and early Australian unionism. All of these themes were dear to the CPA and were adopted by New Theatre. Nationalism became a more prominent feature in most communist parties internationally where the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ was adopted. In the USSR, there was a revival of national folklore and a rejection of modernism and experimentation in most spheres of art. In Australia this tendency was manifested in the bush myths and a culture of uncompromising anti-intellectualism became apparent, particularly within the CPA where any expression of introspection or individual angst—derided as ‘subjectivism’— was considered pretentious and an adaptation to ‘petty bourgeois’ ideology and therefore antithetical to the needs of the proletariat.9

The CPA’s awe for Lawson’s realism is expressed in the Communist Review of 1943 by Katharine Susannah Prichard in an article entitled The ‘Anti-Capitalist Core of

8 Oriel Gray, Lawson, Foreword. 9 Jack Beasley explains this outlook: “The outstanding characteristic of our literature from the time of its founding has been its militant, democratic outlook. All our great writers, Lawson, Furphy, Franklin, Gilmore, O’Dowd, ‘Steele Rudd’, of the brave days towards the end of the last, and the beginning of the new century were rebels. Australia’s nationhood was being expressed in an Australian culture, and this culture aggressively took up the cause of the worker, just being formed into a class”. Jack Beasley, Journal of an Era—Notes from the Red Letter Days (Earlwood, NSW: Wedgetail Press, 1988), 46. 148

Australian Literature’. Prichard wrote that “Lawson, I think, laid the foundation of an

Australian literature that was to be based on realism, knowledge of our own people and country, and a desire for social progress”.10

The aesthetic merits of Lawson’s work notwithstanding, the CPA’s prescription for

Australian “realism” was transformed into a theoretical dogma pursued aggressively in the pages of the Communist Review and Tribune with diatribes against modernism and their Australian representatives, the Angry Penguins.11 Gray explains the nationalist sentiments underlying Lawson:

While I think that Internationalism should be the overwhelming aim and direction for the human race as a whole, there are times when Nationalism is important and even essential. My first full length play Lawson was written when Australians were rediscovering the uniqueness of this country, faced with Japanese aggressionNationalism can be a horrible destructive forcea

10 ‘The Anti-Capitalist Core of Australian Literature’, Communist Review (August, 1943): 106-7. 11 Humphrey McQueen provides a comprehensive analysis of the competing artistic tendencies and their ideological and political persuasions in the 30s and 40s. He posits the disputes between conservatives, right-wingers such as Lionel Lindsay, and the official response to modernism with CPA attitudes, which in this period coincide. He says “Because the Communist Party’s theory and practices were supposed to be involved with all aspects of the nexus between people, nature, science and art, it is not surprising that the Party became a major contributor to a new round of debates over Modernism in the 1940s. Indeed, its views can be taken as pivotal since one of its members, Bernard Smith, published the most detailed and coherent statement, Place, Taste and Tradition (1945); and because its social realism became the whipping post for the Contemporary Art Society whose spokespeople were John Reed and Albert Tucker. In the later 1940s and after, the Party acted as a sheet anchor for the Studio of Realist Artists’ opposition to Abstract Expressionism. The Communist Party’s importance in the art world did not depend on the artists who were Party members; there was no antipodean Picasso, Siqueiros or Leger. The Party’s ability to influence the course of art depended primarily on its anti-fascism”. The Black Swan of Trespass: The Emergence of Modernist Painting in Australia to 1944 (Sydney, NSW: Alternative Publishing Cooperative Limited, 1979), 67. 149

national dream and conscience is important and a country that loses its legends loses its soul.12

Both Prichard and Gray invoke in glowing terms the nationalism of the 1890s, omitting the unpleasant fact that the nascent Australian bourgeoisie at the time used nationalism to counter the influence of Marxism among the bourgeoning and increasingly militant working class. The bushman and larrikin, anti-authoritarian, egalitarian individuals such as and Peter Lalor of the Eureka Stockade, were cultivated as characteristic of an Australian national identity. But this was an identity which, even in the late nineteenth century, had been rendered obsolete by a growth of urbanisation. The CPA was sadly out of date, a fact that shows how aesthetically out of touch the party in Australia was. Sociologist Judith Kapferer points out that these characteristics were “symbolic types” that do not “exist and have never existed in pristine reality”.13 These ‘symbols’ were also utilised to foment xenophobia against

Asians (the Yellow Peril), the ‘Hun’, Kanakas and others and to foster a sense of national identity and patriotic duty as a means of inducing and mobilising young men to fight. Artistic renditions of such themes appear to be embarrassingly mechanical and contrived.

Artistic truth is difficult to achieve when it is based on historical falsification, and reviving Lawson not as an aesthetic concern, but for raising political and social

12 Oriel Gray, Playing With Ideas, Susan Pfisterer and Carolyn Pickett eds., (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1999), 173-174. 13 Judith Kapferer, Being All Equal: Identity, Difference and Australian Cultural Practice (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 41.

150

awareness, seems more like social mission than an artistic undertaking. A basic tenet of the CPA was nationalism (a corollary of the theory of socialism in one country) and the party upheld the nationalist ethos bound up with prevalent conceptions about

Australia’s egalitarian and democratic ideals and its political and cultural development.

These nationalist ideals find expression in some of the New Theatre plays such as

Lawson. Lawson’s popular success for New Theatre can be attributed to the prevalent nationalism during World War Two, from which it looked back to the legendary exploits and heroic travails of the radical 1890s. Gray acknowledges this, noting that a strong syndicalism is an Australian characteristic, and one exploited all the more during the war years.14

Miles Franklin’s apt observation that a defining characteristic of Australian theatre was its “chronic incipience” has some significance in relation to New Theatre and Gray’s work in particular.15 Leslie Rees interprets this as “always having to go back to the barrier for a fresh start” and to a certain extent this is true. A more appropriate interpretation, perhaps, is that the “fresh start” for New Theatre writers in this period remained entrenched in the realism of the nineteenth century. That is not to say that

Gray does not achieve a measure of success in her poetic rendering of Lawson’s stories and poems: the problem is that they express a whimsical longing for a mythical past that by 1943, with the altered demographic resulting from urbanisation and from the entry of women into the work-force, is largely anachronistic. The play is weighed down with sentiments and ideals to which it cannot give life. Lawson aspires to a

14 Oriel Gray, Interview with Michelle Arrow at Gray’s home in Heidelberg, Victoria, 2 August 1995. Unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 15 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 128. 151

sociological function rather than an artistic one and therein lay its weaknesses as a dramatic form. Nevertheless, the critics lauded Lawson and one in particular offered

Gray advice: “She did advise me”, Gray recalls, “to broaden my political spectrum if I was to fulfill the promise I showed as a writer”.16

The Sydney New Theatre production of Lawson in 1943 differs from that produced by the Melbourne New Theatre in later years after Gray re-wrote it.17 The early version consists of two acts and five scenes. Its episodic structure and original conception elicited praise in a Sydney Morning Herald review, where the play was commended as

“a very entertaining and dramatic experiment with its well-selected material and craftsmanship”.18 In the Campbell Howard Index of Australian Plays, however, Colin

Kenny comments that the play “has some worth but in a very limited way”, adding that the embodiment of Lawson in his female characters is too “sententious” and

“sentimental”.19

The original script20 has Lawson appear in scenes in which he essentially functions almost as chorus or continuum to introduce scenarios in which he then embodies characters from his stories. As in all Gray’s early plays, stage directions and settings are minimal. The play opens with an introduction from Professor Emile Saillens’s preface to the 1909 Paris edition of Lawson, 1909. At the conclusion of the speech, the

16 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 110. 17 Oriel Gray, Lawson, Foreword. 18 Gray, Exit Left, 19. 19 Colin Kenny, The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920–1955, 157. 20 New Theatre Records 1914–1990, MLMSS6244, Box 87. There is the published version and the one held in the New Theatre archives. 152

lights go down to an arrangement of Waltzing Matilda as the curtains run back to reveal a campfire downstage where two men, Wilson and Macquarie, sit quietly smoking. A rough boundary fence runs behind them and disappears into darkness and as the music fades an undertone of night bush noises is heard with the soft whining of a dog nearby.

Lawson emerges quietly and warily from the shadows, carrying a swag and his coat slung over his shoulder. His stealthy approach is commented on by Macquarie:

Macquarie: You don’t make much noise, d’you? Came up like a ghost.

Lawson: (with a half laugh) I’m as empty as one.21

A rapport between the three men is quietly but quickly established, and in his abstracted reminiscing, Lawson recites a stanza of poetry before the two bemused men. The scene introduces the characters from his stories such as Past Carin’ and

Water them Geraniums22 as the others fade into darkness. This method is utilised throughout the play.

There is a tendency to melodrama, such as in the scene centred on young Arvie

Aspinall who works long hours as a factory worker, and lives with his mother. He has

21 New Theatre Records 1914-1990, MLMSS 6244, Box 87. 22 Transcript of an interview with Barbara Ann Harding, 3 September 1995, 4. Interview conducted at Gray’s home in West Heidelberg. The transcript was provided to me by Nicholas Hepworth, Gray’s son.

153

fallen ill and his distressed mother, who has already lost a husband, pleads with him to stay in bed and not go to work. Railing at the injustice of class society, she yells indignantly to Mother Brock, the brothel keeper who has come to visit Arvie: “I scrub floors and I go out washing and I bring my children up in slums and dirt and crime! I’ve been a decent woman all my life.and look at melook at me!” Having reluctantly set the alarm for Arvie, she is horrified when it rings unexpectedly and Arvie does not wake. Realising he is dead, she flings herself, arms outstretched, on the bed. The light fades and Lawson appears with Macquarie and Wilson around the fire and intones:

“That’s what I mean about Socialism having to worksomeday”23

The nationalism implicit in the work is reinforced at the end of the play when

Macquarie, Wilson and Lawson part company. Lawson sits in silence for a while, and then, as if summing up, says simply, “Australia”. He rises, and walking to the fence, repeats with tenderness “Australia” before reciting a stanza of his 1905 poem Waratah and Wattle. Gray explains and justifies the simplistic and straightforward portrayal of

Lawson for New Theatre: “ in 1943 everything was very single minded so it was easy to end it as I did on a very heroic note”.24

The re-written version (no date can be found for this later version, but was revised during the Cold War according to Gray) has a London embankment on one side of the stage and a campfire in the Australian bush on the other. Incorporating several of

Lawson’s stories much as in the original version in the rewriting was an attempt to “get

23 New Theatre Records 1914-1990, MLMSS 6244, Box 87. 24 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding, 4. 154

to the character of Lawson himself, to explore Lawson as person, his weaknesses and the fact that he didthat he still had this wonderful feeling for the people and the country”.25

The melodrama and sentimentality of the Arvie Aspinall scene has been replaced with the more gritty realism of ‘Jones’ Alley’ and some added scenes such as ‘Dead Dingo’ and ‘Steelman and Smith.’ Scenes shift between the London embankment and the

Australian bush, and the final scene is utterly devoid of the nationalism of the earlier version. The scene has a dialogue between an English policeman (referred to as the

Bobby) and Lawson:

Lawson: but I did pity haggard womenwrote for them with all my heart.

Bobby: I’m sure you have, sir. And you’ll find that you’ve got more friends than you knew you had, once you’re home again.

Lawson: Once I’m home again. If ever you come to Australia, constable, ask for me.

Bobby: I’ll do that sir. I’ll write it in my notebook. “Australia”—and what name?

Lawson: Henry Lawson, Australia. I—think that will always find me. Yes. “Henry Lawson, Australia” That’ll find me.

A brief snatch of Waltzing Matilda and the lights fade out.26

25 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding, 4. 26 Oriel Gray, Lawson, 46. 155

Gray seems to have loosened the shackles of the nationalism enforced by the CPA and has allowed herself a certain freedom of movement between characters and scenes. Lawson is not merely a symbol here, but a man with contradictory traits and characteristics.

"%+,('+,,"('%"+&'*() '

Milestones27 was written in 1944 and is a very short one act play. A glum didacticism permeates it, rendering it incapable of rising to anything more than a historical overview of the history of the Australian proletariat. The national co-operation that the

CPA enjoyed at this time did not encourage aggressively communist agit-prop material, but New Theatre nevertheless needed “outside shows” that had more to say than revue sketches, so Gray devised Milestones as a portable play. The music would be played on a portable radiogram, a bare stage would be lit in a few spots and there would be a “small cast of historically representative characters that included the almost obligatory convict woman”.28

Seated in a cemetery, a nameless girl enjoys the quiet and solitude, free of war propaganda, and muses “No war posters—no conscription notices—I’m so tired of this talk of war. I envy you who lie here—your life was peaceful and your sleep is quiet”.

She reads a tombstone “In memory of Mary Sutherland, died 1801, aged 34 years” and asks “What would your memories be if you could speak to me?” Her musing is abruptly cut short when out of the darkness Mary Sutherland, in period dress, appears, saying

27 Oriel Gray, Milestones, Hanger Collection HO692, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. 28 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 112. 156

“My memories? I remember an English courtroom—I remember the judge’s gavel as he peered at me and gave me sentence”29 Mary, who is just the first of the dead to return to life in this boldly-conceived play, has been charged with forming illegal organisations—trade unions.

The play does not have dialogue typical of drama with action and plot, but deploys political rhetoric to convey the message of proletarian solidarity and syndicalism: “For surely it is the right of all men to unite for the common good—to unite against the miserable lives that are the lot of all who labour”.30 The Girl’s dialogue serves to prompt

Mary‘s historical narrative of the origins of the Australian proletariat and the struggle for socialism. When Mary recalls the horrific journey on a leaky ship “chained side by side with women who screamed and cursed and prayed”, the Girl says “You were bitter seed for the new soil”31, to which Mary responds “Bitter—but strong. We had to be strong to build this Australia”.

From then on the events in Australian history considered seminal from the perspective of the CPA are introduced. For example a Miner appears, in typical miners’ breeches, boots and open neck shirt. He invokes the Eureka Stockade as the heroic defining moment of the Australian proletariat’s struggle against authority and for better conditions. He says, “... our stories are worth remembering—our songs are worthy of singing. And around the drover’s fires—in the scream of the factory whistles—on the

29 Oriel Gray, Milestones, Hanger Collection HO692, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. 30 Oriel Gray, Milestones. 31 Oriel Gray, Milestones. 157

track—Australia found her voice Henry Lawson”.32 At this point ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is heard, as Henry Lawson slouches into the light, reciting a stanza from his poem

Waratah and Wattle (1905). The Girl says she would like to meet a real hero; at this

Lawson points to a headstone that reads “in proud memory of John Taylor, aged 25, who died in the Spanish War, 1938” 33

John is also made incarnate and explains that he died in Barcelona, “But I don’t complain. It’s a good thing to die, knowing you’re right. And we were sure. We didn’t need to wait for time to tell us the fight of the Spanish people was the fight of all nations who loved freedom”.

All the dead characters solemnly affirm to the Girl that only when united can the proletariat triumph, as each disappears from view, Mary last, holding out her hand to the Girl as she drifts from view saying “Remember.” The Girl follows but realises she is alone. The play ends with the Girl saying, “I’ll remember. I won’t be afraid any more. I’ll fight to keep the country you made—for the rights Eureka won and the songs Lawson sang and to avenge John Taylor and Spain. Yes, I’ll fight now—for the memory of a gallant past and hope of a glorious future for all men”.34

32 Oriel Gray, Milestones. 33Oriel Gray, Milestones. 34 Oriel Gray, Milestones. 158

After momentarily pausing, she walks off stage with head held high as Waltzing Matilda is played loud and full in marching time. According to Gray, Milestones was “a very popular piece” written after the party’s “biggest backflip” in 1939 when it signed a peace treaty with Hitler, and then when Russia entered the war in 1941.35 Leslie Rees, one of the very few critics who have written about Gray’s early work, notes that the themes Gray treats in her work are characterised by a “social-critical approach that is vital, sincere and indigenous, though it suffered as well as gained from over-fostering by its own godmother, the New Theatre”.36Gray describes Milestones as a “historical pastiche thing done on any sort of stagewith the traditional succession of historical figures, the obligatory convict womanto the boy killed in Spain with the logical culmination of the war”.37 Milestones typifies the definition of socialist realism attributed by Regine Robin who says in these works “the positive character is often collective or disseminated. It is represented by an off-stage voice, the voice of the dead calling to order, the voice of history solemnly interruption the web of daily life”.38

Writing according to prescriptive political demands has implications for the playwright because the artist works in images and ideas: a process that requires the subordination of the conscious rational mind, to the unconscious creative impulses which are accessible only to a writer who is allowed complete, unfettered freedom of expression. Writing in a style or on themes according to party ideology or by forcing the

35 Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding, 5. 36 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama from the 1830s to the late 1960s, 202. 37 Angela Hillel, ‘Oriel Gray: A Forgotten Playwright’, Australian Drama 1920-1955: Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September 1-4, 1984, Department of Continuing Education, University of New England, 1986, (17-27), 21. 38 Regine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992), 231. 159

artist to become the moral compass of society are hardly the means by which creativity is nourished. Maintaining the correct line in relation to cultural policy depended often on news from the USSR, which brought its own surprises for writers when such news did arrive as Gray notes:

The Russians had an awkward habit of suddenly bringing a style, or an art form, or a morality into the bright light of party approval, and communist organisations throughout the world felt compelled to follow suit. Unfortunately, these innovations could fall into disfavour very quickly. We were so far from the centre of things that an overseas theoretical/cultural journal, or a copy of The USSR in Construction might find us numbered among the bourgeois goats. But as far as we knew at this time, constructionist sets were ‘in.’  In the next theoretical/cultural journal we got, we found that constructionist sets were bourgeois, decadent, and out! Naturalism was back, down to the last authentic feather on Chekhov’s sea gull.39

Milestones is an agit-prop piece and served a political purpose, and this is implied by

Gray who claims that “Milestones was written to be taken on tours—Russia was in the wareverybody loved everybodyit was all going to be different”.40 Having a political purpose or perspective does not preclude good writing and it is not argued here that

Gray could not produce good art, but rather that subordinating aesthetic concerns to political ideology prevented her writing from taking flight.

39 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 41-42. 40 Angela Hillel, ‘Oriel Gray: A Forgotten Playwright’, 21. 160

The phenomenon of radical theatre is a two-edged sword. While there is an element of radical subversion in the anti-establishment sentiments of the theatre of the 1930s— anti-fascism, anti-imperialism—to the extent that such radical movements in art were dominated by communist ideology they remained straitjacketed and could not progress beyond capturing the most immediate social issues with some vitality and force. There are few plays in the New Theatre playlist in which the individual as a distinct personality is depicted or is not subordinated to the ideology underlying the play.

Indeed, it is only in Gray’s later plays where a transformation is effected and evident to any extent, and by then she had quit the CPA. Milestones’s short length hardly permits of full characterisation or plot development, but that is not the essence of the problem: sententious precept instead of dramatic verisimilitude has prevailed. Milestones reads like unmitigated political propaganda, with all the attendant rhetorical excesses and characters that are mere mouthpieces. All the posturing and heroics underlying simplistic and mythical notions of solidarity are prevalent here as in other works of this type that follow.

-*%(',;(*%%"**() '

Under federal censorship laws New Theatre were not permitted in early 1940 to broadcast or stage No Conscription, a one-act drama by Rupert Lockwood. It was also the year that the CPA was banned. Adapted by Catherine Duncan, the play is set during the First World War and was a dissident voice against conscription in the first days of the Second World War.41 Stylistically it resembled Odets’s Waiting for Lefty, which was in a Living Newspaper, agit-prop style popular in the USA in the 1930s in

41 New Theatre, The New Years 1932—, 11. 161

workers’ theatres. The choice of play is indicative of the party line dictating New

Theatre production: as the Soviet Union was still an ally of Hitler, denouncing the war during this period as a ‘phony war’ between rival capitalist powers was the CPA’s message.

The CPA’s political isolation between 1939 and 1941 is recollected in Exit Left by Gray where she captures a sense of the romance, adventure and allure implicit in the activity of a movement threatened with illegality in the early 1940s: “Our theatre fraction of the party went underground—enjoying every minute of it”.42 Gray’s reference very clearly identifies the symbiotic relationship between the party and New Theatre: it operated as a branch of party work, carried out by CPA members, and as such it was liable to prosecution for illegality. Fear of reprisals, persecution or prosecution abated once

Hitler attacked the Soviet Union who called for help from the Western allies, opening to

New Theatre a new focus: war propaganda.

Communist parties internationally were no longer linked with Nazism, but were now united with many other social forces as anti-fascists. Like Popular Frontism, this was an attempt to lend legitimacy to the Moscow bureaucracy as crusaders against the

Nazism they had previously allied themselves with. However, when the French government of Marshal Petain capitulated to the Nazis in 1940, no action was taken by the French Communist Party as doing so would have run counter to the policy central to the non-aggression pact to which communist parties internationally adhered. The

42 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 51. 162

theatre experienced a period of ambiguity at the outbreak of World War Two as a result of the deviating political party line. The heroic exploits of the French Resistance really only became legitimate material for New Theatre after the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Paul Herlinger makes a similar observation, noting that the plays New Theatre produced between 1939 and 1941 did not directly refer to the war. He states:

Now with the advent of war, the New Theatre’s policymakers, persuaded by the local communist theoreticians, turned a blind eye to the dismemberment of Poland, ignored as far as possible the Allied declaration of war, accepted the German-Soviet Pact as further proof of Stalin’s genius and, in spite of tangible evidence to the contrary declared that the period between September 1939 and June 1941 was a ‘Phoney War.’43

Gray’s play Sur le Pont, produced by Sydney New Theatre in August 1945, was written within this ideological framework and in the midst of political upheaval, and as such reflects something of the crude didacticism intrinsic to propaganda. In her memoir she expresses, in retrospect, some ambivalence about the party line during these years, but it is striking that in the work she produced at the time there is no sign of this.

43 Paul Herlinger, ‘A New Direction for “the New?”’, Australasian Drama Studies, no. 8 (April 1986): 101. Herlinger does not cite any references for this assertion. However, an army intelligence report from 26 July 1949 in the ASIO files lists Herlinger as a New Theatre member. ASIO file Series A6122/40, Item 411. It is a fair assumption that his experience with New Theatre permits him to speak with a level of authority on the matter. Herlinger also wrote his M.A thesis on New Theatre. 163

Sur le Pont44 is set in France during World War Two. This little drama bears some resemblance to Lillian Hellman’s 1940 play Watch on the Rhine.45Hellman’s play is about an anti-Nazi, Muller, whose wife’s family home is infiltrated upon their return by a

Nazi sympathiser who taunts them, until Muller kills him after exposing him. Muller flees and leaves his son to continue the anti-Nazi struggle. The moral and ethical dilemmas about killing another human being are posed in Hellman’s play, and are less concretely elaborated in Gray’s Sur le Pont. In both plays, the French Resistance is the axis upon which the action revolves. Gray initially wrote the play for the Unity Theatre (equivalent of New Theatre) in Wellington, New Zealand, in the early 1940s, when she travelled there with her husband who had won some acting roles in the commercial theatre. She calls Sur le Pont “a melodrama, probably influenced by Casablanca”.46 The film

Casablanca is about a man, played by Humphrey Bogart, who is torn between assisting the Czech born resistance leader to escape Vichy controlled Morocco to fight the Nazis, and his passion for the man’s wife, played by Ingrid Bergman. Set in the shabby Talma Theatre in the French town of Arles in June 1944, Sur le Pont revolves around a revue troupe performing during the Vichy regime. The one act play is set entirely in the wardrobe room. Two dancers, Julie and Fifine, are preparing to go onstage as their costumes are tended to by the wardrobe mistress Emilie, a French patriot and fervent anti-Nazi who prides herself on having worked with Sarah Bernhard.

44 New Theatre Records 1914-1990, MLMSS 6244, Box 139. 45 Lillian Hellman, ‘Watch on the Rhine’, in Four Plays (New York: Modern Library, 1942). Hellman, although not a member of the Communist Party of the United States, was in a long- standing relationship with writer Dashiell Hammett, who was a member of the Communist Party. 46 Gray interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 164

A conversation between them about the RAAF bombing of a bridge beneath which the

Germans had camouflaged ammunition is overheard by the manager, Barron, who enters to warn them that the walls are thin and they can be heard in the auditorium.

Fifine is too naïve to realise the implications of living under fascism and underestimates the danger of collaborators reporting their conversations. Arguing against Julie’s belief that the bombing was good fortune, Fifine insists that an informant must have supplied the information because nothing else was damaged. Fifine is neither a collaborator nor a sympathiser, but has illusions of being able to live peaceably and forge a career in theatre irrespective of the political circumstances prevailing in France. Emilie is contemptuous of anyone who does not despise the Nazis and denounces Fifine:

You’d step off the footpath when the Germans passed you, and speak nicely if they spoke to you first.’ Fifine responds ‘What’s wrong with that? We’re not at war—France is out of it. And I don’t like the way you speak to me. I’m not fond of—of—(she gestures vaguely) them

Emilie: I’ll say it for you—Nazis. (Spits fervently)47

Fifine expresses vague suspicions that Durier, a popular comic actor in their troupe, may be a Nazi collaborator because he has been allocated a weekly fifteen minute radio session by the Vichy government-controlled broadcaster. Having raised doubts about Durier, the play proceeds to show Durier in a dubious light. Lanyon, another actor, a handsome young man with an amiable manner”48, casts further aspersions on

Durier’s character by insinuating to Annette, another actress, that he had observed a meeting between Durier and the military police, and that Durier was seen to enter

47 Oriel Gray, Sur le Pont. 48 Oriel Gray, Sur le Pont. 165

“furtively” and leave the meeting “smiling”.49 The implication is that Durier is a Nazi informant. Annette is unconvinced. Nevertheless, Lanyon elicits from her a promise to report to him “anything suspiciousanything you don’t understand”.50 Annette questions Durier and he confesses to sabotage, but before he can elaborate, Lanyon enters. The play’s denoument occurs at this point where a confrontation ensues between Annette, Durier and Lanyon in which Annette tells Lanyon that Durier is an informant. Fifine interrupts and quips to Durier as she exits that she thinks it odd that he should have sung as a special request Sur le Pont. Lanyon is revealed to be the collaborator when he realises that Durier’s code for sabotaging the Nazis’ plans is contained in song lyrics performed by special request: “Sur le Pont d’Avignonunder the bridge at Arles, where the ammunition dump was hidden!” 51 He produces a gun intending to kidnap Durier and to kill Annette, who is dismayed by Lanyon’s manipulation which has made her an unwitting traitor and who now knows his identity.

Lanyon does not kill Durier because as “a commercial proposition”52 the Nazis will pay more if he is alive.

Annette feigns resignation to her fate, pretends to arrange her make-up one last time before she swings around, and with a melodramatic flourish claps a powder puff across

Lanyon’s eyes. Durier attacks him, and in the ensuing struggle Lanyon is shot dead with his own gun. Barron appears, and as he appraises the situation he reveals that he was collaborating with Durier in the Resistance movement.

49 Oriel Gray, Sur le Pont. 50 Oriel Gray, Sur le Pont. 51 Oriel Gray, Sur le Pont. 52 Oriel Gray, Sur le Pont. 166

Since there is no proof of directives issued by the CPA to New Theatre in relation to this play, it is necessary to analyse how the play articulates CPA policy. Having the

Allies and the resistance portrayed as heroes and liberators would have been an impossible scenario for a New Theatre play in 1939 when Stalin and Hitler were allies, as the abrupt dropping of Odets’s play attests. The aesthetics particular to theatre were a secondary consideration when all efforts were concentrated on making a political point pertinent to the current situation. By 1945, however, the depiction of the heroic resistance fighter and the typical smooth Nazi villain of the piece in Sur le Pont conform to the transformed political requirements and policy of the CPA, and constituted efficient war propaganda, further highlighting the influence of the CPA on New Theatre writers. ‘Art is Weapon’, New Theatre’s slogan, is made manifest in Sur le Pont, in its sententious and melodramatic didacticism.

Aside from these plays from her earliest years with New Theatre, Gray also wrote a play called International Settlement which was performed at the British Drama league

Festival in 1942. No typescript survives, and when asked to describe it Gray remarks that it was “very Partyish” and “very propaganda” and one in which she committed a political blunder: she depicted a Chinese girl as a Kuomintang member, unaware that the Kuomintang were anti-communist.53

Commitment to the CPA meant unquestioning loyalty to a constantly changing party line that would appear without notice or explanation and which was expected to be

53 Oriel Gray interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 167

adhered to by all members. Such flexible loyalty included a requirement to denounce communist sympathisers like Lillian Hellman, whose play Watch on the Rhine was picketed in New York in early 1941 by party members as a “war-mongering play”.54

Undoubtedly, a theoretical justification would be provided for the reversal of policy which would see Hellman’s play restored to party favour once Stalin announced the war as a ‘people’s war’. Each zig-zag in policy was followed by a stern condemnation of anyone who doubted the wisdom of communist political leaders in such matters.

Theoretical backsliding by cadres was vigorously and relentlessly suppressed in the

CPA. The leadership’s multiple errors and revisions, though, were not for discussion as

Gray found out when she pinned on the theatre wall a letter from a friend fighting in the war in which he referred to the factional fighting within the left during the Spanish Civil

War. She was told: “There’s no point in bringing up old theoretical errors, comrade”.55

However, for artists, who by the very nature of their work are accustomed to relying on their emotions, such theoretical justifications inevitably lead to scepticism and demoralisation. Her misgivings about the “party line” were reinforced in 1940, when viewing a newsreel of Dunkirk. Becoming emotional at the sight of wounded British soldiers who were fighting Nazism in World War Two, she nevertheless decided to keep her feelings to herself, fearing the inevitable ostracism that would come with crossing the party line. Gray’s political convictions took a battering but she was as yet incapable of mustering the courage to sever ties. She says:

54 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 72. 55 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 78-79. 168

I had a frightening glimpse of the No-Man’s Land lying out there beyond the shelter of unquestioning party convictions. My marriage, friendships, theatre, enjoyment of living, even my sister were all contained under that shelter, and Baby, it could be cold outside!56

Such sentiments were common among communist party members, and not only in

Australia. Arthur Koestler, a member of the Communist Party of Hungary between

1932 and 1940, expressed similar feelings to Gray: a reluctance to break from the familiar certainties involvement in a movement endows. He recalls that “I no longer had any friends outside the party. It had become my family, my nest, my spiritual home.

Inside it, one might quarrel, grumble, feel happy or unhappy; but to leave the nest, however cramping and smelly it seemed sometimes, had become unthinkable”.57

Gray’s plays from 1942 to 1945, as evidenced in this chapter, centre on the dominant political issues of the time from the perspective of the CPA. As her disillusionment with the CPA increases, her plays after 1945 evince a stronger social and personal tone, dealing with issues of the environment, gender equality and the plight of Aborigines.

They suggest that the themes are determined less by what is politically expedient and are Gray’s own attempts to give artistic expression to ideas and issues not directly related to the CPA. The next chapter will examine Gray’s plays from 1945 to 1959.

56 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 62. 57Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume of an Autobiography 1932-1940 (London: Vintage, 2005), 346. 169

 

*"% *14  (-% "';(%","% "+"%%-+"('&', ' *('"'  !&+=D@B:=DAD

By the mid-1940s Gray’s relationship with her husband began to disintegrate and she and John Hepworth, her sister’s husband, fell in love. Hepworth, who also acted with

New Theatre, was considered to be a talented journalist and he and Gray left Sydney for Lismore when he got a position on the Lismore Star.1 Before leaving for Lismore, however, Gray felt certain that New Theatre, with its aspirations for a national theatre, would become professional or at least work more closely with other ‘little’ theatres. The possibility of such a development was dependent on financial backing from the trade unions. New Theatre had the means to achieve this as in its ranks were many amateur and unpaid, yet “excellent”, actors as well as professionals who accepted Actor’s

Equity minimum rates at New Theatre on the basis of their “sympathy with the broad issues of the plays they were doing”.2

Younger actors also began to gravitate to New Theatre: they were often more educated and confident and they recognised in Gray’s husband (John Gray), a talent

1 A man of many talents, John Hepworth helped establish Nation Review and with Michael Leunig created the back page column in which they combined satire, irony, philosophy and political commentary. Hepworth also worked at the ABC for many years and in Melbourne was chief sub-editor on the Radio Australia news desk. He collaborated with Bob Ellis and Steve Spears on several children’s books and wrote plays, several of which were performed. Hepworth was also a member of the CPA, according to Gray. He also contributed various sketches to New Theatre but it is uncertain whether they were ever produced or staged, even as portable agit-prop pieces. Gray and Hepworth had two sons together. 2 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 196. 170

not only as an actor, but as a teacher. They would ask why he did not conduct acting classes at New Theatre but, according to Oriel Gray, John Gray “was not outspoken in opposition (or as tactless as I was), but he had a dogged resistance to theatrical excellence being subordinated to political expediency, which made him suspect in this climate”.3 John Gray’s success and rising popularity on commercial radio also raised the suspicions of the “New Theatre hierarchy” who “became more doubtful of his integrity”, according to Gray.4 Upon her return to Sydney, Gray discovered that attitudes in the CPA and New Theatre in the early post-war period had not become more conciliatory or cooperative, but had actually hardened, a claim that Susan

McKernan confirms, stating that by the end of the 1940s “the Party began to interfere” in the life of its cultural organisations such as New Theatre and the Realist Writers’ groups.5 The brief euphoria of class-collaboration during the war had subsided and gave way to antagonisms reflecting the emergent Cold War atmosphere, antagonisms that would see the CPA and its factions and fractions isolated from the mainstream once more. Sydney’s New Theatre was blacklisted not long after, around 1949, and the

CPA began to be the target of official anti-communist propaganda.

The intransigence and dogmatism that characterised CPA and New Theatre practice prior to World War Two resurfaced with redoubled vigour and was again reflected in party attitudes to New Theatre. At Sydney’s Marx House, Gray recalls, New Theatre’s repertory came in for intense scrutiny and the phrase “It doesn’t show the face of the

3 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 201. 4 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 201. 5 Susan McKernan, A Question of Commitment (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), 195. 171

party” began to be heard.6Discussions about play productions became “exercises in political rhetoric where social democrat reformism was hunted down like a louse” and when Gray denounced as “stupid” and “tyrannous” the policy of denying Jews entry visas in the socialist countries “the political drawing aside of skirts and trouser-legs was noticeable and the earnest enquiries about my new play became more apprehensive than enthusiastic in some quarters”.7

If any New Theatre writers laboured under the illusion that New Theatre existed only for the purpose of providing a medium for aspiring Australian playwrights, they were mistaken, as McKernan attests, commenting that, above all, the theatre and other CPA affiliated cultural groups “were an important focus for the energies of young communist supporters and a public platform for a socialist message”.8 The purpose of New

Theatre was no secret from either its dramatists or performers, who were always instructed to bear in mind the theatre’s political aims and how it was to be given artistic expression. Yet by the end of the 1940s, according to McKernan, “ideological problems loomed larger than artistic ones”.9 These social, political and artistic tensions, while latent, were not overt prior to Gray’s departure for Lismore.

Though distant from the centre of party activity in Sydney, Lismore’s social composition was fecund with playwriting subjects (such as its racial antagonisms) and Gray soon began to expand her thematic horizons beyond the narrow requirements of the CPA.

6 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 196. 7 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 196-7. 8 Susan McKernan, A Question of Commitment, 195. 9 Susan McKernan, A Question of Commitment, 195. 172

She later visited Kalgoorlie which also inspired her to write about social issues from a more clearly defined humanist, rather than “communist”, standpoint, without necessarily committing political or ideological transgressions that would incur the party’s wrath. Gray herself believes that her plays from this period reflect more accurately her own intrinsic humanist sensibilities, but she attributes these sensibilities to other New Theatre writers also, saying “that’s what most of us were. We were humanists, not communists”.10 Issues such as women’s independence, the plight of

Aborigines and migrants, as well as environmental concerns were beginning to preoccupy her more than the regimented class themes of ideological propaganda.

Animated by a class perspective, but without vehement espousal of socialist realist ideology, her plays of this period have more complex plots and characters and deal with social phenomena more concretely. Few, if any, deal with issues of industrial disputes, or war. They are social-critical rather than politically partisan plays, and her approach to her themes, Leslie Rees maintained, was “vital, sincere, indigenous, though it suffered from as well as gained from over-fostering by its own godmother, the

New Theatre”.11 Rees’s assessment of Gray’s plays is apt, and helps in positioning her work in the proper historical and ideological context in Australian theatre history, as well as providing a basis for objectively analysing the weaknesses in her work, which can be attributed to CPA ideology—political and artistic—to which she subscribed during her time with New Theatre.

10 Gray interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 11 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 202. 173

Gray’s plays continued to be produced by New Theatre even after she left the CPA in

1950 over her disagreement with the party over the miners’ strike in 1949 during the

Labor government of . Twenty-three thousand coal miners on the open cut mines in NSW went on a strike that lasted seven weeks beginning June 27 and ending

15 August 1949. The Miners Federation was heavily influenced by the CPA and it was the first time that the military was used in peace time to break up a trade union strike.

The strike was considered as CPA applying Cold War Cominform12 policy challenging

Labor party reformism.

The CPA’s shift in orientation away from the ALP was not entirely understood by Gray, whose questions about the strike and the CPA’s position on it were answered with typical bureaucratic obfuscation by Les Greenfield, a leading CPA member and managing editor of the Australasian Book Society (another CPA organisation) who told her that “historical circumstances change. A Labor victory may not be our goal this time”.13 This did little to assuage Gray’s doubts about the course the CPA was taking.

Instead it compounded her sense of alienation from the political and theoretical life of the party. Such were the suspicions of political recalcitrance and backsliding about

“bohemian” artists within the CPA, that when she and Hepworth decided to quit, Gray recalls “to my chagrin, I must report that I don’t think the party even noticed our great decision. Down at Marx House they had probably dismissed us long ago”.14 In any event, Chifley’s Labor Party was defeated at the next election and the Liberal leader

12 Cominform is the Communist Information Bureau established after the dissolution of the Comintern in 1943 and is officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties. 13 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 220. 14 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 226. 174

Menzies, who won, promptly attempted to outlaw the CPA. Nevertheless, Gray’s departure from the party, unlike Roland’s, was not acrimonious and this perhaps partly explains why her plays continued to be produced by New Theatre after her departure, with the exception of one, Burst of Summer, which purportedly breached ideological boundaries. Although Gray attributes it to New Theatre’s independence that they continued to produce her plays, she remained at least a ‘fellow traveller’ and she contradicts her own claim to have broken with the CPA with her frank admission that none of her plays “...challenged left-wing ideas or ideals”.15

The anti-establishment sentiment that characterised New Theatre plays (including

Gray’s) in its formative years rarely extended beyond simplistic depictions and characterisation, while plots were usually contrived to expound on the perfidy and ideological bankruptcy of capitalist rule and its representatives. One of her plays to go beyond the political precepts required by New Theatre is Western Limit, produced by

Sydney New Theatre in 1946, and directed by John Gray, to whom she was still married at this time. With themes hitherto alien to New Theatre repertory, Western

Limit explored the “half-caste” problem as well as environmental issues. While New

Theatre undoubtedly encouraged Gray’s writing, albeit within limits set by political ideology, and provided a platform for her talent, its isolation from the mainstream meant that the mainstream press ignored it, a circumstance which insulated many actors and writers from the constructive artistic criticism so vital and necessary to artists’ development. This is apparent in Gray’s attempt to distinguish her work of this period from her more politically didactic plays and revues, and she may have perhaps

15 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 226. 175

overstretched herself, attempting to deal with issues beyond her abilities in Western

Limit. This much is at least alluded to by Leslie Rees who describes the play as

an overstocked paddock, sprawling and hinting at too many thorny questions...The author has a witty and pointed as well as savage line in dialogue. The characters were recognizably real, even if the story- line was not strong. A pity that by straining too hard and too variously the play...was not the completely satisfying entity it should have been.16

A line from the play exemplifies the tenor, and the subversion of the laudatory nationalism evident in Lawson and Milestones:

What’s wrong with this blasted country? Just take a look at the papers. Someone said we stole it from the Abos. It was a bit of smart salesmanship on their part if you ask me.17

Gray, who has one of the characters, a “half-caste” Aboriginal stockman, fall in love with the farmer’s daughter, says that in Western Limit she “...paid ideological tribute to the fact that Aborigines had a raw deal”.18 While lack of professional critical appraisal is a weakness in Gray’s plays, the hidebound ideological framework that New Theatre writers were constrained by did more to impede Gray’s playwriting. One gets a glimpse of Gray’s potential while writing as a CPA member, and in some later plays also, yet these later plays nevertheless evince a sort of internal struggle; one gets a sense that her artistic sensibilities, which are of a humanist inclination, struggle against the

16 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 202. 17 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 202. 18 Gray Interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 176

enervating effects of CPA dogma, her lucid and witty perceptiveness straining against the imposed ideological fetters. This is most evident in Burst of Summer, discussed further in this chapter, where she defies party ideology by having the female protagonist reject reformist struggle, leaving the country town to fulfill her ambitions. It is this unresolved tension in Gray’s plays of this later period that becomes a barrier to a fuller, more artistically unified, complex exploration of the themes she takes up, despite her attempt to break free from the prescriptive approach of the CPA and New Theatre that dominated her writing.

Gray’s sincerity in her attempt to depict the plight of Aborigines is lucid and vital: her sympathies are clearly aligned with the oppressed, the downtrodden and the disenfranchised. The as yet inchoate representation of the experience of the Aborigine in Australian dramaturgy in the post-World War Two period was largely confined to those writers who were usually to be found in the ranks of New Theatre and the CPA such as Gray, Mona Brand, Nancy Wills and Jim Crawford. Yet, despite the relatively novel nature of the issues depicted, there was little attempt at innovation or experimentation with form or technique by which these themes could be given a more powerful expression. The structure of Gray’s plays conforms to the type of realism aggressively championed by the CPA and New Theatre during the Cold War period and is usually in two or three acts with the requisite optimistic resolution. Had We But

World Enough, produced in 1948 by Sydney New Theatre, is a good example, dealing with Aborigines and racism in a small Australian town. Despite the formalistic and ideological limitations, there is far more vivid writing evident in the treatment of the characters, who are developed as complex individuals rather than socialist or

177

bourgeois ‘types’ and there is less of the stilted and rigid feel of some of Gray’s earlier works with New Theatre.

Inspiration for writing about Aborigines came not so much from any overt racism that

Gray had encountered in places like Lismore, but from the indifferent or, rather, long- suffering attitude of the locals towards the indigenous population. “If paranoiac race hatred existed, I didn’t see it”, Gray claims, but she saw what she considered to be something worse: “Lismore’s feelings for its Aboriginal inhabitants hardly reached a level of contempt. It was more a sufferance of necessary unpleasantness, like the miasma that could rise from the river”.19

A conversation between Gray, Hepworth and some reformist friends in Lismore about racism planted the seed for an idea that would become Had We But World Enough, which was performed at Sydney New Theatre in 1947. One of the friends rebuffed racist remarks with the rejoinder that, as Christians, they should remember that “Christ came from the Aborigines” and that his mother was “probably as dark as some of the people you are rejecting”.20 Gray’s thoughts turned to the idea of a nativity play with an

Aboriginal child cast as the Madonna and a town’s hostile response to such a perceived vulgarisation of Christian ideals.

19 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 181. 20 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 191. 178

Taking her title from Marvell’s famous poem ‘To his Coy Mistress’, Gray subverts the optimism inherent in the poem, imbuing it instead with a negative connotation. This is elaborated in the play through the characters’ dilemmas, highlighting the ambiguities and complexities in relationships. Gray situates people in circumstances that compel them to make moral decisions and take a principled stand, and demonstrates that, irrespective of their good intentions, the best people do not always make the right choices. The play suggests that racism is not necessarily an issue easily resolved, and in this it is refreshingly realistic. But this message is conveyed at the expense of the dramatic verisimilitude of the race issue, lapsing into melodrama between the protagonists, Nick and Phyllis, who are both white. Nick is an idealistic journalist and

Phyllis a schoolteacher. Their attraction for each other has not diminished despite

Phyllis’s engagement to David, a wealthy local. Rees remarks that the play was strong until the second act, but “thereafter it collapsed. The girl’s death solved the immediate problem in too easy a way”.21 Phyllis is friends with Nan who is a teacher at the same school. Phyllis is disillusioned about her ability to evince any change in the community and has resigned herself to a life of domesticity upon her eventual marriage to David.

Nan, by contrast, is a devoted and idealistic teacher whose idea for casting Lily, the twelve year old Aboriginal girl, as the Madonna in the school play, sets off a chain of events that exposes the town’s racist and bigoted attitudes. Nan is a lone crusader in her insistence on casting Lily, with the only support coming from Nick with whom she is secretly in love. Phyllis is too cynical to believe any change in attitude can be achieved but eventually changes her mind, signifying also an acceptance of Nick’s beliefs in social justice and her rejection of her bourgeois fiancé.

21 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 203. 179

The play’s denouement sees Nick and Phyllis resume their relationship. The school principal Mr Chalmers, a vacillating yet likable man, supports Nancy in principle, but is incapable of mounting any resistance to the pressure from the town’s big shots, such as the alderman, to have Lily removed from the play. He resigns, leaving Nancy to fend for herself. The tragedy in the midst of all the drama is that Lily drowns while crossing a bridge, during a storm. The wooden bridge was in dire need of repair but, according to

Nick, the council neglected it because it led to “the wrong side of town”.22 Lily is found caught in the willows under the bank. However, suicide is implied as Lily’s actions are interpreted in the context of having been told by Nan of the town’s reaction in a rather didactic speech, aimed more at the audience than the child:

Nancy: We call it racial prejudice and it’s been with us a long time. History shows you hundreds of years of it... but one day it will be destroyed. Never doubt that. But to do that, we’ll have to take away the profits that can be made from fear. Do you understand me Lily?

Lily: Sort of, but not really, Miss Thomas. The other kids aren’t afraid of things...so why don’t they like me?23

Suicide as a likely possibility is suggested by Phyllis, who is traumatised after having found Lily and says “We were all three thinking the same thing, but no one said it..”.24

Despite its weaknesses, its attributes are recognised by Leslie Rees, who credits this play with having “one of the best-written scenes in Australian drama, so free from melodramatics”.25 The scene in question involves Nancy and Mr Chalmers, who throws

22 Had We But World Enough, Hanger Collection HO686, Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Act II, Scene III, 2. 23 Had We But World Enough, Act II, Scene II, 5. 24 Had We But World Enough, Act II, Scene III, 2. 25 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 203. 180

the responsibility for the decision to cast Lily entirely on Nancy. Gray, however, recalls the play in less glowing terms in a letter to Connie Healy:

I wish I had destroyed the manuscript of Had We But World Enough—it is over-written and over-sentimental and only notable in that it was the first time I tried to deal with the injustice inherent in our treatment of the Aboriginal race (and one of the first of these plays written).26

Gray is overly harsh: the sententiousness in aspects of the play are a by-product of the prescriptive methods and utilitarian approach to art of the CPA from which she cannot entirely or easily distance herself after having submitted to those precepts at the inception of her playwriting career.

The resolution is considered by Hillel to tend “towards the melodramatic” and the contrast between the nativity scenes and the town’s lack of goodwill, along with the allusion to Marvell’s poem, are “contrived and indicative of the writer’s immaturity”.27

These flaws notwithstanding, Hillel notes that “much of the dialogue is strong, and, surprisingly, non-melodramatic and the play reveals the assured sense of dramatic structure which is a hallmark of Oriel Gray’s plays”.28 Gray focuses on the community as a microcosm of society as a whole to expose the social issues of concern to her.

26 Connie Healy, Defiance, 157. 27 Angela Hillel, ‘Oriel Gray: A Forgotten Playwright’, 23. 28 Anglea Hillel, ‘Oriel Gray: A Forgotten Playwright’, 23. 181

New Theatre’s Management Committee’s criticisms of the play were, unlike those of

Rees, of a political character. The minutes of the meeting record a summary of discussion of Had We But World Enough, and suggestions for a revision of the play.

Although substantial in length, the criticism should be cited in full to provide an example of the magnitude and extent of the political considerations that were paramount in their appraisal of the play:

1) The bringing of the school master into the forefront and allowing him and his emotional problems to dominate the end. It was agreed that his character is a true one and that he is an important middle class type with his typical fear of positive action which would put him in opposition to the ruling class. However, the emphasis in the end on him is misplaced, for he has not been a key character and his soul searchings are not as important as what the reaction of the main people are—Nan, Phyllis and Nick and what is more important, what action they were going to take.

2) Members felt that we, as a left wing theatre, should point to a more positive solution to the problem and situation, that the three main characters should work out a positive attitude at the end, clearly cut and stated, which would send audiences away with some positive feeling on the subject. Otherwise it became a matter of posing a problem and then leaving up in the air, with the emphasis on purely personal relations.29

The criticism takes the form of an ad hominem attack on Gray and suggests alternative scenarios in order to provide the requisite optimistic resolution:

29 New Theatre Records, Minutes of General Executive Committee Meeting, Melbourne New Theatre, 27/02/1950, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 182

The writer gives too much importance to martyrdom and too little to the winning of allies and to practical achievement. Martyrdom in itself is useless and the yearning for it reveals a Tolstoyan individualism, a secret wish for self-perfection rather than for the winning of some actual gains for the whole of humanity. I would suggest that after the failure to state the position about racial prejudice to Lily, and Lily’s consequent suicide, Nan should redeem herself by putting it clearly and comprehensibly to some other aborigines—say Lily’s mother— and that she should come to see the necessity of winning allies, say among the aborigines themselves, who by the way, are depicted as mere passive victims in the struggle. Phyllis is not the only one capable of being won over. Are there no workers or small farmers in the community? Is there no effective opposition to Whalen? The struggle is too much confined to a detached group of intellectuals who are by themselves obviously too weak ever to gain victory and must be crushed unless they can find effective support somewhere.30

Gray says that Had We But World Enough is about “injustice to Aborigines in a country town, but it had become as much about love, how quickly time slips away, depriving us of the chance to give our hopeful dreams practical meaning”.31 Marvell’s poem ‘To a

Coy Mistress’, from which Gray takes the title of the play, was “neither proletarian nor revolutionary” Gray notes, and should Wally Clayton (also known as Possum Pearson) of the CPA Control Commission question her about the revolutionary credentials of the play or poem, she could be certain of his ignorance of literature, of both the artistic and political type:

30 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 31 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 214. 183

I doubted that Possum Pearson was much of a reader of seventeenth century poetry. If he asked me, I would say that it came from a small pamphlet attributed to Lenin and bluff my way home from there.32

In a lecture in 1934, Walter Benjamin advanced ideas that were intended to bring about a rapprochement between what was considered to be politically progressive (i.e., left- wing) and aesthetic qualities in the work of politically committed writers, in an attempt to challenge assumptions about the supposed political virtue, or lack thereof, of works that do not conform to the methods of socialist realism (as the likes of Possum Pearson would insist upon), stating:

For I hope to be able to show you that the concept of commitment, in the perfunctory form in which it generally occurs in the debate I have just mentioned, is a totally inadequate instrument of political literary criticism. I should like to demonstrate to you that the tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense.33

Unfortunately, such ideas were, if not entirely anathema, at least unwelcome and misunderstood by CPA leaders. And it did not help matters that Australia’s isolation and concomitant provincialism also limited aspiring writers’ access to the modernist trends prevalent in Europe. Historically, the provincialism inherent in Australia’s culture of heroic ‘proletarianism’ was, perhaps, an important factor contributing to New

Theatre’s lack of innovation in the aftermath of the Second World War. But it was a

32 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 214. 33 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer’, in Art in Theory 1900-1990, Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. (Malden, Massachussetts: Blackwell, 1998), 484. 184

new political and social atmosphere: conservatism was pervasive, inside and outside

New Theatre and the CPA, and the experiments with form of the 1930s, exemplified in their production of plays by Brecht and Odets, were but a dim memory. New influences were introduced into Australian mainstream theatre in the post-war period, but they were writers that New Theatre had been familiar with in the 1930s such as Odets and

Brecht, and so lagging behind the artistic and literary trends of Europe was Australia that it was only in the 1950s that the brothers Capek, Tennessee Williams and Anton

Chekhov were introduced as new in the mainstream theatres.34 Against such indomitable forces, it is little wonder that writers such as Gray, who struggled to find their voice, only to have it stymied by social and political conservative mores and the dictates of CPA ideology in New Theatre, were unable to surmount those impediments and develop their ideas and styles to create works that would have prove more enduring.

Glimmers of Gray’s potential as a dramaturg abound in most of her plays, and this is noticed by the very small number of appraisals of Gray’s plays outside of New Theatre, such as by L.L. Woolacott. Writing for The ABC Weekly on 28 January 1950 at the outset of the Cold War, Wollacott diffidently proclaims of Had We But World Enough that, aside from the abrupt change of focus in the third act, he has “never witnessed so intensely interesting an Australian drama that fulfils the definition of a great play—a play that is national in sentiment; universal in appeal; and yet belonging intrinsically to no age or no country”35 and praises Gray as a woman of genius.

34 Katharine Brisbane, Plays of the 50s, vol.1 (Sydney: Currency Press, 2004), vi. 35 L.L. Woolacott, The ABC Weekly, January 28, 1950, 30. 185

Given the general paucity of constructive aesthetic criticism of the play, it is little wonder that Gray sought to expand her thematic horizons and break from the ideological trappings of the CPA in relation to art. And she certainly did try to stretch herself by, for example, exploring themes such as female autonomy which she says

“the Party gave lip service to”36 in plays such as My Life is My Affair. A domestic, gendered drama that contextualises marital problems within the framework of international war-time uncertainty, the play explores a marriage breakdown, infidelity and social mores and expectations. Eunice is married to Joe Cartwright, a scientist working in New Guinea on the atom bomb. Joe’s mother, Amy, lives with them, helping

Eunice to look after their child and is caught in the middle of the disintegrating marriage. Amy, Eunice and Joe’s mistress, Claire, who is ostensibly the reason for the marriage breakdown, form the nucleus of the play’s moral and gendered compass.

Eunice is a discontented housewife, having had to leave her job as a teacher upon getting married, as the department of education then stipulated. The domestic tension is heightened when Joe is denied the job he assumed would be his but is given instead to his former trainee, a woman. Disillusioned, he gets little solace from Eunice and the tension is escalated when Claire arrives unexpectedly at the house.

The ensuing scenario is a confrontation between Joe, Claire and Eunice, but it also provides the impetus for the perspective of female autonomy as the three women are each compelled to acknowledge and challenge the prevalent social stereotypes of women. Eunice acknowledges her ignorance about childbirth and childrearing, contrary to the prevalent notion that such things come naturally to women. Eunice’s discovery of

36 Gray Interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 186

Joe’s affair is the catalyst for a life-changing decision: when Joe tells her he will provide for the baby and for her she replies “Oh no. Not for me. My life is my affair. I’ll go back to work”.37 Claire also defies convention and asserts her right to reject Joe, opting instead to travel to England to try her luck at acting, saying to Joe, who expected to leave with her, “everyone is different. And wipe that look off your face or I might just do it for you. My life is my affair, too, Joe”.38 Thus, both wife and mistress defy social convention and expectations, and renounce the traditional roles assigned to women as submissive, maternal and dependent on male patronage. Her depiction of strong independent women has been attributed to a latent feminism. However, Gray does not fully embrace the feminist label (she rejects what she refers to as “aggressive feminism”) but does reveal a concession to feminist issues in her depiction of independent women, which are a recurring feature in Gray’s writing from the mid-1940s onwards, to which Gray refers as “my woman”.39 Reconciliation between Eunice and

Joe is implied as Joe finds Eunice’s new-found independence attractive. This provides the impetus for his enlightened development, while her emancipationist aspirations inspire him in turn to free himself from the outdated values and social mores that hold him hostage.

Although feminist concerns can be attributed to this play, the scope is nevertheless wider: the nature of relationships in a society fraught with political tensions, war and seemingly unbridgeable generational schisms. The stark realism of the play is a heavy

37 My Life is My Affair, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 93. 38 Oriel Gray, My life is My Affair, MLMSS 6244, Box 93. 39 Gray Interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 187

concession to naturalism, an “uneasy bedfellow of realism” in Australian literature, according to Jack Beasley 40 and is fairly typical of Gray’s oeuvre from this period. It is rather ironic that, in the period in which Gray’s dramaturgy seeks ideological distancing from the dictates of the CPA, the actual structure and style of her plays seem to regress to a distinct realism/naturalism. Her themes and outlook evince something of a struggle with the constraints of CPA dogma, but the form is static, remaining within the mould prescribed and preferred by the type of socialist realism demanded by the CPA.

The “positive hero” is also present as is the optimistic resolution. Within the context of the development of Australian literature and drama in the twentieth century, Gray’s plays are, more often than not, reflective of what was a peculiarly Australian disdain for an overtly intellectual approach to culture and art (although highly contentious, such traces remain, but are outside the scope of discussion here).

Intellectualism was usually associated with modernism and all the tendencies through which it sought to express itself such as Surrealism, psychoanalysis, abstract expressionism (Picasso was still politically suspect even after he joined the French

Communist Party in 1944 because of his abstract style)41 and even James Joyce’s stream of consciousness. Within the CPA, these trends and tendencies were redolent of petty-bourgeois ideas and antithetical to a ‘communist’ outlook. For example, Dick

Diamond writes in 1943 that “a good percentage of modern art presents anything but

40 Jack Beasley, A Gallop of Fire—Katharine Susannah Prichard: On Guard for Humanity, 154. 41The Communist Review devotes several articles in a number of issues to a discussion of Picasso’s lack of realism: John Oldham, ‘Picasso and the Arts under Capitalism’, Communist Review, no. 73(September 1947):661-3; Len Fox, ‘The Obscurity of Picasso’s Art’, Communist Review, no.75 (November 1947): 729-30; Paul Mortier, ‘Artists and the Class Struggle’, Communist Review, no.78 (February 1948): 59-60; R.M. Shaw, ‘The Artist in Our Society’, Communist Review , no. 84 (August 1948): 258-60; and J.B. Miles, ‘Art for the People’, Communist Review, no.84 (August 1948): 260-62 . 188

intelligible ideas ... the influence of Surrealism and Formalism are apparent in much of the work exhibited—influences that must be curbed if the work of an artist is to escape triviality and deal with events that matter—the death of the old world and the birth of the new”.42 Implicit in the demand to depict “the death of the old world and birth of the new” is the demand for socialist realism, of which “the truthfulness and historical concreteness of the artistic portrayal should be combined with the ideological remoulding and education of the toiling people in the spirit of socialism”.43It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the most enduring and popular of Gray’s plays is

Lawson, her first and one of the very few of her plays to be published, and which articulates the still prevalent notions of Australian identity: mateship and notions of egalitarianism. Although it does not necessarily apply so categorically to the most didactic of Gray’s plays, the type of critique most New Theatre writers received is what

Lukács termed “‘publicistic criticism’, a ‘purely’ social or political attitude to literature, which judges past and present according to the superficial slogans of the day, without considering the real artistic content of the work in question, or caring whether it is a great work of art or a piece of worthless trash”.44

The paucity of objective criticism, or, to paraphrase Engels, criticism free from bias as a primary condition of all criticism45, proved to be an impediment to Gray’s development as a writer, even after having extricated herself from the strictures of CPA and New

42 Dick Diamond, ‘Art and the Struggle’, Communist Review (November 1943): 152. 43 Andrei Zhdanov, ‘Speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers’, 411. 44 Georg Lukács, ‘Studies in European Realism’ (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964) cited in Bela Kiralyfalvi’s The Aesthetics of Gyorgy Lukács (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1975), 17. 45 Karl Marx, Preface to The Poverty of Philosophy (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1978). 189

Theatre ideological precepts. Sky Without Birds, written in 1950, is an example of her broadening themes, but her technique remains harnessed to the stark realism favoured by the CPA and New Theatre. The portrayal of the protagonists in the sparsely populated town on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain drew a sympathetic response from audiences who “forgave any technical shortcomings in the script or the production” because they “understood and liked the ideas in the drama” wrote the Queensland

Guardian’s Syd Davis in his review of Unity/New Theatre’s production in Brisbane in

1952. It played in Sydney New Theatre also in 1952. Davis commented on Sky’s worthiness as a thoughtful play with progressive ideas but noted that it lacked action, the “essential ingredient of drama which is so often absent from the works of modern playwrights”.46 Katharine Brisbane remarks also on the lack of action in Sky Without

Birds but does not consider this a detriment, stating that the play is “about the way life moulds people and how most of us learn to come to terms with our circumstances”.47

Sky Without Birds continues Gray’s concern with xenophobia and peers beneath the surface of the purported Australian egalitarianism to expose the prejudice and injustice in the supposed ‘land of opportunity’ not long after the end of World War Two. Heinrich

Schaefer, a German-Jewish refugee who was incarcerated in a concentration camp for anti-Nazi activities, arrives at Koorora to take up the position, long vacant, of locomotive engineer. He boards with Rick and Nereia, the latter a sister of Peggy who runs the post-office with her husband Robert, whom everyone calls Major for his stint in

World War Two. Intent on suppressing his emotions, particularly about memories of his

46 Connie Healy, Defiance, 165-6. 47 Katharine Brisbane, Plays of the 50s, vol. 2 (Sydney: Currency Press, 2004), ix. 190

wife whom he has not seen since he was taken prisoner, Heinrich’s passions are nevertheless reignited by Nereia. Bartley, the town’s storekeeper and skinflint, is the stereotypical petty-minded small-business man, whose colossal mediocrity is surpassed only by his xenophobia and latent fascistic sympathies, which are given expression on discovering Heinrich’s nationality and background. He finds in Major, if not overt support for his views, at least a tacit sympathy with his concerns about the supposed inability of foreigners to assimilate. Heinrich and Nereia’s clandestine relationship becomes the talk of the tiny outpost; and although Rick is not impervious to the gossip, he has noted the attraction between his much younger wife and the newcomer but resists issuing ultimatums or resorting to physical or verbal violence, instead reaffirming his love for her. Nereia chooses Rick’s “practical love” that is “built to last”.48

Gray has captured with some force the pervasive legacy of the ‘white Australia’ policy, still apparent today in relation to refugees or so-called illegal immigrants and how this is made manifest in social relations. The topicality inherent in revues and agit-prop, as well as some of the serious drama typical of New Theatre playwrights, is not as pervasive in Sky Without Birds, but its aesthetic qualities are still hamstrung by the lack of action. The play has the capacity to resonate with contemporary audiences because the prejudices exposed in Sky Without Birds still retain a certain social validity, but these concerns are not given adequate artistic expression through the characters. The xenophobia intrinsic to the ‘white Australia’ policy, removed in 1973, is usually revived, by both the establishment parties, during political crises. For instance, the fomenting of

48 Oriel Gray, ‘Sky Without Birds’, in Plays of the 50s, vol. 2, 141. 191

racial tensions to scapegoat refugees, asylum seekers and foreigners, especially those who supposedly refuse to assimilate, is usually a tactic utilised to divert the population from the more pressing issues of unemployment, inflation and environmental crises.

The Second World War exacerbated these tensions in Australia when the government rounded up Italians and Germans and placed them in detention centres, fuelling racist sentiment, while during the Cold War Australian xenophobia assumed the form of anti- communism, as communism was identified with foreign doctrines and ideologies.

Anyone suspected of harbouring communist sympathies was invariably denounced as a spy, saboteur and traitor. Anti-communist sentiment was zealously and vehemently promoted by the Menzies government, creating an atmosphere to almost equal the hysteria of the McCarthyite anti-communist witch hunts in the United States. Animated by a sense of social injustice and inequality, Gray gives expression to the racial tensions in this atmosphere in the dialogue between the Major and Heinrich:

Heinrich: If I thought it was because you believed me to be a Nazi, I would welcome your distrust. But you know, I think, that I am not. So why do you distrust me so?

Major: Nonsense, I—[Then in a burst] You were such a mixed bag, you lot. Communists, socialists, religious people, atheists—you never know what you’re getting. You could be any of those—or something else again. And, frankly, I think that the place for foreigners is in their own country. It takes too long to learn new ways. We can’t assimilate— 49

Agitating against the dominant ideology, Gray fortunately resisted the temptation to portray the Major as an outright reactionary: he is a gruff man with the utmost respect

49 Oriel Gray, ‘Sky Without Birds’, 110. 192

for authority but is, at bottom, a decent individual who merely expresses the prevalent temporal moods and sentiments. Peg, his wife, provides a counterpoint to the Major’s ambivalence, which expresses the political bias of the Cold War during the Menzies era, and which still retains some social relevance today:

Peg: That Heinrich seems a nice fellow. A bit shy...all inside himself...but nice... Must be hard to come to a strange country and start your life all over again.

Major: No one asked him to come, of course.

Peg: No, although we’re always saying we need people here, aren’t we?

Major: Selected immigrants...that’s different. We need a good type.

Peg: He seemed a good type to me. Of course, it’s too early to tell. He ought to be all right—he’s been in the concentration camp because he was against them.

Major: So he says.

Peg: Don’t you believe him?

Major: Yes...as a matter of fact, I do. But just the same, plenty of people who were against them wouldn’t be what I’d call the right types for out here.50

Gray’s intention to write a sensitive and critical portrayal of xenophobia notwithstanding, the limitations inherent in the play are entirely bound up with the residual CPA influence. For example, her depiction of the persecuted character is simplistic, rendering him more of a symbol of resistance than a living, breathing human being with all the contradictions and complexities that it implies. These limitations are

50 Oriel Gray, ‘Sky Without Birds’, 98. 193

expressed in the inconsistencies in Heinrich's characterisation. For example, his

‘Jewishness’ is emphasised merely by a change in diction and he is given to implausibly eloquent poetic turns of phrase, especially with Nereia, making his lapses into awkward immigrant idiom seem contrived. For instance, when he first arrives he claims to have learned English at university in Germany, “But learning a language so, and speaking it in the country of its origin, are very different attainments. Already I find so many terms, and idioms, and colloquialisms...they are quite beyond me”.51 However, two months later he employs poetic metaphor in an articulate denunciation of the iniquities against the Jewish diaspora, saying to Nereia “So useless. Should one add one’s clamour to the frantic shrill voices flung into the storm? The sooner we are silent, the better for us”.52

These shortcomings demonstrate Gray's attempt to reinforce her oppositional message about injustice and racism, but it is weakened by not having the main protagonist

Heinrich as a more developed character. He is drawn to ‘type’, functioning more as a symbol of resistance to oppression, emblematic of the play's themes. Leslie Rees points out these limitations, noting that “Gray’s constant implied need to push home her ideas on social injustice” is an impediment to her work, noting also that the contracted version of Sky Without Birds fared rather well as a radio production, unlike the stage version which he claims that despite the “sensitive writing and feeling” was “too sluggish a movement towards an outcome”.53 Gray explains some of the myriad

51 Oriel Gray, ‘Sky Without Birds’, 94. 52 Oriel Gray, ‘Sky Without Birds’, 113. 53 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 203. 194

difficulties she confronted in her attempts to overcome the encumbrance of the political influence on her work:

I was a child of my time and of my theatre, New Theatre, growing up in an Australia more isolated from the rest of the world than you can imagine today. I was seventeen when I came under the influence first of the Left Wing theatre and then the Communist Party...I felt a wonderful lack of constraint when writing Sky Without Birds since it was the first play I wrote after leaving the [Communist]Party. I still like it and might re-write it if a real chance of production came along.54

Dissenting from the status quo was not popular, and Gray’s indictment of society’s injustices should be viewed within that context, and despite its aesthetic limitations Sky

Without Birds avoids lapsing into dogmatic or dictatorial philosophising or rhetoric, reflecting instead an abiding humanism that sees in the flawed characters the potential for reform. Aside from the New Theatre productions, Sky Without Birds has never been professionally staged.

Gray’s next play, The Torrents met with critical success when it was joint winner of the

Playwrights Advisory Board Competition (PAB) in 1955 with Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. However, the shared prize proved to be a mixed fortune for

Gray: it failed to dislodge Gray’s playwriting from amateur status when it failed to pick up a professional production. The Doll was produced by the newly established

Elizabethan Theatre Trust and propelled into fame in Australia and England, while The

Torrents, which according to the judges was the “more complete” of the two plays, was

54 Oriel Gray, Connie Healy, Defiance, 166. 195

instead relegated to a footnote in the annals of Australian theatre history, virtually obliterated from the canon of Australian plays. The only productions The Torrents enjoyed was at the Adelaide New Theatre in 1957 and Melbourne New Theatre in 1958 followed with a radio broadcast on the ABC and in 1969 a television production and finally at the State Theatre Company in 1996. The play itself was not published until

Dale Spender included it in The Penguin Anthology of Australian Women’s Writing in

1988. In 1984 it was adapted to a musical comedy titled A Bit O’ Petticoat. The

Torrent’s fate gives a “false impression” of the development of Australian theatre between 1920 and 195555 and lends further credence to Campbell Howard’s assertion that “luck played a great deal in the success of the Doll. In fact, if I were Ray Lawler I would never henceforth take a ticket in Tatts. One does not get two lucky breaks in a lifetime”.56

Described as a Shavian comedy of manners by Gray57, she admits that she was seeking new horizons beyond the comfortable confines and “dedicated audience” of

New Theatre:

And so in a way I had to break away from this New Theatre tradition which was agit-prop to a degree. Well that’s putting it too forcibly, perhaps, but all working class characters were thought of as good

55 Oriel Gray, The Torrents (Sydney: Currency Press in Association with State Theatre Company of South Australia, 1996), viii. 56 Campbell Howard to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 25 May 1959, ‘Correspondence with, and about Katharine Susannah Prichard, Vance and Nettie Palmer’, Campbell Howard Collection, 672016/285/001. 57 Giulia Giuffrie, A Writing Life, 175. 196

and upper-class characters as bad. The Torrents was my first breakaway play. I had left the party by then.58

The Torrents is set in Australia in the 1890s. A three act play in a realist style, its

‘message’ is of a liberal persuasion, and not driven so much by party ideology. Its emphasis is female inequality and environmental concerns. Australian colonial history is also viewed from a perspective in The Torrents that diverges from the usual stereotype represented by miners or bush dwellers: it takes as its premise the ethical dilemmas confronting a group of journalists in a mining town that is nearing the end of the gold rush. The action takes place entirely in the office of the Argus newspaper run by Rufus Torrent and his journalist son Ben, in Koolgalla, a goldfields town. Advertising for an assistant, Rufus Torrent is aghast to discover that the J.G. Milford, whom he has employed on the basis of an application by letter, turns out to be a very female Jenny

Milford, who turns up for work. Feisty and independent yet feminine, Jenny represents the ‘New Woman’ (a phrase that is used several times throughout the play) who is determined to exercise her right to earn her living in what was then a strictly male profession. Her ‘New Woman’ status is commented upon by Ben who tells her admiringly “You’re an independent woman, not an imitation man...! And clever women have the advantage, every time...”59

Jenny’s acuity and perspicacity wins her Ben’s admiration and he falls in love with her although he is engaged to Gwynne, a childhood friend of whom he is fond but not

58 Katharine Brisbane, ‘Oriel Gray: The Art of Dedication’, the National Times, 13-18 September 1976 (Broadway, NSW), 26-27. 59 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 24. 197

passionate about. Their marriage was arranged by their parents but Kingsley Myers,

Ben’s friend, and Gwynne form an attachment and Gwynne, who recognises that Ben is carrying out a duty in marrying her, returns her engagement ring to him. In a manner befitting Jenny’s emancipated ‘New Woman’, Gwynne tells Rufus that her parents

“...are a little behind the times...They haven’t quite realised that the New Woman is so much more independent than the old!”60 and then asserts her independence to Ben, declaring“...And next time a marriage is arranged for me—I shall arrange it myself!”61

Jenny’s presence at the Argus is symbolic of imminent social change, both in the cause of the suffragette movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as well as the concerns with the environment decades later. Kingsley Myers, an idealistic young man, is on an environmental crusade. Recognising that gold is running out and gold mining, the basis of the town’s wealth, is being rendered obsolete, he wants the

Argus to support his scheme for a system to harness the rivers for irrigation to develop

Koolgalla into an agricultural town and addresses the doubtful and reluctant Argus directors:

Kingsley: ...You can’t plant gold gentlemen. Once it’s gone, the land lies dead and useless. But plant and water and harvest—put your work back into the land, and the land is grateful for it.62

His long-term perspective clashes with those of the paper’s directors, who see only a decline in their profits in such a scheme. Rufus is a civic-minded man who sees merit in

60 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 49. 61 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 53. 62 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 27. 198

the scheme but, having become conservative, baulks at overriding the directors.

However, the situation is taken out of Rufus’s hands when his son Ben, who supports

Myers’s scheme and seeks to assert his own independence away from his father’s control, writes an article which Jenny then publishes without editorial consent from

Rufus. This brings about the play’s denouement: Rufus rediscovers his Irish temper and independence and stands on principle against the directors who threaten to ruin him, telling them

Take it out, then—in fact, I’ll buy you out! And be damned to you all for a pack of money-grabbing, small minded, mean-soured pedlars, and the town—and the paper—well rid the lot of you.63

Jenny rejects Ben’s marriage proposal, and instead sets her sights on Rufus who is

“proud and stiff-necked and adult.”64 Animated by a spirited independence and emancipationist ideals, Jenny articulates her beliefs and aspirations, reflecting Gray’s humanist ideals:

But to live with the world—not to perish, but to work for it—that takes a man—or a woman! And if everything fails—love and religion, faith, hope and charity are proven lies, there is still something left that can make us go on! But I don’t know what it is, or how to find it.65

The artifice of the comedy is well defined, with lively dialogue and an engaging plot, although a little on the romantic idealist side. In contrast, the Doll, with its male protagonists emasculated by urban progress, and its idealised “youthful national virility

63 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 45-6. 64 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 57. 65 Oriel Gray, The Torrents, 34. 199

and bush masculinity”66 betrays a yearning for a bygone era. The Torrents, with its characterisation of female autonomy and issues of environmentally sustainable development, although set in the past, looks decidedly forward. Although spirited, the play has the tenor of a saga about it, and while female autonomy is a progressive aspiration, it was a theme dealt with by many writers in the nineteenth and twentieth century, well before 1955, such as Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm or any of Virginia Woolf’s novels to name only a few examples.

The play, however, did reflect Gray’s radicalism67 and implicit in a professional company undertaking to produce Gray’s play would have been a tacit acknowledgement and approval of her communist history. Few theatre companies would care to attract the suspicions of ASIO for harbouring communist sympathies, and the attendant controversy that that would court in a socially and politically conservative

Australia of the 1950s. The Torrents’ progressive element resides in its being one of the first and few, up to that point, to address the themes that it does in Australian dramaturgy, but that does not in and of itself imbue The Torrents with the necessary aesthetic qualities that would see the Torrents endure other than as curiosity piece.

Despite the ideology of political reformism that it espouses, the other flaws are to do with the characters’ lack of psychological depth. While the Doll looks to the past, it nevertheless does so with a profound sense of loss, which in turn expresses the insidious social transformation that progress and urbanisation engenders. Roo and

Barney’s very existence and their relationships are entirely dependent upon

66 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged, 24. 67 Leonard Radic, Contemporary Australian Drama (Blackheath, Australia: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2006), 25. Incidentally, The Torrents is the only one of Gray’s plays that Radic mentions in the entire overview of Australian drama. 200

maintaining their illusions as virile cane-cutters, a profession rendered obsolete, which lends their plight an element of pathos. No such sense of loss or profundity is evident in The Torrents, perhaps because Gray intended the play to be a comedy of manners in the Shavian mould68, so comparisons on the basis of sharing the PAB are perhaps somewhat futile and even unfair. Nevertheless, the Doll resonates with audiences more than The Torrents because it is emotionally more compelling, although ironically enough The Torrents, even today, retains its topicality. Gray explains the political reasons underlying the characterisation and structure of The Torrents:

To us communism had been a philosophy, a dogma. In The Torrents...I deliberately chose a conventional hero; but the play wouldn’t work out without three very imperfect, but I hope, charming, people who direct the hero’s life. With these three the play became a rebuttal of the idea I had lived with for so long, that life was clear- cut.69

Regardless of its limitations, The Torrents signifies a significant development for Gray, marking as it does a departure from the heavily prescribed themes of New Theatre and the CPA, and evinces Gray’s flair for dramatic dialogue and plot.





68 Gray acknowledges the Shavian influence, saying that, “The first thing I discovered about Shaw when I first started reading was that feeling that your brains had been taken out and shaken and brushed and you were thinking again”, Katharine Brisbane, The National Times. 69 Katharine Brisbane, ‘Oriel Gray: The Art of Dedication’, 27. 201

-*+,( -&&*

Ten years after leaving the CPA, Gray wrote Burst of Summer in 1959, and according to Gray this play “was rather different and has never been produced by a left theatre”.70

Its lack of party-ideological rigour was the reason New Theatre rejected Burst of

Summer which won the J.C. Williamsons–Little Theatre Guild play competition in 1959.

Burst of Summer is the only one of Gray’s plays to have been professionally produced when it was performed by the Melbourne Little Theatre in 1960 and it was Gray’s last play.71 Sick of “bashing her head against a brick wall”, she “ran out of steam”72 unsuccessfully trying for mainstream acceptance and turned to writing for television.

She was a scriptwriter for twelve years on the popular television series Bellbird. Gray’s marginalisation is attributed to her left-wing background73, as evidenced in some of the criticism she received from the mainstream media such as the Observer’s Madeleine

Armstrong who accuse Gray of exhibiting in Burst of Summer“...that mixture of crudity of sentimentality so characteristic of the social realist group of Australian writers”.74The lack of theoretical clarification and discourse on the fundamental difference between social realism and socialist realism75 only serves to entrench the tendency to blithely stereotype, and hence dismiss, politically committed Australian left wing writers without elaborating on the intrinsic aesthetic qualities of their work. Gray fits neatly into this

70 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 226. 71 Katharine Brisbane, Plays of the 60s, vol.1 (Sydney: Currency Press, 2000). 72 Gray interview with Michelle Arrow, 2 August 1995, unpublished sound recording loaned to me by Michelle Arrow. 73 Leonard Radic, Contemporary Australian Drama, 25. 74 Madeleine Armstrong, ‘Burst of Summer’, Observer, 3, no. 6 (19 March 1960): 13. 75 Cath Ellis—as cited previously in the Introduction to this thesis—explores the difficulty in defining socialist realism in the context of Australian writing in her essay ‘Socialist Realism in the Australian Literary Context: With Specific Reference to the Writing of Katharine Susannah Prichard’, Journal of Australian Studies, 54-55 (1997). 202

category and her contribution to the development of Australian theatre, spanning two decades, is belatedly being accorded some recognition.

Burst of Summer subverts the stereotype of the bush and outback idyll, depicting a town somewhere north of Australia, riven by racial and class tensions. The milk-bar run by Joe, an Italian migrant, is the place of congregation. Peggy, an Aboriginal girl who used to wash dishes at Joe’s milk bar, has been plucked from rural obscurity and propelled to stardom after a starring role in a film, which has promoted her by her tribal name of Mayrah. However, success is fleeting and commercial movies cannot provide a career for such a “specialised talent”76 and so she returns to the town where she takes a position as a domestic servant for Sally Blake, a rich pastoralist’s daughter.

Mayrah/Peggy and Don, an idealistic Aboriginal lawyer, have a long-standing romance: he loves her but she considers him too much of a martyr. Don is adamant that social progress can be achieved (a reconciliation so to speak) by appeals to reason, and strives to educate as well as mediate between the town’s Aborigines and the whites.

Clinton, a friend of Don’s, is a journalist visiting the town; an endearing and charming sophisticated ladies’ man, his lack of fidelity to any social cause is a foil to Don’s earnestness. His brief romance with Sally is undermined by her class position on the issue of Aborigines, igniting in him his egalitarian instincts. The bigoted Mervyn

Holmes, who is smitten with Sally but is out of her social league, has insinuated to

Sally that Mayrah and Clinton have been having an affair. She asks him to “strike a

76 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 314. 203

blow for her”. This he does by escalating his antagonism with Eddy, the young

Aborigine employed at Joe’s. Fomenting the existing social and racial tensions, he rallies behind him the town bigots. A fight outside Joe’s milk bar ensues and Mervyn cuts Eddy’s face, blinding him. The prospect of retaliation from the town’s Aborigines heightens tensions further.

The instinct to stay and fight for the cause of the Aborigines eludes Mayrah, who concludes that Don is too virtuous for her, and instead asks Clinton to take her back to the city with him when he leaves. Eschewing the enlightened sense of justice that inspires Don towards ideals of social reformism, Mayrah wants to succeed on her terms, explaining to Don why it is imperative for her to leave:

People like Mervyn Holmes and Sally Blake I can only hate—for what they are, for what they do to us. I couldn’t hide that and you’d see it and be extra good and understanding for both of us. Then I’d begin to hate you that you had to find excuses for me. I’ve got to be where I can stand up for myself, where I do what I decide. If it’s good, I’ve learned and if it’s bad—no excuses and I take what comes of it. 77

The dubious independence Mayrah aspires to is possible only to the extent that she accepts the status quo; the plight of Aborigines therefore is reduced to that of personal responsibility and not institutionalised racism. It also poses the question: why would the city be more hospitable for a young Aboriginal woman? A lack of polemic, evident in

Gray’s early plays while she was in the CPA, lends credibility to the characters’

77 Oriel Gray, ‘Burst of Summer’, Plays of the 60s, vol. 1, ed. Katharine Brisbane (Strawberry Hills: NSW: Currency Press, 2000), 48. 204

situations, but the notion that the city will provide Mayrah with opportunities is a little simplistic. Gray resolves this issue by having Clinton warn Mayrah that his views on marriage are unconventional and that if he “gets designs” on her they will be “evil”:

Clinton: ...And I won’t marry you. Not because you’re black—I think you know that. But because I can’t commit myself to what a marriage should be...

Mayrah: Who expects miracles? I’ve got things to do. See you in the next seat maybe. But you will ask me to marry you, Clinton. You’ll go down on your bended knees.78

The inevitable cynicism that is the by-product of institutionalised racial victimisation is epitomised by Mayrah, yet Gray provides a conventional and conservative solution to

Mayrah’s dilemma, which is not an aberration of party-ideological influence but, in a certain way conforms to its requirements for simplistic and optimistic resolutions. Rees sees in Gray’s depiction of the victimisation of Aborigines by whites the “ventilating” of

“truisms” and remarks that the play’s ending betrays an uncertainty on the part of the author about what she is trying to convey.79 The play nevertheless certainly challenges the depiction of Aborigines as mute bystanders to their plight or helpless against injustice such as portrayed by most of the Australian literature up to that point. The

‘correct’ depiction in terms of CPA and New Theatre ideology undoubtedly would require Mayrah to stand by Don and dedicate her life to serving the cause of Aboriginal peoples’ struggle for civil rights. Her defiance of such a prescriptive approach was no doubt the reason for New Theatre’s rejection of Burst of Summer and she insinuates as

78 Oriel Gray, ‘Burst of Summer’, 149. 79 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 314. 205

much when she refers to her decision to have Mayrah leave the town, saying “I knew the ‘party’ would think that she should have stayed and helped him in his work for his people..”.80

The play is based on the similar fate of Ngarla Kunoth, who as the Aboriginal star of the 1955 Australian film Jedda, was discarded by the film industry after the film’s success. Its theme of racial intolerance notwithstanding, with Burst of Summer Gray claims to have written “more a feminist play than an Aboriginal play” with Mayrah’s decision to leave the town an expression of “a woman’s right to decide about what she is going to do”.81Had We But World Enough, she adds, “is much more a play of protest about the treatment of aboriginal people”82 than Burst of Summer with its “fine line” feminism.83

Gray believes that her writing probably did not change enough after she left the CPA, and disagrees with claims by others that had she not come under CPA influence and written so much political material earlier in her life, she could have been a “very good writer”, conceding, however, that her writing did become “more refined” after she left.84Burst of Summer was considered for a professional production by the Melbourne

Theatre Company but was rejected on the grounds that “this is not the way the Koori

80 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 81 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 82 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 83 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 84 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 206

people want to see themselves now, so we won’t be putting it on”.85 A similar reply was provided by Malcolm Robinson of the Playbox Theatre who believed Gray had

“exaggerated the attitudes of the town concerning their treatment of aboriginal people” and that the “Kooris were too white”.86 It is an ironic situation when Gray, who endured the “stigma” of being a left-wing, politically committed writer whose plays have been rejected by the mainstream for their underlying political ideology, has a play rejected because it does not correspond with the ideology of race politics. Her experience in

Lismore convinced Gray that the issue of racism was more complex than simply ‘black versus white’, and as the idea for the play developed she devised Aboriginal characters that challenged the literary stereotype. She decided that in her depictions “all

Aborigines would not be selfless fighters for their people, unrecognised geniuses or noble savages. They would have their fair share of bludgers and villains and pretenders like any other slice of the world’s population”.87

The idea for the play, although not clearly defined, was fermenting while she was still in the CPA, but Gray was averse to discussing her thoughts for the play with New

Theatre, fearing that her politically “unorthodox” views would meet with recrimination, and result in a meeting with Wally Clayton, from the CPA Control Commission.88

In an interview with Giulia Giuffre, Gray alludes to the CPA’s strictures on writing and its impact on her own earlier work, saying that “by The Torrents and Burst of Summer I

85 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 86 Oriel Gray, Transcript of interview with Barbara Ann Harding. 87 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 195. 88 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 195. 207

was quite away from writing anything that was privately censored as to whether it was politically correct”.89

The schematic approach to depicting social life impacted upon Gray beyond her association with the CPA and New Theatre. Experimentation was not only frowned upon but actively discouraged in the post-war period and the dreary socialist realism inculcated in New Theatre writers by the CPA—resembling what Ernst Bloch described as a “third hand classicism”90does find expression at times in Gray’s work even in this later period.

Although New Theatre provided a platform for her playwriting, the narrow and prescriptive demands of the CPA prevented her from developing her talents beyond the political requirements of New Theatre. Her talent, evident in many of her plays, strains unsuccessfully against the circumscribed parameters imposed by the political ideology in New Theatre. Gray acknowledges that deference to party policy by New

Theatre impacted on her work, but nevertheless concedes that New Theatre provided a platform for those issues she considered important:

The plays I wrote, Lawson, Western Limit, Had We But World Enough, Sky Without Birds, The Torrents, Burst of Summer, have not proved lasting, were not memorable, but I did try to hold up a mirror to my times, and sometimes I think I caught a reflection that no other writer will get because it will never be just that way again. I am not

89 Giulia Giuffre, A Writing Life, 176. 90 Ernst Bloch, ‘Discussing Expressionism’ in Art in Theory 1900-1990, Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. (Malden, Massachussetts:Blackwell, 1998), 523. 208

ashamed of them. And I could not have done it without New Theatre.91

New Theatre, for Oriel Gray, was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it provided her with the opportunity, unavailable to women elsewhere in Australia, to forge a career in playwriting. However, the price she paid is that her plays, which she admits have not proved lasting or memorable, remained, to varying degrees, affected by the prescriptive attitudes to culture by the CPA and New Theatre. Public success eluded Gray and, defeated, she never wrote another play after Burst of Summer.

91 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 104. 209

   



('*'4'$'(/% '(-,( ,!&"'+,*&

I feel that theatre must, in the first instance, be entertainmentit must be this because people don’t go to the theatre with the object of being instructed. If while they are being entertained they are instructed, well I think this is good, provided the instruction doesn’t overpower the entertainment.1 Mona Brand

!*%1*+4=D@C:=DAD

Unlike Oriel Gray and Betty Roland who were animated by the social crises produced by the Depression in the 1920s and 30s and the concomitant rise of fascism, Brand, who worked as a copywriter and research officer, joined the CPA at the outset of the

Cold War in 1948. In terms of attitudes to and policies on culture by communist parties where they were in power such as Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union, the period 1948 to 1953 is assessed by Joanna Spassova-Dikova as the most

severe Stalinist years in which works of art were to mirror the hierarchical order of a social structure in which the actants were the Party Leaders, the Party, the heroes and the masses. The various mimetic art forms had to reproduce the simple social role system and to flood society with such basic slogans as “the leading role of the

1 Hazel De Berg and Brand Mona, Mona Brand interviewed by Hazel De Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection [sound recording]National Library of Australia, 1983. 210

party,” “eternal loyalty to the party,” “the working-class, a gravedigger of capitalism,” “the masses: the authors of history,” “in the service of the people” and “struggle against enemies and oppressors.2

Attempting to enforce such doctrinaire approaches to cultural work in Australia posed certain difficulties for the CPA and New Theatre, as Australia was entering a period of economic prosperity through which it was governed, for more than two decades, by a conservative government. Even more problematic for New Theatre and the CPA was the Cold War anti-communism prevalent in this period. Audiences in Australia, and in

New Theatre specifically, were therefore not only cautious about being associated with communists, they were not very eager either to be instructed on the wonders of socialism in the Soviet Union of Stalin, or entertained by the heroic exploits of the ‘Dear

Leader’ of the ‘Socialist Fatherland.’ At New Theatre, however, the vastly different social conditions in Australia were considered inconsequential and art had to remain a

‘weapon’ in the class struggle.

Mona Brand joined New Theatre in 1954 after travelling to England and Europe and was one of New Theatre’s more prolific writers for over two decades. This chapter will discuss the extent of CPA influence on Brand’s work with New Theatre by examples of direct party interference in determining New Theatre productions and in the directives issued to artists through textual readings of Brand’s plays to demonstrate how the party line is refracted through the artistic medium of drama in New Theatre, and through

2Joanna Spassova-Dikova, ‘Utopian Fathers, Dystopian Systems’, in History of the Literary Cultures of East–Central Europe, vol. IV: Types and Stereotypes, eds. Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer 180 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010). 211

Brand’s own personal observations recorded in interviews, biographies and articles she has written.

When Brand joined the CPA in the late 1940s the CPA was seeking to consolidate its dwindling membership in the face of the official anti-communism zealously promoted by the Menzies government. Surveillance, persecution and infiltration of the CPA and its organisations compelled members and sympathisers to adopt more secretive methods of conducting party work. This atmosphere produced something of a siege mentality within the CPA and engendered in New Theatre a more prescriptive and regimented approach to cultural matters in order to limit the influence of outside

‘bourgeois’ forces. More relevant, though, were the policies of the Moscow bureaucracy on culture under conditions where the existence of the Soviet Union was under threat from a revitalised and economically powerful US and in which nuclear war was a distinct possibility. The protection of the USSR—the defence of socialism in a single country—was the primary concern of communist parties everywhere including

Australia. The result was that party dogma became more entrenched and any semblance of liberal attitudes towards freedom of artistic expression was soon almost totally eradicated. Theatre historian Leslie Rees, who had enjoyed some success with

New Theatre’s production of his play Lalor of Eureka and Sub-Editor’s Room, provides an apt description of the prevailing narrow and doctrinaire approach to art in the CPA:

The Communist Party was not my cup of tea. The party’s practices were short of acceptability for me on at least two major counts. First, they seemed to rely on political clichés and mechanical, unargued simplifications and slogans, with slavish obedience to the foreign leaders who handed them out. More seriously, but related to this, they gave no guarantee of a right to flexible artistic and intellectual 212

variations, freedom of individual utterance and the printed word, and these rights were all-important to me.3

Brand, less categorical about CPA attitudes, also comments on party narrowness and the sectarian dogma imposed on New Theatre, but accepts this as a by-product of the struggle for a greater good:

At its best it has been able to generate a spirit of excitement and collective enthusiasm, especially in times of crisis when a play’s social or political importance has called for all-out efforts from the whole membershipOn the other hand, elements of narrowness and sectarianism sometimes alienated either temporarily or permanently some of its devoted followers. There was sometimes a failure to listen to other people’s points of view, especially if any actual or supposed aspect of the Party “line” was questioned.4

It was in this repressive political and cultural atmosphere that Brand sought to channel her creative energies towards the “instruction” and entertainment of the working class through her plays. For her part, she rejects the definition of her plays as overtly political, considering them instead as “party political but socially aware plays”.5

3 Leslie Rees, Hold Fast to Dreams: Fifty Years in Theatre, Radio, Television and Books (Chippendale, NSW: Alternative Publishing Cooperative Ltd, 1982), 169-70. 4 Mona Brand, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: New Theatre’s Formative Years 1932-1955 and their Influence on Australian Drama’, Australian Drama 1920-1955, Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September 1-4, 1984 (Armidale, NSW: University of New England, Department of Continuing Education, 1986), 7. 5 Iris O’Loughlin, Marjorie Fitzgerald, Mona Brand, Nancy Wills, ‘Four Australian Women Playwrights’, Australian Feminist Studies, 21 (1995): 138. 213

The definition of the ideologically driven or politically committed playwright is a highly contentious issue, fraught with tension arising out of the multifarious views about the role of politics in art, the role of art in society itself and the responsibilities, if any, of the writer. Some of the New Theatre productions of the 1930s and 1940s, while lacking artistic refinement and professional treatment, nevertheless evinced a vigorous and spirited attitude that more than satisfied its audience, which was usually comprised of

CPA and New Theatre members and sympathisers. Brand’s plays are something of a barometer charting the change in direction in the late 1940s and 1950s within New

Theatre, which itself was inextricably bound up with the changing policies and alliances of the CPA itself. In the 1930s and up to the entry of the Soviet Union into World War

Two, New Theatre plays usually deployed revolutionary rhetoric, anti-imperialism and other radical slogans, while from around 1941–2 until about 1948 the plays reflected the war-time co-operation between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, with democratic rather than socialistic ideals enunciated.

In the early 1950s nationalism and Australian nationalist traditions such as trade- unionism were ideas that were co-opted by the CPA and incorporated into New

Theatre plays by the theatre’s playwrights. In linking with the unions and shoring up support from them (such as the Waterside Workers Federation whose premises New

Theatre utilised for close to a decade in the 1950s when they had no permanent residence) New Theatre felt obligated to ensure that no play they produced ran the risk of offending these organisations. With CPA members at the head of a number of unions in the post-war era, the party’s orientation to these social layers is reflected in

New Theatre’s choice of themes. For example, in 1951 New Theatre management sent invitations to the Painters and Dockers Union, the Seamen’s Union, Telegraph’s Union

214

and Federated Clerks, among others, to attend their performances and requesting the allocation of time at union meetings for visiting New Theatre members to discuss upcoming plays.6 The Soviet Union resumed its anti-imperialist rhetoric from the mid-

1950s. National liberation movements, predominantly backed by most communist parties, began to emerge and were viewed sympathetically by many within the CPA and New Theatre. Brand explores these themes in Strangers in the Land.

Brand’s plays are primarily plot driven, yet her approach assumes a more humanitarian, rather than overtly politically didactic, tone when dealing with issues of imperialism, racism and even gender politics. However, as Ken Harper notes,

“ideological commitment” was a fundamental tenet of New Theatre and every writer was expected to bear this in mind.7 In the case of Brand, the tendentiousness is there, not necessarily in the excessive use of political rhetoric, but in the manner in which her dramas tend to focus, or provide, the ‘correct communist’ solution to the dilemmas confronting the characters. This is borne out by an assessment of Brand’s plays as well as the private political criticisms made by New Theatre of the depiction of characters in some of her plays.

6 New Theatre Records 1914-1991, MLMSS6244, Box 13. 7 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre: The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne 1935-1983’, Meanjin 43, no. 1 (March 1984), 63. 215

Although much of her experience with New Theatre is discussed in her autobiography

Enough Blue Sky: An Autobiography by an Unknown Well Known Playwright8, unsavoury aspects which reflect poorly on the CPA are only occasionally vaguely alluded to, but many details are curiously omitted. The title, however, is apt. Brand believes that the discrimination she experienced as a playwright is a response to her politics rather than her gender: “Politically more than as a womanBut politically it was being associated with New Theatre”.9

Brand came to the attention of Christine Tilley who discovered a collection of three of

Brand’s plays in a bookshop in the late 1960s and proceeded in the following years to chart Brand’s literary output. The result was ‘Mona Brand: A Checklist 1935–1980.’10

Interest was generated from academics and researchers including Susan Pfisterer,

John McCallum, Gaye Poole, Iris O’Loughlin and Michelle Arrow who have dealt with

Brand’s relationship with New Theatre and the CPA.11

8 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky. 9 An Interview with the Author of Enough Blue Sky: The Autobiography of an Unknown Well- Known Playwright, http://www.fastbooks.com.au/intermb.html (accessed 23 September 2009). 10 Australian Literary Studies 10, no. 1 (May 1981): 117-27. 11 Gaye Poole, ‘A very humanitarian type of socialism’; John McCallum, Belonging: Australian Playwriting in the Twentieth Century (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2009); John McCallum, ‘Rattling the Manacles: Genre and Nationalism in the Neglected plays of the Howard Campbell Collection 1920-1955’, Unemployed at Last!: Essays on Australian literature to 2002 for Julian Croft, Ken. A. Stewart, Shirley Walker, eds. (Armidale, NSW: University of New England, Centre for Australian Language and Literature Studies, 2002); Susan Pfisterer, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’, Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself, Xavier Pons, ed. (Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2002); Susan Pfisterer, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women, Identity and the New Theatre’, Playing with Ideas: Australian Women Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the Sixties, Susan Pfisterer, Carolyn Pickett, eds.(Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 1999); Susan Pfisterer, Tremendous Worlds—Australian Women’s Drama1890-1960 (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 1999); Susan Pfisterer, ‘Playing with the Past—Towards a Feminist Deconstruction of Australian Theatre Historiography’, Australasian Drama Studies, no. 23 (October 1993); Christine Tilley, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: Perspectives on 216

Brand’s “unknown playwright” status stems from her isolation from mainstream theatre, her reputation having been largely confined to New Theatre audiences and those who were involved in left-wing movements and causes in Australia.12John McCallum’s overview of Brand’s career attests to this “unknown” status, referring to Brand as one of the most “successful and unfairly neglected of all twentieth-century Australian playwrights”.13 Her plays were the most “successful Australian plays ever written”—not in Australia where her talent is only belatedly and grudgingly accorded some accolades, but in the former Soviet Bloc and China.14 Strangers in the Land is one of her early plays to meet with success abroad including in London, but most of her plays were regularly produced, as well as published, in the former Soviet Union, the Stalinist

Eastern Bloc countries as well as in India and China throughout the 1950s and

1960s.15 A measure of the status accorded to Brand in the Eastern Bloc as a politically committed writer is given by the invitation extended to her from the Consul-General of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Dr Vasil Hudak, to a reception at the Consulate

General in Dover Heights in Sydney in 1984 to mark the occasion of the fortieth

Mona Brand’s Isolation from Mainstream Australian Theatre’, Australian Drama 1920-1955: Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September 1-4, 1984 (Armidale, NSW: University of New England, Dept. of Continuing Education, 1986); Christine Tilley, ‘Mona Brand: A Checklist 1935-1980’, Australian Literary Studies 10, no.1 (May, 1981); Michelle Arrow, Upstaged. 12 Reinforcing her unknown status is an anecdote she recalls about a production of her play Strangers in the Land in the 1970s or 1980s by University of Sydney students who ran a competition offering free tickets to the play to anyone who could name the play’s location and the author. Brand phoned them and to the students’ embarrassment identified herself. When asked by Brand where they had found the play and why they had not sought her permission, they replied “Umwe thought you wereum” Brand answered ‘dead?’ ‘No’ he said, ‘We thought you might have defected”. They had found the play in a Russian publication in the Fisher library and presumed the rest. Transcript of interview with Mona Brand with Iris O’Loughlin and Kerry Kilner, Mona Brand Papers (uncatalogued) ML1011/73 Box 6. 13 John McCallum, Belonging: Australian Playwriting in the Twentieth Century, 70. 14 John McCallum, Belonging, 71. 15 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged; Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism: An Interview with Mona Brand’, 3. 217

anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising.16 Because of her confirmed communist convictions, Brand, like Prichard before her, was escorted around Moscow in 1953 by interpreter Oksana Krugerskaya, who had also been Frank Hardy’s escort.

Krugerskaya was attached to the Soviet Writers Union in Moscow and was responsible for accompanying foreign writers everywhere as well as pointing out the achievements of Soviet society. Brand’s visit to the Soviet Union was part of a six week tour of central

Asia as guest of the Union of Soviet Writers, visiting not only Moscow but Leningrad and Stalingrad. She was entertained almost every night with ballet, opera, circus, puppet theatre, contemporary drama, cinema, and films.17

Brand’s relationship with New Theatre began before she joined the CPA and, although she was anti-war, she was less of a firm and committed political socialist activist than

Jean Devanny and Prichard. Brand explains that “When I joined the Communist Party it was not so much because I agreed with Karl Marx (of whom I had read little) as because I felt he and his followers agreed with me”.18

Although Brand considered war an “obscenity”, she was nevertheless lacking in any firm political convictions, having adopted an anti-war stance through reading Siegfried

Sassoon’s poetry when younger.19 Her political understanding, she claims, was “almost

16 Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 17 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky (Sydney NSW: Tawny Pipit Press, 1995), 161-164. 18 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 100. 19 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 90. 218

nil” and so events such as the 1939 Stalin–Hitler non-aggression pact, that disoriented many communists and their sympathisers, left Brand unaffected.20

Like many other writers and artists, Brand was attracted to the variety of the left- leaning literary groupings that emerged during the early 1940s within the more radical intelligentsia. One of these was the Melbourne Realist Writers Group, another CPA initiative, which she joined just before the end of the Second World War. Members included Frank Hardy, Max Brown and . The group had a “declared socialist and working class stance”21 and also went on to produce the left-wing journal

Overland.22Her collection of early poems was read aloud at one of their meetings.

Experiencing for the first time the judgement of “committed writers”, she recalls the discomfort her “reactionary”23 poetry caused:

As the reading progressed I was aware of those sitting each side of me moving restlessly, sighing and groaning. When it was over one of them shook his head and looked at me sadly. Later I was gently but firmly told it was a good thing that I had stopped writing that sort of stuff. I didn’t argue but I didn’t agree. My private feeling was akin to one I’d had not long before when I’d heard these new friends describing Tchaikovsky as “Reactionary”. I didn’t agree with that either.24

20 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 91. 21 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 107. 22 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism: An Interview with Mona Brand’, 4. 23 Gaye Poole, ‘A very humanitarian type of socialism: an interview with Mona Brand’, 110. 24 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism: An Interview with Mona Brand,’ 109. 219

According to David Milliss, who knew her in New Theatre, Brand did not always give in and could be very stubborn about altering her plays to suit the party line.25 The appeal of writing “socially valuable art”26 may explain why Brand remained with New Theatre for so long. It is also possible that she was unable to interest other theatre companies to which she had submitted scripts because of the anti-communist bias during the Cold

War when New Theatre suffered a media boycott. New Theatre was her sole outlet.

Seemingly undaunted by her experience with the Realist Writers’ attitude to her poetry, she perhaps naively underestimated the influence that the CPA exerted on writers and artists. Clearly, neither the cause of enlightenment by decree nor the party line could be found in Brand’s early poems, now included in a collection called Coloured

Sounds.27 One of her early collections, Wheel and Bobbin28, was written between 1928 and 1938 and published with a foreword by Dame . These poems evoke images of European, or rather English, gardens and landscapes; places that Brand, at that point, had never seen or visited. While there is an element of vibrancy in the poetry’s imagery, it is hampered by its overtly imitative quality, typical of youthful poetry, and is influenced by Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred

Owen, Walter de La Mare, Edna St Vincent Millay and many others. Some of her poems, which appeared in Dawnfire, a selection of modern Australian poets, garnered

25 Betty and David Milliss interviewed by me on January 2010 at their home in Concord, Sydney, NSW. 26 Jerome Levy, Paul Mortier, Pat Bullen, New Theatre: 15 years of Production (Sydney: New Theatre, 1948), np. 27 Mona Brand, Coloured Sounds (Potts Point, Sydney, NSW: Tawny Pipit Press, 1997). Coloured Sounds includes a selection of poems previously published in Wheel and Bobbin (1938) including ‘Silver Singing’ (1940) and ‘Lass in Love’ (1946) as well as other poems written since 1946. 28 Mona Brand, Wheel and Bobbin (Sydney, NSW: Deaton and Spencer, 1938). 220

favourable reviews, with one critic commenting in 1942 that “Mona Brand is another young poet with a very sure touch, a gift of wit, a sense of paradox and a sharp eye for patterns”.29 These were qualities that were to be given expression in her satires in the

1960s for New Theatre. In general the poems reflect the poet’s immaturity in some of the excessive lyricism. The most sophisticated in the collection is Forgetting, an anti- war poem. Modernist and written in free verse, it is stylistically polished with Sassoon’s and Owen’s influence clearly evident.

Given the response to her poems by the Realist Writers it is perhaps just as well that they had not read her initial attempt at playwriting, which they would most likely have dismissed as indulgent nonsense. The play, a one-act comedy called First Aid was written in 1940 for the Australian Red Cross and won first prize in a competition.

Encouraged by friends to write a full-length play after her success in this venture,

Brand was initially reluctant because there were no theatres that were producing

Australian plays. Mirroring Oriel Gray’s first foray into playwriting and discovery of New

Theatre, a friend informed her of New Theatre’s existence and that “They occasionally put on plays by Australians, they’re almost the only theatre that does”.30 Poetry was relegated to a hobby when Brand began to prioritise playwriting from 1948 onwards31 when Here Under Heaven, an anti-racism play set in rural Australia, was taken up by

New Theatre. According to Brand, playwriting afforded her the ability to be “objective after being fairly subjective in what I was writing in the way of verseI found I liked

29 The Australian Highway, 16 April 1942 (31) in Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 30 Transcript of Interview with Mona Brand, with Iris O’Loughlin and Kerry Kilner, Mona Brand papers ML1011/73, Box 6. 31 Mona Brand, Coloured Sounds, 3. 221

dealing with character. And I also found that it gave me a feeling I enjoyed of pushing myself out rather than looking in, and I particularly liked the structural work needed”.32

Brand’s reputation among the left-wing was restored by the critical acclaim accorded to the New Theatre production of her play Here Under Heaven. Frank Hardy had read the play and in 1947 suggested that she submit it to New Theatre. It was just prior to her departure to London33 in 1948 that Brand was approached by a New Theatre member and encouraged to join the CPA, which she promptly did. Brand spent five years travelling between Britain, Europe, Hungary and the Soviet Union. Underestimating the influence the CPA would exert on her artistic development, Brand believed that “the things I didn’t agree with I thought at the time were unimportant”.34

Here Under Heaven is markedly different from First Aid, which was a gently humorous and rather frivolous play about a group of women preparing to take their first-aid exams. Here Under Heaven, a conventional three-act play with realistic settings and dialogue, is Brand’s first full-length drama and was produced by Melbourne New

Theatre in 1948 despite the fact that some communists considered it “bourgeois”.35 A critic from the Melbourne Herald in 1948 commented that Here Under Heaven “is worthy of production by some enterprising commercial management”.36 The play was

32 Iris O’Loughlin, ‘A Bit of Ingenuity’, 110. 33 Transcript of interview with Mona Brand, with Iris O’Loughlin and Kerry Kilner, Mona Brand Papers ML1011/73, Box 6. 34 Iris O’Loughlin, ‘A Bit of Ingenuity: Mona Brand’, 110. 35 The New Years 1932—, 59. 36 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 114. 222

also highly commended by other mainstream newspapers such as Melbourne’s The

Age, The Herald and The Argus among others.37

Set in a sheep station in Queensland in 1942, Here Under Heaven has a cast of characters which is a collection of Australian stereotypes polarised into positive and negative groups, with most having an ideological function to fulfil. It looks at the racism of the Australian squattocracy, embodied in Mrs Hamilton, the matriarchal widow and owner of the station who is a xenophobic and conservative snob, the epitome of all the evils of the British Empire. Her snobbery extends to having a room called the Duke’s

Room, because the Duke of York spent one night there in 1901. One of her sons,

Peter, has fathered a child with one of the local Aborigines who camp nearby, and, despite Mrs Hamilton’s awareness of her grandchild among them, she orders Mr

Reynolds, the overseer, to move the “dirty blacks” away from her land.38 When

Reynolds refuses to send them away, saying “it would be murder in a drought”, Mrs

Hamilton, indifferent to their plight, responds “Let them die”.39

To her consternation, a young jillaroo (instead of the jackaroo they had been expecting) Jill Ramsay, arrives to work on the station, and an attraction of sorts develops between her and Mrs Hamilton’s other son, Richard. Her older son John is fighting in Malaya. Having established Mrs Hamilton’s appalling character, and the divisions within the household, the drama begins to unfold when John’s wife Lola, a

37 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 114. 38 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 14. 39 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 14. 223

war bride they have yet to meet, arrives. Lola, to Mrs Hamilton’s horror, is Chinese.

She is a nurse and writes poetry but the matriarch is impervious to her qualities; her immediate concern is how to explain this situation to her equally bigoted neighbours.

Lola embodies the ‘progressive’ woman: she is noble, humanitarian and espouses high ideals, juxtaposed to the narrow provincial outlook of the parochial Mrs Hamilton. The theme of racism is underscored by the democratic ideals dominating the play. These ideals are an affirmation of CPA policy of support for the Second World War as a struggle between fascism and democracy. This ideology finds expression throughout the play, such as when Lola makes reference to John’s democratic ideals and when

Reynolds articulates his support for the war, saying that although he is indeed childless

“I can still feel like a father. And all of them are my sons that are fighting this war to get a better world, God help them”.40

Janet Gibson aptly notes that “the articulation of Brand’s politics sometimes dictates their characterisation”41 This is true in the case of Mrs Hamilton, whose rampant xenophobia is a too simplistic depiction of the squattocracy. In making Lola Chinese,

Brand has obviated the need to develop her character beyond that of the ‘good’ and

‘noble’ communist: she is the embodiment of the enlightened and democratically minded communist and functions as a progressive counterfoil to Mrs Hamilton’s noxious and anachronistic views.

40 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 34. 41 Janet Gibson, Mona Brand: The Marginalisation of an Australian Playwright, MA thesis, 20 November 1996, Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 17. 224

The democratic ethos is also conveyed through the absent John who is invoked by the presence of Lola. However, Mrs Hamilton does not believe it possible for John to have married Lola for reasons other than idealistic, because, as she explains to her,

“Australian boys very rarely marry Chinese”.42 Lola’s announcement that she is pregnant with John’s child does not mollify Mrs Hamilton, who refuses to have “half caste children”43 in her house when entreated by her son to let her Aboriginal grandchild live with them. Instead, she continues devising ways of sending Lola away to the city. The household is divided on the issue, but finally Lola reveals what she really came to tell—that John is dead. Up to this point John’s whereabouts have been rendered something of an irrelevance as the dialogue has been dominated by Mrs

Hamilton’s obsessive racism; the announcement, however, provides the basis for the conciliatory resolution. On hearing of his death, Mrs Hamilton despairs that she has had no “word” from John, whereupon Lola gives her John’s last letter. Brand has produced a simplified schema, revealing supposedly conflicting ideologies through the creation of characters that embody those ideals.

John’s death produces an improbable denouement: Mrs Hamilton immediately, without any inner struggle, undergoes an abrupt transformation in attitude towards Lola, effectively reversing a possible lifetime’s prejudice in an instant. In a grandiloquent gesture, she declares “My mind is clear. I must do what John says. I must go to Lola.

42 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 25. 43 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 37. 225

She may be needing me”.44 The resolution articulates the triumph of Lola and John’s social and political outlook over Mrs Hamilton’s anachronistic world view. The lack of artistic verisimilitude in this scenario is a result of forcing the conclusion to a predetermined simplistic schema, a ‘correct’ conciliatory message and an optimistic resolution typical of socialist realism. Lacking in all subtlety and nuance, the effect is to instruct, rather than sensitise. The main character, Mrs Hamilton, lacks complex individuality: she is too much of an abstraction to be convincing and remains something of a caricature.

Here Under Heaven’s schema is predicated on the “moral/political virtue”45 of the

‘progressive’ protagonists, John and Lola. It is therefore “no less crucial that the protagonists assume their correct functions within the plot than that they appear to be emblematic of particular virtues”.46 The road to political consciousness, or rather the

“normative progression from dark to light”47, occurs by substituting the war hero son for the “father” as the positive hero. John is characterised to fulfill both functions of “‘father’

(stern/loving) and ‘son’ (hot-headed and spontaneous)”.48 John defies bourgeois—and therefore capitalist—convention by falling in love with a Chinese woman, who is also a revolutionary. John’s actions and his heroic death in the ‘people’s war’ alters Mrs

Hamilton’s social consciousness and she too passes from the ‘dark into the light.’

Although not of proletarian background, as required by socialist realism, the notion of the squattocracy becoming enlightened corresponds with the formulaic functions of

44 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 47. 45 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism without Shores’, 47. 46 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism without Shores’, 47. 47 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism without Shores’, 28. 48 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism without Shores’, 41. 226

socialist realism that can be applied to the Australian context: Mrs Hamilton and her family have working class origins, probably as convicts from England. Their petty- bourgeois status is redeemed in Here Under Heaven according to specific Australian traditions of historical development and gentrification of the working class: the

Hamiltons, therefore can pass from darkness of bourgeois ideology into the light of socialist ideals.

The play’s other weakness is its extreme topicality—the one character who embodies a nation’s prejudices and nothing more, is too narrow and limited to compensate for the lack of dynamics inherent in this socio-political family drama. However, the play gained impressive reviews and was placed first in the Ballarat South Street competition.49 Yet a significant professional theatre in Australia at the time rejected Here Under Heaven, not for its lack of dramatic or aesthetic merit but because absurdly and incredibly they claimed that “there is no colour problem in Australia”50, rendering unviable a commercial production. Here Under Heaven draws on the policies of institutionalised racism to enunciate the issue of racism, and Brand’s own curiosity about Chinese women refugees in Australian provided a point of conflict around which she based her characters.51

49 Connie Healy, Defiance, 155. 50 Christine Tilley, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: Perspectives on Mona Brand’s Isolation from Mainstream Australian Theatre’, 12. In Brand’s archived and as yet un- catalogued papers, Brand states that the ‘significant’ theatre critic is J.C. Williamson, Transcript of interview with Mona Brand and Iris O’Loughlin, Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 51 Brand says: “I knew Les Davey for a while in the 1940s. He was a member of New Theatre that I had not yet joined. Hesuggested I try a full-length one [play] with the New in mindWhen I mentioned being interested in Chinese young women (refugees) I’d seen in Melbourne streets dressed in cheongsams and wondered about their backgrounds, Les suggested I should think about this as a possible starting point for a play. During the next few 227

Despite the lack of commercial success in Australia, Here Under Heaven had wide currency overseas: the play ran in the German Democratic Republic for ten years without ceasing.52 In England the play was considered unsuitable for the London stage because the Chinese and Aboriginal themes would presumably not resonate with

British audiences.53 Asked to make it about American Negroes instead, Brand refused and when it failed to generate any further interest in London, including the Unity

Theatre which had an ethos similar to New Theatre, she eagerly grasped the opportunity to have the play professionally produced in Hungary when she was there for a peace congress in the 1950s. Yet, even in socialist Hungary, the play’s resolution was thought to lack the necessary revolutionary vigour. The Hungarians altered the ending to have Lola return to China to participate in the revolution there.54 Brand, who claims to regret her decision to agree to the changes55, says “I must admit I didn’t much care for this alteration, but I also have to admit that after my struggles in London over this play, and more recently over ‘Strangers’ I was a bit tired of argument”.56

Brand explains the dilemma faced by artists who attempted to conform to CPA and

New Theatre criteria for positive working-class depictions, saying that:

weeks, with Les’ encouragement and a few helpful suggestions about sheep station life, I began to rough out a plot. The theme of racism was an obvious one for both of us, and definitely for me, aware of its value not only for content but also for conflictThe play went through several drafts, one of which I called ‘Lola.’ It was not until I’d joined the Realist Writers and they read it and recommended it to new Theatre that it was produced there in 1948 just before I left for England”, Connie Healy, Defiance, 154-5. 52 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism: An Interview with Mona Brand’, 9. 53 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 158. 54 Iris O’Loughlin, ‘A Bit of Ingenuity’, 111. 55 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism: Interview with Mona Brand’, 5. 56 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 157. 228

Another narrowness was the tendency at one time to regard as ‘anti- working class’ any play that failed to show the worker in a favourable light. In some ways this was an understandable reaction to the then wide-spread practice in so many theatres of showing working people always as stupid, poorly educated servants. But for the dramatist anxious to explore complexities of character, irrespective of class, it could have been a damaging restraint.57

The apologia for this ‘narrowness’ would be unnecessary in an environment in which artists were encouraged to write unencumbered by party-political imperatives, which in the case of New Theatre was clearly not the case. Brand underestimates the impact this type of diktat had on her own writing:

Unfamiliar with the working class I peopled my anti-capitalist, anti- imperialist plays with people I knew—those of the middle class. It was my way of implying the socialist solution, in which I continue to believe.58

The implication in the statement is that as a writer writing about her own social class, she was able to overcome the limitations imposed on other writers who were of, or who wrote about, the proletariat. Brand seems to underestimate, or at least downplay, the deleterious impact such ideology could have on her work and her claim that it posed few problems for her is not entirely true, as discussion of her later play Strangers in the

Land will attest. However, in her autobiography Brand contrasts socialist realism with

57 Mona Brand, ‘A Writer’s thirty-six years in Radical Theatre: New Theatre’s Formative Years 1932-1955 and Their Influence on Australian Drama’, 7. 58 Mona Brand, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: New Theatre’s Formative Years 1932-1955 and their Influence on Australian Drama’, 7. 229

social realism, claiming that, despite the difference, inherent taboos were present for communists that determined what and how they should write about social phenomena.

Brand says:

For example, the portrayal of certain upper class characters as victims rather than as villains was generally unacceptable, with some other people, for example, old swaggies, migrants, Aborigines and shop stewards always having to be treated sympathetically. Inherent in this attitude was the desire to redress the usual stereotyping of such people, but genuine realism was sometimes the loser.59

In any case, challenging the party line would probably have resulted in her plays being jettisoned by New Theatre and would have diminished her chances of having any plays produced at all anywhere, as at the height of the Cold War no mainstream theatre would have staged a play with a left-wing slant by a known communist writer.

Another aspect of social life that writers were previously encouraged to criticise, both in the USSR and in the CPA, was religion. But this too underwent a reversal. The

Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s attitude to and policy on religion was of a piece with all its oscillating policies: they were based on what was politically expedient to advance the bureaucracy’s interests. For example, the suppression of religion after almost ten years was reversed during the Popular Front period and again during the

Second World War. The Popular Front policy could brook no criticism of religion,

59 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 191. 230

declaring such views sectarian and, as Jeff Sparrow notes “every Popular Front platform boasted a progressive parson.”60

Denzil Dean Harber, writing in 1945, exposes the rationale behind the party’s change in attitude in the Soviet Union after the German invasion of the USSR:

The ‘Society of Militant Atheists’ had built up a huge publishing concern which in ten years had published 1,700 books and issued magazines with a circulation of some 43 million copies. The whole undertaking was closed down on the grounds of a ‘paper shortage’. At the same time school-textbooks were revised and anti-religious passages removed. Anti-religious tests for the Army and Civil service were also abolished.61

The CPA adopted similar attitudes as demonstrated in Brand’s query regarding the advisability of giving publicity in Tribune to a book given its “strong anti-Catholic” stance. She feared it might offend some Tribune and trade union readers.62 The play

60 Jeff Sparrow, Communism: A Love Story (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007), 241. 61 ‘Religion in the Soviet Union II’, Workers International News (November 1945), http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/harber/1945/rel02.htm (Accessed 9 October 2009). Harben also details the support of the previously savagely repressed Orthodox church for the war effort at this time when Stalin needed the church to mobilise and motivate the people, and the joy of the priests as they hailed Stalin and sent money in support of defence of the ‘fatherland’. One example is a Leningrad Orthodox priest who writes to Stalin that 3,182,143 roubles have been subscribed by believers in his diocese alone, to which they are adding another 500,000. By September 1943, there was no longer a separation of church and state after a council for the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was established under the jurisdiction of the Council of Peoples’ Commissars. Christians were not alone in their enthusiasm for the war effort; Jewish and Muslim clergy also gave freely and lent their support. Stalin cynically continued to allow religious believers freedom of worship—until the war was won, when the repression of Christians and others resumed 62 Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 7. 231

Cannibal Carnival by Herbert Hodge was also expunged from New Theatre because of its derisory treatment of religion.

Artistic integrity is an essential and crucial component of a writer’s work and few willingly edit or amend their work to accommodate the needs of an audience or publisher. Refusing to alter her work to suit English audiences, Brand nevertheless appeased the Hungarian socialists. Her comments about the experience are a contrast to the statement which appeared in a Hungarian newspaper where she claims that after visiting the Soviet Union she received a telegram from London Theatrical

Publishers to whom she had submitted her latest play, which they rejected for having

“too much politics in it”. Brand claims to have been “proud” of this criticism.63

Yet, Brand’s submission to party authority on artistic matters was not enough to quell political criticism of her work. New Theatre was entering a new period in the 1950s in which its old constituency had greatly diminished along with public support for the CPA.

Matters were not helped with the boycott of reviews of New Theatre productions by the mainstream press in which nothing by New Theatre was reviewed between 1948 and

1963. New Theatre’s innovations of the 1930s and 1940s had vitality in the use of reportage, living newspaper style, vaudeville, pantomime and other techniques that are lacking in Brand’s early plays, which exhibit a type of Australian naturalism. Cold War anti-communist hostility contributed to the lack of criticism, constructive and otherwise, imperative to the development of writers, and was an impediment to Brand and her

63 Undated article (translation) in Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 232

ability to hone her craft outside of the amateur framework of New Theatre and the

CPA.

The fluctuating political fortunes of the CPA in this period were reflected in New

Theatre’s approach to its productions. The Leninist slogan “Art is a Weapon” was transformed in the post-war period to ‘Theatre with a Purpose’. The change in name and attitude symbolises the conflict within New Theatre about art and propaganda. The differences in opinion were not enough to rupture ties with the CPA, but instead revolved around how New Theatre could best adopt an approach that accommodated the perspective and program of a left-wing theatre and expand its audience beyond the working class. The approach is articulated in New Theatre’s fifteenth anniversary pamphlet: “A play is a goad to action. In choosing a play, then, the New Theatre is concerned with two considerations: is it art, and is it socially valuable art? And we judge it by the action it invokes”.64

In this context Mona Brand’s plays were welcome at New Theatre and found a receptive audience, which usually consisted of CPA supporters and sympathisers.

Preaching to the converted was nothing new at New Theatre. Strangers in the Land,

Brand’s next play, was produced by Sydney New Theatre in 1953 and conforms to

New Theatre’s old and new ethos alike. Written in 1950 when Brand was living in

London, the play’s theme about the struggle for independence of the Malayans against

British imperialism encountered resistance. The play, urging warfare against the would-

64 Pat Bullen, Jerome Levy, Paul Mortier, eds., New Theatre: 15 Years of Production, np. 233

be colonisers, earned the disapprobation of the Lord Chamberlain who refused to issue a licence for a public performance. The moderate notoriety notwithstanding, Strangers in the Land was published by the Communist publishers Lawrence & Wishart, and was performed in several countries as well as in Bengal.65

Strangers in the Landis set in Malaya during the ‘Emergency’, a guerrilla campaign led mainly by communists. As inhabitants of a former British colony that had begun fighting for independence after World War Two and the occupation of Japan, Malayans in the late 1940s confronted the re-emergence of British colonialism and imperialism in the region. British expatriates established rubber plantations, farms and other interests while the Malays were treated as subordinates, with many reduced to domestic servitude in the homes of the new British plantation owners. Strangers in the Land is set in the comfortable bungalow of a wealthy British family whose comfort and wealth are jeopardised by the insurgents who destroy rubber trees and kill white men. In retaliation, some captured Malays are decapitated and their caps are hung like trophies in their houses. Brand claims the play “was practically written” after listening to a radio program in which a woman who was interviewed said she proudly displayed the “caps” above a bar in her home. Asked her ambitions, the woman answered “I’ve got a gun and I could use it”. The interviewer says that his own ambition is “to get one, just to get one”.66 These elements were incorporated into Strangers in the Land which Unity

Theatre produced in London in 1952 before the ban on a “strictly public performance” was imposed. Brand’s concession to a spontaneous artistic impulse led to her being

65 Christine Tilley, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: Perspectives on Mona Brand’s Isolation from Mainstream Australian Theatre’, 13. 66 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’, 9. 234

upbraided by the CPA for her emphasis on the middle classes, as will be demonstrated.

Brand claims to have written the play as a British drawing room drama with a

“Somerset Maugham atmosphere” with British audiences in mind, but the Unity Theatre committees were, according to Brand, even more sectarian than their New Zealand and Australian counterparts and insisted on changing the play “to something far more revolutionary; to have the guerrillas coming in with red flags on stage”. She places the

Unity approach within the context of the British Communist Party which she claims was

“terribly narrow-minded”. The problem was resolved, according to Brand, when she appealed to a Malayan high official within the British Communist Party who intervened successfully on her behalf.67

The play is cast in the traditional three-acts in a realist style, although the inherent political didacticism demonstrates the influence of socialist realism. It is a straightforward drama of protest. Like Here Under Heaven, the extreme topicality of

Strangers in the Land and its political intent renders the play a historical piece, rather than one with enduring value. Rees comments on this aspect, but attributes to it a sociological significance: “If her concentration on a temporary situation gave the play a limited period of life, she had the satisfaction of knowing that the world came to think

67 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’, 10.

235

her way”.68 Brand, ironically, considers herself a “journalistic playwright”, only with more depth.69

Employing a dramatic strategy evoking the drawing room drama, Brand hoped to

“attract and maybe influence a wider theatre going audience”.70The play’s theme is antithetical to the then popular and official line of support in Australia for the British colonisers in Malaya. Brand focuses on the conflict between the views of Chris, a young British ingénue from Kensington who has arrived in Malaya to marry Rod, and the aims of the racist expatriates. When not condescending towards the seemingly docile and silent native servant Seng Lee—“he’s quite intelligent”—they consider it their duty under the circumstances to “not let the natives think you’re not the master.

That’s more than half their trouble—the war ruined them, you see, so many Europeans lost face when they had to get away from the Japs”.71 Chris is dismayed to discover that Rod, a plantation owner, has joined the brutal campaign against the resistance fighters, who in this play are nearly all communists, to protect his plantation.

Communists are depicted in Strangers in the Land as nobly fearless heroes in contrast to the irredeemable venality of virtually all the bourgeois characters, bar one. For instance, Brand introduces communist ideology by including the obligatory generous, intelligent and humanitarian communist Indian couple whom Chris met on the ship to

68 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 205. 69 Transcript of Interview with Mona Brand, 15 February 1993, Mona Brand Papers ML/1011/73 Box 6. 70 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 148. 71 Mona Brand, Strangers in the Land, 17. 236

Malaya. The communist couple, like John in Here Under Heaven, only appear as recollections by Chris and not as cast characters. It is through them that the requisite ideology is assimilated by Chris, a process that functions as a device by which she also progresses from “dark to light”72 and communist progressive ideas and ideals are incorporated into the play as a counterweight to the ruthlessness of the greedy and selfish British expatriates. Recalling her discussions with the communists, Chris invites upon herself scorn and ridicule from her hostess who says that “I’ve learned to hate those murderous communists who are trying to ruin our crops and terrorise us into leaving our homes.”73

The didacticism and tendentiousness are too crude and its objective—to convince the audience of the correctness of armed struggle—seems tacked on rather than organic.

Despite these limitations, the play is less “a farrago of preaching”74 than Here Under

Heaven. Chris’s reservations about the entire enterprise find a sympathetic ear in Giff, a cynical expatriate who has taken to drink. Chris reminds him of a former lover of his, a schoolteacher with socialist ideals, and he encourages her to leave, to “go out and look for some real people—your own people” to which Chris responds, forming the conclusion to the play, “We don’t belong here, Giff, we don’t belong. We are the enemies!”75 Chris follows her conscience and leaves Malaya, and her fiancée.

72 Katerina Clark, ‘Socialist Realism without Shores’, 28. 73 Mona Brand, Strangers in the Land, 47. 74 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 205. 75 Mona Brand, Strangers in the Land, 55. 237

Despite the ‘correct’ anti-imperialist message, the play was the centre of further controversy in New Theatre in Australia. Brand was reprimanded by New Theatre for her emphasis in the play on the prejudices of the upper class characters rather than on the struggles of the Malayan resistance fighters. In 1953 New Theatre’s production committee fulminated in a letter to Brand:

[the character] Giff is politically bada man of ideas who is prepared to do nothing about them [other] than slowly drink himself to death in some outpost of the empire. At no time is there any contact made with the Malayan people, who, presumably, must depend onliberal minded whites to state their case for them. Herein, incidentally, lies the strength of Nance McMillan’s Christmas Bridge—the exploited people’s problems [in this play] are solved by themselves by action in conjunction with other exploited people, and not by the altruistic intervention of some kindmember of the petit bourgeoisie.76

From the perspective of the schema of the ‘positive hero’, the New Theatre criticisms have validity. Devoid of any obvious Australian working class characteristics, the play is doubly flawed according to the trope of the individual ‘positive hero’ of socialist realist literature because the character who propels the main protagonist ‘from dark to light’ is a middle-class, cynical alcoholic. Brand defended herself against the criticisms of the play at a New Theatre national conference where she argued that as a “working class theatre we needed to keep our minds broad. We should be broad in our attitude towards plays that show that workers come from everywhere”.77

76 New Theatre production committee to Mona Brand, Correspondence 17 March 1953, Sydney, New Theatre Records, MLMSS6244, Box 1. 77 Minutes of Annual Conference of New Theatre, Correspondence 16-17 April 1954, Sydney, New Theatre Records, MLMSS6244, Box 1. 238

The political criticism of her play is recorded in a conversation tapped by ASIO, where

Brand is admonished for “not writing good material” and told that she “should pull her socks up”. The source’s comment on the conversation is that “[name deleted] was voicing [Communist] Party criticism of Mona Brand”.78 , a CPA and

New Theatre member and subsequent ALP MP, rejected Strangers in the Land for a proposed book on Australian plays because the play “is English rather than

Australian”.79

The implications of subjugating the creative process to political dogma and doctrine become increasingly apparent in Brand’s case. She was excoriated for lack of depiction of working class solidarity and collective action in Strangers in the Land, and her response testifies to the narrowness that she has wittingly or unwittingly adapted to when she says “a play can have Menzies as the central character but it still could be moulded as [a] play for the working class”.80 She argues for Strangers in the Land’s proletarian orientation, claiming that it “was a working-class play because it is a working class judgement on a working class situation, and could only have been written by a member of the working class”.81

78 Report no. 8768, 20/12/1955, Mona Alexis Fox (nee Brand), Australian Archives Series A6119/90 Item 2668, cited in Arrow, Upstaged, 179. 79 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 80 New Theatre League Fifth National Conference, Sydney, Report, no. 321, 9 June 1954, Mona Alexis Fox (nee Brand), Australian Archives Series A6119/90, Item 2668, cited in Arrow, Upstaged, 179. 81 Minutes of Annual Conference of New Theatre, Sydney, 16-17 April 1954, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 239

Despite her efforts at appeasements of sorts, she continued to be subjected to intense criticism. In an address to a CPA cultural conference, she claims to have been called a

“revisionist” and a “carrier of right-wing ideas” for her defence of Patrick White. This situation was not a new one at New Theatre: decades before, Alan Marshall, who collaborated with Catherine Duncan and Kim Keane at Melbourne New Theatre on

Thirteen Dead (about the 1937 Wonthaggi mine disaster in which thirteen men died), experienced a similar situation. The incident is recalled by L.H. Gould, a CPA member involved in cultural aspects of party work, in what amounts to an impassioned plea to the CPA for freedom of artistic expression in New Theatre in the form of a letter entitled

“Suggestions to Party re Literary, etc., Artists: On the need for self-restraint in dealing with them”. Gould writes of knowing at least one leading CPA member who advised artist friends against joining the party because of its interventions, and in the case of

Alan Marshall, he writes that the party in Melbourne wanted him to “write differently”.

CPA member Alan Watt discussed the matter with Marshall and, as a result:

Marshall has not written as well since; he writes much less and for us hardly at all. Watt himself said he was afraid we had ‘killed’ Marshall. Marshall said that after the discussions, whenever he started to write he thought of Watt’s words—and couldn’t write a line of his own.82

Of party attitudes and approach to New Theatre, Hughes says:

Along similar lines, Party interventions in respect of New Theatre League productions also disturb me. I felt that if the author of [the play] Cannibal Carnival for instance were a member of the Party

82 New Theatre ASIO files, A467/1Bun 89/pt2/SF42/81, held by New Theatre, Sydney. 240

here, or close to us, we would either kill him stone dead as a writer or drive him away from us.83

New Theatre’s production committee’s criticism of Brand’s Strangers corresponds to the changes New Theatre underwent during the late 1940s and early 1950s as a result of the CPA’s isolation, which compelled the CPA to undertake closer scrutiny of New

Theatre’s repertoire. The party’s intensified intervention into New Theatre programming is also suggested by the information contained in ASIO files which disclose vital details about certain leading individuals within New Theatre and their relationship to the CPA.

For example, about Paul Mortier, the file dated 1955 states that he is a CPA member who has been “mainly associated with the League [New Theatre League] as party supervisor to keep the theatre on the right ideological path”.84 Of Miriam Hampson it says:

Member of the CPA. Took over the position of Secretary from Pat Bullen following a Party decision to clean up the N.T.L. Jerrold Wells and Victor Arnold were ‘banished.’ Assisted in this activity by Paul Mortier. Hampson and Mortier ‘got rid of a number of arty hangers on who were not considered good prospects by the Party’ and otherwise reorganised the League. She is a sister of June Mills, an active and leading member of the CPA.85

Jerome Levy claims that he was replaced as New Theatre Secretary by Hampson around 1948 or 1949 as she was related to the Aarons family, who held leadership

83 New Theatre ASIO files, A467/1Bun 89/pt2/SF42/81, held by New Theatre, Sydney. Cannibal Carnival was written by Herbert Hodge and performed at Sydney New Theatre in April 1939. 84 ASIO files A6122/XRI No.414, Sept 1952-Dec 1957. 85 ASIO files A6122/XRI No.414, Sept 1952-Dec 1957. 241

positions in the CPA.86 The choice of theme in Strangers in the Land raises several issues: although Brand regards her work as “humanitarian”87 her humanitarianism is itself informed by the political perspective of the CPA. An alternative scenario presents itself given Strangers’ anti-imperialist theme: had Brand written a similarly themed play for New Theatre during the period of war-time co-operation, for instance, it would most likely not have been produced as it would have undermined CPA policy at the time, as

Oriel Gray attests in her autobiography. The historical context is crucial in examining

Brand’s work because it almost always conveys the party’s direction at given moments.

The political dicta imposed on writers, not only about what to write but how to write, demonstrates the influence, and often interference, of the CPA on the work of New

Theatre writers. This assertion is further borne out by the fact that New Theatre committees were dominated by CPA members, as a precaution against deviation from the party line in New Theatre. David Milliss, however, claims that New Theatre had hybrid membership that included members of the Australian Labor Party.88 Another

ASIO report, dated 2 September 1953, which catalogues the make-up of the production committee tasked with selecting plays for New Theatre, shows that, out of seven members, six are CPA members. Furthermore, it states that “Meetings of the

Production Committee are presided over by Miriam Hampson who always has the final say”.89 A similar situation prevails in the composition of the management committee

86 Jerome Levy, Interview with me at his home in Centennial Park, Sydney. 87 Iris O’Loughlin, ‘A Bit of Ingenuity: Mona Brand’, 112. 88 My interview with David Milliss at his home in Concord, Sydney, 10 December 2009. 89 ASIO files A6122/XRI No.414, Sept 1952-Dec 1957. 242

which lists in August 1953 eight CPA members and one, a new member, who is “not known to be” a CPA member.90

This then is the atmosphere in which Brand operated. The authoritarian atmosphere would have stifled the most gifted artist, and in itself partly explains the lack of spontaneity and psychological penetration in Brand’s plays. The pronounced propagandist style of New Theatre in the post-war period came under attack from CPA members such as Jean Devanny, who in a letter to New Theatre in 1959 asserts that the problem with proletarian dramatists was “a tendency to hang slabs of propaganda on the barest of dramatic threads”.91

Although CPA membership was not necessarily compulsory, political agreement was obligatory for aspiring New Theatre writers. To stray from the party line was to be severely admonished. If a break from the party was acrimonious, it was usually followed by rejection of writers’ work from New Theatre, as was the case for Betty

Roland, discussed in Chapter Four. This censure or break from the New Theatre and the CPA would certainly have a psychological and emotional impact on members subject to this because, as most New Theatre writers have claimed, New Theatre was the basis for most of their social association. David Milliss reinforces this, claiming that

New Theatre was like ‘family’, with schools, shows and parties, after-work gatherings at the pub and the close collaboration involved in being a New Theatre member,

90 ASIO files A6122/XRI No.414, Sept 1952-Dec 1957. 91 Cited by Paul Herlinger in The New Theatre: The Pre-War years 1932-1939, MA thesis, 1981, University of Sydney, held at Mitchell library, ML Q792.099441/16, 13. 243

especially for those who were production or management committee members.92 David

Millis is an example himself. He had attended New Theatre performances in 1952 after studying at the Teachers’ College. Sydney New Theatre needed a designer for sets and costumes, and Ross Thomas was his contact. He joined New Theatre in 1952 and began teaching all in the same month. At New Theatre he met Betty Cole who was acting in Brand’s Strangers in the Land. They began attending shows together in 1955 and married in 1956. Betty continued acting with Sydney New Theatre for many decades and acted in another Brand play, the comedy And a Happy New Year, in

1973. David Milliss was also on the production committee of New Theatre.93

The censure experienced by Brand in the 1950s was the outcome of the ideological pressure and censorship experienced by writers in New Theatre since its inception. For example, in her archived papers at the Mitchell library is a letter to Brand in May 1966 in which Stephen Holt comments on Brand’s experiences with New Theatre, and claims to have found evidence of similar cases. According to Holt, he had been researching the career of Dr Lloyd Ross, whom he discovered had been involved in

New Theatre in the 1930s and had put on a play about the Tolpuddle martyrs.94

However, Holt claims that when Ross split with the CPA in 1940 he “thereafter was effectively cut off from the New Theatre”.95

92 My interview with David Milliss at his home in Concord, Sydney, 10 December 2009. 93 My interview with David Milliss at his home in Concord, Sydney, 10 December 2009. 94 The Tolpuddle martyrs were a group of agricultural labourers in nineteenth century Dorset who formed The Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. They share similarities with the Trade Unions of today, the latter who still commemorate Martyr’s Day. The Tolpuddle martyrs were sentenced to transportation to Australia. 95 Private correspondence, letter dated 27 May 1966, in Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 244

In 1955 Sydney New Theatre produced Out of Commission, which was not as acclaimed as Here Under Heaven or Strangers in the Land and remains unpublished.

Ironically, it was reviewed favourably by ASIO sources in the audience who claimed the scenery and costumes compared “very favourably” with professional theatre, while the presentation was described as “smooth”. Fiona Capp argues that the level of professionalism of New Theatre’s performances enhanced its ability, from an intelligence agent’s perspective, to “beguile its audience” and in the process lend legitimacy to its purpose.96 Out of Commission is a lampoon of the Petrov Commission in the style of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The play pre-empts the official findings and reverses the scenario, handing down its own interpretation of events in which ASIO and other authorities are the villains and enemies of the people and the defendants are made heroes. ASIO attempted, unsuccessfully, to find grounds for prosecuting New

Theatre for contempt of court.97 For security reasons, no-one’s name appears on the program notes for the play, but David Milliss claims that Brand had a free hand in writing it.98

Brand left Australia not long after the production of Out of Commission for Hanoi,

Vietnam, in 1955 with her husband Len Fox, who was editor of the CPA organ Tribune in the 1950s to early 60s, both returning in 1957. An international commission had been established after the Geneva Conference in 1954 and a journalist friend had informed them that the Vietnamese involved with the commission needed assistance

96 Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled (Victoria, Australia: McPhee Gribble, 1993), 164-65. 97 Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled, 171-172. 98 My interview with David Milliss at his home in Concord, Sydney, 10 December 2009. 245

with English. Fox, who incidentally also contributed short sketches for New Theatre, worked as a freelance journalist whilst there. The struggles of Vietnamese women against French rule in the Indo-China war prompted Brand to write a collection of five stories, of which Brand claims all but the last one are true.99 These were compiled in a book titled Daughters of Vietnam published in 1958.100Her sympathies for the

Vietnamese women come through in these stories but they are let down by the socialist realist style: the characters are always fearless, unflagging and untiring in their determination to overcome their oppressors. There is never a moment of doubt, or helplessness, only heroic and principled struggle. For example, in the story ‘The Little

Messenger’ the heroine is captured and tortured but “sick with pain and exhausted from the number of times she had fainted and been revived, she felt far down inside her an inner glow of triumph”.101

Party policy is demonstrated to have devolved onto writers such as Brand, impacting upon the aesthetic merit of their work. What is also demonstrated is that the subsequent lifting of commands and demands on writers within New Theatre to conform to party doctrine on artistic method in the 1960s yielded far more rewarding results, with Brand writing some of her most rewarding satire such as On Stage

Vietnam and Going, Going Gone. Delving into satire began in the late 1950s with No

Strings Attached, which, although it has its moments of humour, is far more limited than her later work.

99 Mona Brand and Hazel de Berg, Conversation with Mona Brand [sound recording] / [interviewer: Hazel de Berg] 1967. 100 Mona Brand, Daughters of Vietnam (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House,1958). 101 Mona Brand, Daughters of Vietnam, 57. 246

New Theatre produced No Strings Attached in 1958, a year after Brand’s return to

Australia. A three-act satire set in the fictional country of Taikong, in south-east Asia, the play is about American imperialism’s machinations in the region. Despite rigged and undemocratic methods of voting, the People’s stands to win the election against the government, which is backed by the US. The US has deployed agents posing as businessmen to ensure that the outcome of the election results in US imperialism’s interest. Reformist ideas, expressed through the monarchy’s neutral stance, are crudely juxtaposed with the venality, rapaciousness, and idiocy of

American imperialism through its representatives: Judd and his ignorant wife, Della, their teenage daughter, and Harvey, another American “businessman” and accomplice.

A conspiracy of sorts ensues which sees the daughter become romantically involved with a liberal-minded prince who sympathises with the plight of his country’s poor.

Like most of Brand’s plays, No Strings Attached is not character driven. The plot is simplistic: the aim, it would seem, is to demonstrate the hypocrisy, ulterior motives and double standards of American democracy. Undoubtedly ahead of its time in these criticisms, the play exposes certain aspects of Cold War manoeuvrings that have now come to be accepted as established truths, especially after the US-backed toppling of the Soekarno regime by Soeharto in Indonesia in 1965 and the Vietnam War. Brand’s political perspective and her experiences in these countries enables her to explore critically these events that perhaps other playwrights, at least in Australia, could or would not.

247

These sociological and historical facts notwithstanding, No Strings Attached is replete with stereotypes: the ‘can-do’ American businessman; his blithely ignorant but pleasant wife; the rebellious teenage daughter; the conspiratorial journalist; the taciturn secret insurgent; and a bourgeois, reformist sympathiser. The play lacks dynamics, with everything organised according to preconceived dogma about the politics of the region.

The characters function merely as expressions of disparate interests and have little inner life.

Flood Tide was also written in the 1950s but, according to the entry in the Campbell

Howard Collection, it was never produced. It is a three-act play set in the home of Jim and Evelyn Cooper who are both about 50 years old and small farmers in the Hunter

River Valley at the end of summer in 1955. The area is prone to floods but nothing has been done about it despite Jim’s “bellyaching”102 for almost 30 years about getting a dam, channel or having the river dredged to avert a potential catastrophe in the event of another great flood. Nothing has ever been done because it is considered too costly.

Frank Wyburn, a prosperous farmer who also opposes Jim’s ideas, comes to warn

Evelyn about the rising river and urges the local men to assist him in sandbagging the riverbanks. He is more concerned about saving his crops and vineyards than the lives, homes and livelihoods of the local farmers and residents. It is a futile task as it is too

102 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, Campbell Howard Collection, MS/6692823/268/003.

248

little, too late. People flee their homes, and those who stay lose virtually everything.

The old twin men across the road from the Coopers climb onto their roof, but one dies in a rescue mission as his rheumatic hands cannot grasp the rope dangling from the helicopter firmly enough and he falls into the swirling torrent, swept away. Evelyn’s daughter, Joan, her husband Bill and their fifteen month old son are swept into the river as they attempt to drive to Newcastle and are all drowned.

The play is effective when its focus is on the main character Evelyn, who remains in the upper storey of their home with her cousin Caroline. It is through her perspective that one is sensitised to the impact of the flood. Trapped in the rooms upstairs without word about the whereabouts of her husband and as yet unaware of the tragedy that has befallen her daughter and her family, she remains concerned but not unduly alarmed. It is a plausible characterisation; while not exactly a stalwart she is a realist and is cautiously optimistic that they will survive the worst this “act of god” can wreak.

Caroline, although a clearly delineated character, is somewhat similar to Blanche

DuBois from a Streetcar Named Desire, but lacking the pathos.

The drama unfolds as the flood subsides and the extent and impact of the catastrophe—physical, emotional, psychological and financial—becomes increasingly evident. Electricity is cut but news begins filtering in as rescue missions arrive. Miners begin to clear out the mud and debris with typical workers’ swagger, speaking in the vernacular typical of miners. They are dismissed by Wyburn as “bone lazy so and

249

sos". Always going on strike”.103 Evelyn, still unsure if her husband is safe, believes

Joan has made it out safely. When she is informed of her daughter’s death, she is numb with grief; unable to cry she busies herself tidying up the house and rummaging through the debris where her daughter’s house previously stood. Finding her grandson’s rocking-horse, the only remains of her daughter’s family, she begins cleaning it vigorously. Wyburn reappears to lament the loss of his crops and says that

“ten thousand pounds” would not replace them. At this Evelyn loses control and coolly informs him that he may have lost his tomatoes and cauliflowers, but she has lost her daughter, and continues cleaning the rocking-horse. Her husband, who is safe, appears at this point and the couple is united in their grief.104

The play would be more effective and plausible if it ended at this point. Instead Brand inserts the obligatory resolution to the crisis. When Wyburn informs them that he plans to leave the Valley and advises the Coopers to do the same, Jim responds that he will organise a protest instead “and action to follow!”105

Wyburn: Still the same idea

Jim: The same only more so! And this time there’ll be plenty of forces joining in.106

Evelyn is, implausibly, sufficiently roused by this to declare:

You see Mr Wyburn, we like this valley, even if there are plenty who don’t or just don’t care. We like it because we work on it, with our own bare hands. Ours has never been a big farm. Now it’s scarcely a

103 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, 5. 104 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, 35. 105 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, 37. 106 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, 37. 250

farm at all, and I don’t know how we’ll start again, but we will. What sort of a solution would it be, running away? We’d only run into some other disaster-droughts, bushfires or floods somewhere else.107

What modicum of tragedy existed is dissipated by these rhetorical postulations, which can only be explained by the playwright’s sense of duty to impart a practical solution, to

‘instruct’ the audience on the correct course of action. It defies emotional logic that anyone just informed of their daughter’s death, despite their political views, can immediately contemplate the planning of any protest, social, political, syndicalist or any other. These ideas occur to people not in the midst of a tragedy, but only after long and sober reflection, and in this case, mourning. Brand developed characters and a simple but effective plot. However, her sense of political duty impinges on the dramatic effect, diluting the central drama by introducing pseudo-propagandist dialogue. This political intrusion forces the play to an unnatural end and shifts the focus from the tragedy onto the more pragmatic aspects of collective action. The solution, however, is inherent in the tragedy; that something more than sandbagging is necessary is patently obvious.

Only a playwright who mistrusts the audience or insists on a ‘correct’ message would resort to the tendentiousness evident in Flood Tide. Artistic truth is the casualty.

The play ends with Wyburn, very uncharacteristically, stating “I was going to say—you might be right about that matter. I’ve never had much faith in public protest, but anyway, I’ll think it over” and Jim responds “you do that, Frank.”108 The optimistic resolution is another example of the type of socialist realism practiced in the Australian

107 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, 38. 108 Mona Brand, Flood Tide, 39. 251

context. It is not clear why the play was never produced, but perhaps the setting of a flooded town made staging Flood Tide difficult.

One of the positive developments in Brand’s work in the late 1950s and beyond is that the stern tendentiousness of many of her plays was somewhat eased, perhaps reflecting the ‘thaw’ that was occurring in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev where writers and literature previously banned were ‘rehabilitated.’ For instance, her play

Barbara, produced by Sydney New Theatre in 1966, deals with teenage pregnancy and a strained mother–daughter relationship, while Going, Going, Gone, a political revue, is a satire about the selling off of Australia’s assets to foreign multinationals. On Stage

Vietnam, another political revue, played a role in sensitising audiences to the plight of the Vietnamese and in fomenting anti-war sentiment. Going, Going, Gone and On

Stage Vietnam utilised a pastiche of techniques and styles—many derived from New

Theatre’s innovative years in the 1930s and 1940s—which foreshadowed the coming

New Wave who, when they used similar techniques, were heralded as radical and innovative. The next chapter will discuss the two revues Going, Going, Gone, On Stage

Vietnam, Barbara, Our ‘Dear’ Relations as well and Come All Ye Valiant Miners.



252

  

(' *'4 (+,6 !*-+!!.9+ *, )!; 8/9 "*,"(' 

This chapter will begin by contextualising politically and historically the development of

New Theatre in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s secret speech. I will discuss the liberalisation of New Theatre as a result of the protracted disintegration of the CPA and a revived social radicalism as Australian artists, in a period of social and political unrest, once more gravitated to New Theatre.

Brand’s little comedies such as Our ‘Dear’ Relations, produced by Sydney New

Theatre in 1963, and the domestic drama Barbara were something of a departure from the politically topical themes that characterised her plays at the outset of her career with New Theatre. Having attenuated the political emphasis, Brand demonstrates in the plays of this period, if not a refined aesthetic sensibility, at least a nuanced humour effective in exploring the more mundane aspects of human drama. These plays deal with such subjects as the commercialisation of Mother’s and Father’s Day; mother– daughter relations; children born out of wedlock (a controversial theme in the 1960s); and dysfunctional and mixed culture families in suburbia. Brand’s talent for comedy is also made manifest in this more permissive period in New Theatre. In the late 60s she co-wrote two revues: Going, Going Gone, about the selling off of Australia to foreign companies, and On Stage Vietnam, about the Vietnam War. The latter was important in sensitising audiences to the real issues behind the government’s war drive and

253

played a role in the protest movement that developed against Australia’s involvement in the war.

(%","% *,-*+ ' -%,-*% "*%"+,"(' "' / !,*4(' *' ((+'+,! (%( "%+!$%+

,=DA<+,(=DBC Khrushchev’s secret speech in February 1956 at the Twentieth Party Congress sent shockwaves through the CPA once the news reached the rank and file. The main thrust of the speech was to denounce Stalin and enumerate the many crimes committed under his leadership, including the persecution and repression of all opposition, the torture by the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) of people falsely accused of being enemies of the state, and Stalin’s brutal and despotic dictatorship, self aggrandisement and commanding the revision and falsification of history by placing himself at the head and centre of important revolutionary developments including the October 1917 revolution. The picture of Soviet life under

Stalin, as outlined by Khrushchev, was one of fear, suspicion and terror. Khrushchev’s speech painted the crimes of Stalin as the crimes of an individual, rather than those of a bureaucratic regime whose sole intent was in preserving their privileges. For those who had been vacillating in their commitment to the party, Khrushchev’s speech was confirmation of their worst suspicions, and was the decisive factor in the intelligentsia’s exodus from the CPA. An example of the widening gulf between the party hierarchy and cadres is the action taken by Ted Hill, Victorian party leader, who attended the congress, but revealed nothing to CPA rank and file upon his return to Australia. The party allegedly “stumbled” on Khrushchev’s indictment of Stalin’s crimes and responded by denouncing it as bourgeois lies designed to discredit the USSR. Hill called the speech a capitalist forgery and Lance Sharkey, central committee member, simply ignored the speech and stated that Khrushchev would soon be “deposed by the 254

more powerful Molotov-Malenkov group who opposed the repudiation of Stalin”.1 The speech was only published in Washington and Belgrade on 18 March 1956 and

Khrushchev himself had advised that the revelations be made gradually. They took

Khrushchev’s advice much too literally in Russia where his speech was not published until 1988. The veracity of the speech and of its source was impossible to refute once the New York Times reprinted it on 5 June 1956. Hill moved, successfully, for suppression of discussion of the report within the CPA.2 According to Mona Brand, there were people in the party who opposed the decision and several of them issued the speech in roneoed form to the membership. They were expelled for their efforts.3

According to Phillip Deery, J.D. Blake was the CPA central committee member who encouraged discussion of the speech and was censured for it. Blake had fallen foul of the party hierarchy during a period of ‘consolidation’ between 1949 and 1956. Accused of deviating from the “Moscow line”4 he was accused of manifold ‘mistakes’ including

“left sectarianism, individualism, subjectivism, factionalism, disruptionism and unbalanced attacks on economism”.5

The panegyrics to Stalin by CPA and New Theatre members that had graced the pages of the party’s official press organs were rendered even more horrific and ludicrous in retrospect by Khrushchev’s revelations. Outraged, some writers attempted

1 Phillip Deery, ‘The Sickle and the Scythe: Jack Blake and Communist Party ‘Consolidation’, 1949-1956’, 218. 2 Jenny Hocking, Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life, 123-4. 3 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’, 8. 4 Alan Barcan, The Socialist Left in Australia 1949-1959 (Sydney, NSW: Australian Political Studies Association, 1960) 7. 5 Phillip Deery, ‘The Sickle and the Scythe: Jack Blake and Communist Party ‘Consolidation’, 1949-1956’, 216. 255

to destroy all evidence of their dogmatic faith in ‘Uncle Joe’, and disillusion and a sense of betrayal pervaded the CPA and New Theatre. An example is the case of party cultural theorist Paul Mortier, who was suffering from a crisis of faith. He had been engaged in a protracted internal battle between party loyalty and his increasing intellectual disagreement with its direction and had resumed his interest in religion.

Given the circumstances, Mortier perhaps was a victim of some form of depression, if the symptoms he suffered are any indication, but these appear to have been exacerbated during the 1950s by the CPA’s increasing marginalisation from official political life and the working class, and its programmatic disorientation. Mortier’s reviews and analyses were regular features in the Communist Review and his major contribution to party cultural life was his pamphlet Art: Its Origins and Social Functions, which was published in 1955.6 A socialist realist, he elaborated in his writings on the importance of this decreed method:

The Soviet people are achieving the highest levels of artistic creation in the history of man. They are creating Socialist Realism, which sets itself tasks such as those outlined to the nineteenth congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.7

After several failed attempts, Mortier committed suicide in 1965. A less tragic, but nonetheless significant effect of the ‘secret speech’ was its impact on Joan Clarke,

6 Jenny Hocking, Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life, 154. Mortier’s close friendship with Frank Hardy is discussed in the chapter entitled ‘Death of a Communist’ in this biography. There is no mention of depression in the chapter in relation to Mortier, but the symptoms described by Hocking suggest that Mortier’s increasing mental and emotional instability and gambling problems were perhaps an undiagnosed depressive disorder, compounded by the problems within the CPA. 7 Paul Mortier, ‘Artists and the class struggle’, Communist Review (February, 1948): 59-60; Art: Its Origins and Social Function (Sydney, NSW: Current Book Distributors, 1955), 25. 256

CPA member for ten years in the 1940s and 1950s. Clarke wrote several plays for New

Theatre: Wild Colonial Boy: An Australian Musical Drama in Three Acts (1954), We’ll

Build A Little House and Home Brew (1955). She was a staunch Stalinist who, when in her most politically committed phase, wrote effusive odes such as ‘Poem for Stalin’ which was published in the Tribune in 1953:

How came a love for one so distant man?

How came a love for one unmet began?

Perhaps t’was born the time I watched the flushed

Australian sky. In silent beauty, I lay

Caresses on a setting sun, with a promise

Of the morn when it would greet a people’s day.

Perhaps I felt it first when my own son

Was born, with all a babe’s sure confidence

Of life, of peace, so sure of care and love;

Of dreams dreamed and dreams made real. And hence

There came my love for people—and so began

A love for him who loved the people—Stalin the man.8

Clarke, says Arrow, “tore out the poem, removing it from her private record and excising an important emblem of her past political consciousness”.9 Clarke and her unflinching devotion to ‘Uncle Joe’ prior to her shattered illusions resemble, according

8Joan Clarke, ‘Poem for Stalin’, Tribune, 8 April 1953, cited in Arrow, 132. 9 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged, 132. 257

to Arrow, the character Joan Fraser in the 1996 Australian film Children of the

Revolution, starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill.10

Clarke’s reaction, however, was not unique. The sense of betrayal would compel even the most party-faithful to question every decision ever made by the higher echelons in

Moscow. The edifice of lies, secrecy and falsification could no longer be maintained in light of Khrushchev’s public denunciations and condemnation and the result was a veritable exodus of the intelligentsia from the CPA and hundreds expelled for questioning the ‘party line’. One cultural group to break definitively with the CPA at this point was the literary journal Overland, when Stephen Murray-Smith, its founder, resigned in protest at the CPA’s expulsion of Ian Turner and took Overland with him.11

The CPA leadership’s unstinting support for Soviet foreign policy, including the crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, compounded the flight of intellectuals from the CPA. Political tensions mounted during this time. Yet parallel to this, a cultural

‘thaw’ or liberalisation of sorts was introduced by Khrushchev in the USSR, a thaw in which many writers, artists and intellectuals previously anathematised and prohibited from publication were ‘rehabilitated’. The works of writers such as Alexander

Solzhenitzyn and Anna Akhmatova were once again published and accessible to the public and, while outrightly subversive literature was still prohibited, artistic criticism of the regime was, if not actively encouraged, at least becoming more permissible. For example, Alexander Solzhenitzyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, about

10 Michelle Arrow, Upstaged, 132. 11 Jenny Hocking, Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life, 124-5. 258

the spiritually and physically destructive conditions of life as a prisoner in one of the notorious gulags, appeared in the Soviet Union in 1962. However, the cultural thaw was a brief interregnum: Brezhnev came into power in 1964 and reversed many of the liberal policies, and Solzhenitzyn once more incurred the wrath of the Moscow bureaucracy who banned his books in the Soviet Union until 1990, when they were once again re-introduced in the spirit of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost.12

In Australia the CPA’s disintegration, a corollary of the crisis within the CPSU, assumed the form of a splintering of the party into two separate entities by 1964: the pro-Moscow stalwarts and those adopting the Maoist-China line (Marxist-Leninist). The polarisation within the CPA was reflected in the attitudes between the warring factions towards art and culture in general. Moscow hardliners such as Jack Beasley maintained a doctrinaire socialist realist line while others adopted a more liberal attitude that is reflected in New Theatre in this period. However, the CPA’s disintegration left the New

Theatre without the party’s “strong advice”13 upon which it had relied in its early years and during the Cold War. Nevertheless, and unsurprisingly, this, coupled with the resumption of mainstream reviews of New Theatre productions, led, as Ken Harper notes, to“a freer feeling in the group”.14

12 Perestroika is the Russian term for political and economic reforms in the former USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev who also introduced glasnost, which was a policy of openness, transparency and freedom of information. 13 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre: The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne 1935-1983’, 67. 14 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre’, 67. 259

A plethora of new political and social issues emerged, which cried out for artistic treatment during this period. A revived left-wing political radicalism erupted in the early

1960s, based on issues of civil and democratic rights, as well as sexual politics. The

Vietnam War, however, proved to be the single most important issue galvanising the intelligentsia and youth, and New Theatre was virtually the only theatre providing a medium for an alternative viewpoint. The political establishment supported the US’s claims to be fighting against the spread of communism. Well known Australian film actor John Hargreaves worked with New Theatre in the 1960s and recalls that there was little stigma attached to professional actors working there as it was getting mainstream reviews at a time when there was a dearth of venues for professional actors “and so you got a lot of actors going through there who were experienced and quite good”.15 His colleague, popular Australian film, theatre and television actor

Maggie Kirkpatrick, who also appeared in New Theatre productions, claims that

Hargreaves found

The political climate of the New Theatre was very conducive to his attitude of what he hoped theatre might have in store for himto be with like ‘left’ mindsbecause it was a time in our lives when there was some passion around in the theatrethe anti-Vietnam and the Aboriginal protests and all that. It appealed to his passion.16

Having become a renewed pole of attraction, New Theatre’s management found itself coping with the political and social tensions that inevitably impacted upon their own practice, requiring a reappraisal of their approach to art and literature and posing a

15 Tony Watts, Genevieve Picot, John Hargreaves—A Celebration (Newport, Victoria: Parrot Books, 2000), 20. 16Tony Watts, Genevieve Picot, John Hargreaves—A Celebration, 16. 260

challenge to the authority of the CPA in matters of culture. These tensions were made manifest in a major disagreement about Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, which was produced by Sydney New Theatre in 1962. On this issue the hardliners fulminated against the play’s lack of proper political perspective, arguing that the work promotes “individualism” rather than collective action, while others argued for its artistic integrity. Mona Brand claims that while there were many rewarding aspects about working in New Theatre, such as collaboration and dedication to shared ideals, the imposition of political dictates proved an impediment which “sometimes alienated either temporarily or permanently some of its most devoted members”. This is how she recalls the Miller incident:

I recall a major dispute around Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People in which Stockman declares in a speech that the majority is not always right. Communists in the theatre were split on the issue until it was resolved by the theatre membership as a whole deciding in a vote that the play should go on. (Although I was on Miller’s side in the argument, I have to say that so far as this vote was concerned I thought the majority was right.)17

If the dispute demonstrates anything, it is that the narrowness and sectarianism that had characterised New Theatre productions and the party’s authoritarian control over cultural production had reached an impasse by 1962.Betty and David Milliss confirm the Miller incident and Betty recalls that the New Theatre production committee criticised the play for glorifying “bourgeois individualism, not collective action”. Both the production and management committees were defeated, with the majority of New

17 ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: New Theatre’s Formative Years 1932-1955 and their Influence on Australian Drama’, 7. If I understand Brand correctly, although she agrees with Miller’s point that the majority is not always right, in the case of New Theatre the majority decided that Miller was indeed right and she concurred. 261

Theatre membership in favour of producing the play.18 David and Betty agree that the

1960s ushered in a new epoch in which the plays produced by New Theatre were far less trenchant in their political tendentiousness and discussion was not limited to those

CPA members that comprised the management and production committees. Betty

Milliss was not a member of the CPA but recalls her surprise when she discovered that her boyfriend in the 1950s, who was a CPA member, attended these internal meetings.

She believes that having acted with New Theatre on a regular basis she should have been entitled to attend and contribute to the discussions and felt somewhat outraged to be excluded on the basis of not being a party member.19 As has already been explained, only CPA members held positions on the management and production committees of New Theatre, demonstrating that the CPA was very involved in, and at different times, determined and guided New Theatre’s activities.

The tendency in New Theatre to attempt to tailor plays by established authors to suit the ideological agenda of the CPA was nothing new, however, and was cause for much debate within the theatre and in the CPA organ The Tribune, even in the 1950s according to Roger Milliss. A long-time member, actor, director and producer for New

Theatre, Roger Milliss—brother of David Milliss— recalls how when he joined New

Theatre in 1956 he played in an adaptation of Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier

Schweik which also included Les Tanner, the Walkley Award winning cartoonist, at the

Waterside Workers Federation hall. The play caused something of a furore in the

18 My interview with David Milliss and Betty Milliss at their home in Concord, Sydney, 10 December 2009. 19 My interview with David Milliss and Betty Milliss at their home in Concord, Sydney, 28 January 2010. 262

pages of Tribune which argued that it was ideologically “incorrect” for Schweik to die at the end of the play.20

The CPA’s control of New Theatre began to wane after 1956 commensurate with declining party membership, but the anxiety Khrushchev’s revelations caused were not insignificant. Audrey Blake, a long-standing CPA member and wife of leading CPA member J.D. Blake, attributes the decline of the CPA “to the lack of social and political will after the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956

[which] was caused, above all, by the failure of the party leadership of the period (and of leaderships for a long time after that) to enter the struggle against Stalinism”.21 The divisions within the CPA in the decade that followed became more intractable. The

Moscow-liners saw in these events the necessity for unquestioning party loyalty and unity, while those who had not fled proposed more openness with debate and questioning, as well as inclusion of the rank and file in the decision-making process. A

1965 Central Committee report entitled ‘Party Building and the Path to a Mass Party’ exemplifies the gradual shift from a rigid pro-Soviet line to one that emphasises the necessity, in this new turbulent period, of adopting “the correct attitude in Australian conditions”. This suggests a disengagement from the more ossified attitudes to art that prevailed in the CPA but Brand claims that she struggled to write plays that would endure because New Theatre made demands for topical sketches.22 These sketches have a sense of parochialism about them, limited as they are to transient local issues.

20 Roger Milliss interviewed by Alex and Annette Hood in Alex Hood folklore collection, 2006, NLA [sound recording]. 21 Audrey Blake, A Proletarian Life (Malmsbury, Australia: Kibble Books, 1984), 153. 22 Transcript of interview with Mona Brand, Sydney, 15 February 1993, with Iris O’Louglin and Kerry Kilner, Mona Brand Papers, Mona Brand Papers ML1011/73, Box 6. 263

Their value lies in their function as propaganda for the CPA, but culturally they are little more than historical artefacts of Australia’s militant and unionist traditions.

The acknowledgement of the prescriptive attitudes prevalent in the party prompted a reappraisal of cultural matters within the CPA and in New Theatre. These issues were raised in a report in the CPA’s Central Committee, expressing a view that would previously have been sternly repressed:

There is no doubt that we need to fight against narrowness, conservatism and dogmatism in our own approach to the development of literature, art and culture in general. A correct Communist viewpoint on these matters needs to be thrashed out in discussionswe should not concentrate narrowly upon form or mechanical interpretation of socialist realism.23

This had an impact on New Theatre: writers began to explore themes and forms hitherto considered inappropriate for a left-wing workers’ theatre, and it was these new types of plays that thrust New Theatre into prominence, achieving a measure of critical success in the process. New Theatre won first place in 1961 in the NSW Arts Council

Drama Festival for Oriel Gray’s Lawson, directed by John Armstrong, long-standing

New Theatre member and director who also worked in mainstream films. This success was repeated in 1962 for New Theatre’s production of The Long and the Short and the

Tall by Willis Hall and in 1963 for Mona Brand’s Our ‘Dear’ Relations.

23 Report to the February 1965 Meeting of the Central Committee, CPA Further Records, MLMSS5021 Add-on-1936, Box 28. 264

New Theatre’s new constitution was drafted in 1962 and, according to David Milliss, was a response to the revelations of Stalins’s crimes and an attempt to distance the theatre from “Stalinism” (and consequently the CPA). Stalinism, claims Milliss, is a pejorative term that only came into use after Khrushchev’s speech.24 New Theatre’s new policy demarcated it from its heritage as a CPA organisation with ties to Stalinism, emphasising instead its humanist ideals:

New Theatre is a theatre based on the principles of humanism and the realistic tradition of art, which emphasises a progressive drama centred on the lives of working people and their ideals and aspirations.25

The atmosphere at New Theatre enabled writers such as Brand to expand their horizons, thematically and technically.



*'"'+!*(&""!

Characteristic of this period, and in contrast to that of the Cold War 1940s and 1950s, is that the repertoire at New Theatre in the 1960s emphasised comedy, found in particular in the political satire to which Mona Brand contributed. There is a noticeable shift away from the previous orientation to the unions and the set themes required by socialist realism, reflecting the less doctrinaire attitudes in the CPA and New Theatre after 1956. Mona Brand felt emboldened enough by the changed atmosphere within the CPA and New Theatre to assert herself against pressure to reproduce the crude didacticism of her earlier agit-prop sketches. Asked by the Miners Federation in 1965

24 David Milliss, telephone discussion with me on 10 February, 2011. 25 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 2. 265

to write something for their federation members that New Theatre could produce, she insisted on absolute freedom to write as she pleased, replying “Yes, provided it’s entertaining, I’m not going to put on a pamphlet, I’m not going to put on a speech, anyone can do that, one of the leaders can give a speech if they want to”.26

The result was a Sydney New Theatre production of Come All Ye Valiant Miners in July 1965, a prototype for the later documentary musicals that Brand would collaborate on. A folk singer opens the one-act play as he sings the first verse of The Big Hewer:

Out of the dirt and darkness I was born,

Go down!

Out of the hard black coal-face I was torn,

Go down!

Kicked on the world and the earth split open,

Crawled through a crack where the rock was broken,

Burrowed a hole away in the coal

Go down!27

A chorus takes up the story, followed by nameless archetypes such as Convict,

Troubadour, Gold Miner, Female Domestic Servant, Coalowner, Mrs Coalowner,

Miner’s Wife, and James Fletcher, the Scottish union “agitator”. It is perhaps fitting, and typical, that only the union man is personalised by being given a name, rather than characterized by occupation as the others are.

26 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’, 13. 27 Mona Brand, Come All Ye Valiant Miners, MLMSS 6244, Box 69. 266

The play recounts the history of mining in Australia, beginning in 1796, as the Convict tells the audience, in “any provincial English accent”, according to stage directions.

Slides of miners and significant dates as well as the Eureka flag cross the stage, documentary style. Brand’s uncritical attitude to the unions is expressed in the exchange between Coalowner and Mrs Coalowner as Mr Coalowner becomes agitated when reading criticism of his mines in the newspaper:

Mr Coalowner: He says of my mines “Even where the mine is well ventilated the odour is necessarily offensive and unwholesome; the floor is scarcely ever dry, renders it difficult to avoid getting wet feet; while the low roof often prevents your walking upright. In some pits the working is only four feet in depth, and to examine them you must creep along in a stooping and uncomfortable posture.”

Mrs Coalowner: Why, how uncomfortable that must be. Then perhaps Mr. Fletcher has some right ideas after all. (Maid giggles behind hand. Mrs. C glares at her and she leaves hastily)

Coalowner: James Fletcher! That Scots agitator. My dear Charlotte, you understand nothing. The man is talking of forming a union!28

There are references to mine accidents such as the Bulli mine explosion in 1887 that killed 81 miners and the Mount Kembla disaster in 1902, which killed 97. Some of the scenes are intercut with humorous irony such as the two judges who link arms with

Coalowner to demonstrate their solidarity against miners’ claims in the courts. They sing ‘Much Diddling in the Court’:

With much diddling in the court

We diddle on for years before it’s settled

28 Mona Brand, Come All Ye Valiant Miners, MLMSS 6244, Box 69. 267

With much diddling in the court

Don’t hurry so the judge is getting nettled.

There’s only bosses witnesses are likely to be heard

The Unions and their advocates are gonna get the bird

If a worker tries to answer we won’t let him say a word

With much diddling in the court.29

Adopting intertextuality and self-referential techniques, John Gray, Oriel Gray’s first husband, pipes up as an audience member to remind them that “the history isn’t over yet” and reminds them of the Glen Davis sit-in strike. The New Theatre had produced a performance of The Candy Store underground for the miners at Glen Davis. Citing directly from New Theatre’s own history and reports he adds:

John Gray: On June 17th New Theatre had a call from the Miners’ Federation asking if we’d be interested in taking a show to Glen Davis to present to the miners who’d been on a stay-in strike underground for two weeks. You see, the Menzies government had decided to close the shale oil mines, and the miners were resisting. Well, of course, we said yes, so the entire cast of our show, a play called “The Candy Store”, travelled up to Glen Davis by chartered bus and were smuggled into the mine. Here’s some of what New Theatre secretary Miriam Hampson, had to say about in “Notes on New Theatre”.30

29 Mona Brand, Come All Ye Valiant Miners, MLMSS 6244, Box 69. 30 Mona Brand, Come All Ye Valiant Miners, MLMSS 6244, Box 69.

268

The actors refer also to the New Theatre play Black Diamonds, also about miners, by

Frank Hardy. The play ends with speeches by other miners who explain their plight as a Troubadour sings ‘Come All Ye Valiant Miners’ by Ewan McColl, with words slightly adapted to the specific Australian context.

The pronounced pro-union sentiment notwithstanding, the techniques and devices deployed in Come All Ye Valiant Miners encompassed the gamut of theatre and cultural practice: there was revue material, folk songs, slides, segments of films made by the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit, as well as some vaudeville elements.

This was regarded as ‘total theatre,’ a breakthrough in theatre practice that was to find critical approval and be lauded as radical when presented by the New Wave in the early 1970s. Although justifiably proud of their achievements, Brand felt that the contribution and efforts made by New Theatre received little, if any, acknowledgement of the artistic merits of its plays, with mainstream press reviews consisting mainly of backhanded compliments. For example, a review by Norman Kessell of Brand’s satire of mother’s day Our ‘Dear’ Relations in 1963 is typical of the criticism meted out.

Kessel says the play “...succeeds well enough in its own right as an original and well- constructed play to excuse the propaganda injected into the story of a plan to boost business by introduction of an ‘Uncle’s and Aunt’s Day’.31

In my opinion, Our ‘Dear’ Relations is far less propagandist than the stern, politically themed plays Brand had written in the 1950s. The reviewer seems to be expressing his

31 Sydney Sun (27 May 1963): 42. 269

own bias against politically partisan writers in what amounts to a genuflection to conservative Cold War ideology.

The play itself is an amusing and witty little farce about the machinations of the business industry and the rampant opportunism and dubious morality that pervades these sorts of enterprises. A departure from her previously sombre plays with their pre- determined socialist realist optimistic resolutions, in Our ‘Dear’ Relations—the Dear being a pun on the word expensive—Brand captures the characteristics of the class distinctions with wry humour as the farce unfolds. This three-act play lays bare in a light-hearted manner the nexus of business, religion and the manufacturing of public opinion. The firm of Alert Shirts Pty Ltd holds a meeting to “put spiritual values into

Father’s Day” which, according to them, is not as popular or successful in loosening the purse strings as Mother’s Day.32 The purpose of focusing on the importance of Father’s

Day is to boost their flagging sales of menswear during a mild economic recession. A plan for a nationwide competition for Father of the Year is mooted with wide press and media coverage extolling the virtues and significance of Father’s Day. One of the directors suggests an Uncle’s Day but the Reverend Crone, a major shareholder, is sceptical about this and wants something with a spiritual angle. An Uncle and Aunt’s

Day is decided upon, and so to maximise publicity it is decided to fabricate a matrimony between the winners at the most propitious moment. Twenty-three-year-old

Felicity, the daughter of the company director Sir Wally, wins the popular vote. The proletarian Bob Briggs (who is having a romance with Felicity) is also winning the popular vote, until the Friday night when the contest is rigged and fifty-three-year-old

32 Mona Brand, Here Under Heaven, 83. 270

Count Uffizi del Firenze is announced the winner. The rationale in having Uffizi win is based on Felicity’s almost certain rejection of him, thereby obviating the legal and moral complications of cancelling the much-touted engagement. Feigning concern about the moral implications of such fraudulence, the Rev. Crone attempts to allay the count’s concerns:

I am very glad you mentioned that, my friend. It is a point which also troubles me. But you must decide it yourself. Weigh up this small deception against the joy you’ll be giving so many people, and the service you will be doing the nation in a time of mild economic recession. Look into your heart and see what lies there.33

The count replies: “First I will look at the young lady”.34 Our ‘Dear’ Relations won first place in the NSW Arts Council’s Drama festival in 1963 and Leslie Rees notes that this farce merited a “much wider audience than it obtained” and that in this play “the fabric of invention held together in an unusual and lively way”.35

Another of Brand’s works during this period that is markedly different from her earlier plays with their sententious precepts and didacticism is Barbara36, a domestic drama produced by Sydney New Theatre in 1966. Here the dramatic tension arises out of the relationship between a controlling mother and her daughter. The conflict itself points to broader social issues but it never resorts to political sermonising, instead focusing on the human drama within the context of a conservative society in the early 1960s that

33 Mona Brand, ‘Our Dear Relations: A Farce’, in Here Under Heaven: Three Plays, 126. 34 Mona Brand, ‘Our Dear Relations: A Farce’, 126. 35 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 373. 36 Mona Brand, Barbara, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 63. 271

arose as result of the economic expansionism of post-World War Two and the attendant social and economic reforms. The opportunities provided to the working class by these reforms included access to education and careers previously unattainable and Brand’s play articulates these new aspirations through the family dynamics, while at the same time pointing to the underlying philistinism still prevalent in

Australian society. The play gestures to feminist concerns: “Gee, that’s good. I mean for a girl. It’s mighty”, says her sister’s boyfriend about Barbara’s academic results.37

The latent xenophobia beneath the veneer of tolerant egalitarianism and society’s conservative mores is also exposed through these filial relationships. The mother has academic aspirations for her daughter who has exceeded all expectations in her exams. Although studying science at her mother’s behest, Barbara prefers art and literature. To her mother’s dismay, Barbara becomes involved with a married immigrant from Germany: he is treated with barely concealed suspicion and disdain, and referred to as “the dirty Jew” when he is discovered to be Barbara’s lover.38 Barbara falls pregnant, causing chaos in the family and arguments ensue about how best to cope with the situation.

The play scratches the surface of lower-middle-class, conservative respectability to reveal some unpleasant truths: that despite material comfort and the opportunities it provides, middle-class conventions are spiritually stifling, especially for those with artistic inclinations. The mother, a domineering woman, thwarted in her own ambitions and aspirations by societal expectations, is trapped in a life of uninspiring domesticity

37 Mona Brand, Barbara, MLMSS 6244, Box 63. 38 Mona Brand, Barbara, MLMSS 6244, Box 63.

272

and lives vicariously through her daughter. Her concern for Barbara has less to do with the moral implications of having a baby out of wedlock: it is more about the impediment it will be to Barbara’s academic and career prospects. Barbara, who wants to have the baby and lead an independent life in another state, yields to her mother’s obdurate determination and agrees to go to England to have the baby where it will be raised by

Barbara’s childless aunt and uncle as their own so that she can continue her studies.

The denouement highlights the broader implications of Barbara’s subservience to her mother’s forceful will: the perpetuation of subordinating individual desire to that most sacrosanct of bourgeois institutions, the middle-class family.

The play is generally devoid of political rhetoric and Brand does not supply the expected optimistic resolution to the dilemma, instead providing a microcosm of the broader and more complex social problems as they are manifested within filial relationships. It is through Barbara’s own inability to defy convention that the necessity to challenge it arises intrinsically in the drama. The dramatic tension is sustained to the end, where the mother’s asphyxiating influence, which prevents her own daughter from experiencing motherhood, is underscored. These were themes that few theatre companies in Australia were exploring but Barbara “spoke to its time” with sensitivity.39

It is very unlikely that New Theatre would have approved of Barbara prior to the 1960s.

Its tone of dejected subjugation and resignation to the seemingly omnipotent force of petty bourgeois conventions, expressed through the mother, would have consigned this play to the reject bin for its ‘defeatism.’

39 Michelle Arrow, ‘Written out of History? The Disappearance of Australia’s Women Playwrights’, Overland, no. 155 (1999): 46. 273

The new, more liberal atmosphere in New Theatre after 1956 provided Brand with the opportunity to articulate her own misgivings about attitudes to culture and sectarianism within the CPA and New Theatre. In an address to a cultural conference she spoke against the prevailing attitudes within the CPA, blaming the loss to the party of “all the professional writers and dozens of cultural cadres” on its sectarianism and dogmatism.

She pointed out that many of these writers “are working most effectively outside the party—some of them closely with us in various spheres”.40 Brand also re-affirmed her defence of Patrick White as a “realist in the best Australian tradition” and added “I had thought and hoped that we had all outgrown the White-phobia that had plagued the party a few years ago”41 Her defence of White led, as has been noted already, to her being labelled a “revisionist” and “carrier of right-wing views” by senior CPA members.42 The ‘White-phobia’ is perhaps a reference to the party cultural theorist

Jack Beasley’s ad hominem attacks on White in his article ‘The Great Hatred—Patrick

White as novelist.’43 Brand had responded with her own article in the Realist Writer in

1963, where she deems “fallacious” Beasley’s assessment of White as “misanthropic” and as having a “Patrician contempt for ordinary people”. She counters Beasley’s simplistic political assessment of White’s literary work with her own evaluation of White as a writer with an “extra-dimensional quality” and “of originality” whose “satire is often superb”.44

40 Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 8. 41 Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 8. 42 Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 8. 43 The article first appeared in Realist Writer, No. 9, September, 1962 and reproduced by Beasley in Journal of an Era: Notes From Red Letter Days (Earlwood, NSW: Wedgetail Press, 1988), 101-7. 44 Mona Brand, ‘Another Look at Patrick White’, Realist Writer, no. 12 (1963): 21. 274

The shift within the CPA and in New Theatre shows that the CPA’s ceding control over

New Theatre produced beneficial results for Brand and others. Her writing is less constrained when dealing with issues that, while of political significance, are not subservient to political considerations; she is revealed to be more of a “humorous and percipient observer of individuals”45 and this is given expression in her domestic dramas and comedies as well as documentary musicals such as On Stage Vietnam and Going, Going, Gone.

On Stage Vietnam had a six-month season in 1967 at Sydney New Theatre and is considered to be the progenitor of Australian documentary musicals.46 This was an ensemble effort which included Mona Brand, Patrick Barnett and Roger Millliss. Press reviews commended On Stage Vietnam, with The Realist’s Hazel Jones enthusing that

“The true quality of On Stage Vietnam comes from the very successful integration of the different art forms”.47 Brand claims that, while the audience comprised quite a few of the “converted”, many others also attended, which aided in influencing many people to adopt a more critical attitude towards the Vietnam War.48

An interesting aspect of the play, and one that Brand and others have noted, is that its format of musical revue, newspaper reportage, film and other technical innovations was soon taken up by other theatres comprising the New Wave (the Jane Street

Theatre, Nimrod in Sydney and the Pram Factory in Melbourne) and was heralded as

45 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 204. 46 New Theatre, The New Years 1932—, 21. 47 Hazel Jones, The Realist, no. 27 (1967): 34. 48 Mona Brand, Enough Blue Sky, 240. 275

radical and innovative. The praise accorded to the New Wave underscored New

Theatre’s isolation from the mainstream in the critics’ and New Wave’s lack of acknowledgement of the precedents established by New Theatre.

On Stage Vietnam, which remains unpublished, is an effective political satire that interrogates humanitarian intervention as a pretext for war, to reveal the imperialist motivations underlying it and the reason for the Australian government’s alliance with

American imperialism at the war’s outset. The play opens up with a commentator who points to a map of Vietnam:

Here is a map of Vietnam. The Vietnamese live here. All over. Up here to the north we have China. Full of Chinese. Australia is down there, 2,000 miles away. America is over there—6,000 miles to the west. U.S and Australian troops have travelled all those thousands of miles to make sure Vietnam is not invaded—by the Vietnamese. 49

Brand provides a historical overview of the succession of imperialist intrigues in south- east Asia culminating at the end of Act One with the formation of the National

Liberation Front or Vietcong in Vietnam in 1962. Juxtaposed to the developments in

Vietnam is the manufacturing of public opinion in Australia in support of the war. Mavis, a barmaid, is at work and concerned about what she reads in the newspapers about the war and the youth that are opposing it. Glad, another barmaid, is indifferent, while

Bill, a sullen customer, is an uncritical patriot:

49 Mona Brand, Patrick Barnett, Roger Milliss, On Stage Vietnam, unpublished manuscript from the Hanger Collection, Fryer Library, University of Queensland. 276

Mavis: Why do we have to get caught up with fighting Asians?

Bill: Now look, Mave, you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry one, would you?

Mavis: No, but

Glad: Well, there’s millions and millions of them up there.50

The scene plays on Australian xenophobic traditions while simultaneously exposing the inherent political philistinism engendered by an uncritical media upon a public fed incessantly on lies and propaganda. On Stage Vietnam is informed by Brand’s (and

Barnett’s and Milliss’s) class standpoint and understanding of the machinations of imperialist aggressors, but resists promulgating the ‘party line’. Nevertheless, Norman

Kessell, like other critics, damns with faint praise in his critique of the revue in the

Sydney Sun in 1967. His equivocal praise of On Stage Vietnam as “valid and entertaining humour” and its “deftly introduced humour” is a segue to criticism of the underlying political elements which “counterbalance propaganda that ranges from subtle to sledgehammer”.51

The satirical approach lends itself well to Brand’s insightful knowledge of the culture, history and traditions of the Vietnamese people. Christine Tilley makes a similar assessment of Brand’s evolution as playwright and her developing style as having

50 Mona Brand, On Stage Vietnam. 51 Cited in Janet Gibson’s MA thesis, Mona Brand: The Marginalisation of an Australian Playwright, 13. Gibson cites as her source the article ‘Fun with a Purpose’, June 13 (1967). A page number for The Sydney Sun is not provided. Mona Brand papers ML1011/73, Box 17. 277

“fortified her penchant for the truth of good caricature, humour and satire which increasingly has demanded the technical expertise of total theatre”.52

On Stage Vietnam manages to succinctly capture those historically determined aspects of Australian culture that are revived even today during periods of political and social crisis, such as the notion of race as a unifying force and cultural tradition enshrined in the Australian constitution. The play also has the potential to resonate with contemporary audiences who will easily recognise the war-mongering rhetoric predicated on decades of successful xenophobic scare-mongering: the word terrorist can be substituted for communism and the yellow invaders become the Muslim

Jihadists without disrupting the play’s inherent and relevant critique.

Although infused with satirical vitality, On Stage Vietnam does not lose sight of the human tragedy at the war’s centre: the Vietnamese people upon whom the war has taken a terrible toll, and the brutalisation of soldiers. The scene entitled ‘Vietnam

Encounter’ has a woman nursing her child. The soldier pleads with her to accept the gifts he proffers and reassures her of their noble intentions for having taken over the village. She remains unresponsive, continuing to sing to her baby. Assuming the baby is unwell, he offers to get medical help, but reels back in horror when he pulls the baby’s covers away and realises that she has been burnt to death, a mangled corpse all that remains over which the mother continues to croon lullabies.

52 Christine Tilley, ‘Mona Brand: A Checklist’, 119. 278

The play ends on a sombre note: a slide with thousands of crosses appears and the images of Menzies, Johnson, Holt and others are juxtaposed to slides of ordinary

Australians, going about their usual routines, indifferent to the plight of the Vietnamese.

Tending towards histrionics, the play’s finale has ‘Guilty’ slowly disappear from the slide as a disfigured Vietnamese child is shown.

Brand followed up On Stage Vietnam with Going, Going, Gone: A Financial Revue, produced by Sydney New Theatre in November 1968, also unpublished. It was devised by Brand and Margaret Barr, a choreographer who had studied in New York with

Martha Graham, the pioneer of modern dance. Going, Going, Gone is about the gradual selling off of Australia to foreign multinationals. Using elements of vaudeville, narrative, music and drama, Brand claims it introduced “a new type of format that was soon to be seen at the Jane Street, the Nimrod and the APG”.53Going, Going,

Gone’s overt political stance alienated some reviewers such as The Bulletin’s Rex

Cramphorne who acknowledged its “worthwhile contribution to forward looking theatre on the level of form but its undigested partisan content makes it a failure as far as

‘changing’ its audience goes”.54 This is the only review or commentary to be found on this play, with even Leslie Rees omitting any mention of it as well as of On Stage

Vietnam in his seminal work The Making of Australian Drama.

Cramphorne expresses uncertainty about what “critical standards” exist to evaluate a

“theatre whose impact is not simply aesthetic and its point of attack is not simply

53 Mona Brand, ‘New Theatre Movement—Part 2’, Theatre Australia (October 1978): 20. 54 Rex Cramphorne, The Bulletin (7 December 1968): 84. 279

intellectual”.55 For those critics previously unfamiliar with New Theatre’s work but cognisant of their political affiliations, the starting point of any critique was New

Theatre’s political history and that of its playwrights. Stalinists derided any interest in artistic form as formalism and regarded it as an expression of political malfeasance, so it is ironic that mainstream reviewers seem to articulate their criticisms in a purely political context. For example, Brand recalls that notable Australian theatre critic

Katharine Brisbane “panned” Going, Going, Gone and emphasised instead the fact that

Brand was “an old socialist since the thirties.”56

However, it would be almost impossible for New Theatre to remain on the sidelines of social or political critique given that several other Australian playwrights were attempting to deal with these pressing issues in their work during this politically turbulent period. An example is Alan Seymour’s One Day of the Year, which questions the growing social polarisation in the conservative Menzies era in the late 1950s and, more controversially, challenges the veneration of Anzac Day. The play was banned, but was staged by an amateur theatre group in 1961 and has since then entrenched itself in Australian theatre history. Patrick White’s plays also began to be produced at this time. White’s anti-naturalism can be interpreted as a response to the prevalent social climate, but his concern is more metaphysical: the national psyche is the focus of his satire and is conveyed through expressionism and symbolism. Other Australian

55 Rex Cramphorne, The Bulletin (7 December 1968): 84. 56 Gaye Poole, ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’, 11. 280

playwrights include Dorothy Hewett (a CPA member), Alex Buzo and Douglas Stewart, all of whom produced plays of social critique in this period.57

Going, Going, Gone’s emphasis is on Australia’s economic development, traversing

Australia’s history from its inception as penal colony, through the Eureka stockade, the first stock market crash, the first and second World Wars, the Depression of the 1890s and that of the 1930s, the post-World War Two economic boom, right up to the 1960s where parts of Australia are auctioned off. It is a farcical history, and satirical in its attempt to expose the perfidy of governments and speculators in their efforts to sell off

Australian industry to foreign multinationals. Non-fictional Australian political characters include J. D. Lang, Scullin and Menzies and the main protagonist is A. Strine, the self- made Australian ‘everyman’ who features throughout, first as a convict in London, then as a First Fleeter before becoming, in another scene, an emancipated landowner who loses all his savings in the stock-market crash of 1892. Exasperated after all his efforts to merely make ends meet while struggling against seemingly omnipotent forces throughout Australia’s history, Strine appears in the last scene at an auction, bidding unsuccessfully for bits of Australia.

The play is uneven in its humour, but it nevertheless demonstrates Brand’s latent flair for comedy and indicates a talent that could have been honed had she been granted critical appraisal outside of the network of ‘committed writers.’ One of Brand’s more

57 Leonard Radic, The State of Play: The Revolution in the Australian Theatre since the 1960s (Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books, 1991). Radic discusses these authors and their work in the 1960s in the chapter titled ‘Backyard Realism’, 25-38. 281

notable successes with Sydney New Theatre was the comedy Here Comes Kisch!

Brand had written the play in 1972 although it was not produced by New Theatre until

1984. It is about the attempt by the then Australian government to prevent Egon Kisch, the Czech communist, from attending an anti-fascist conference in 1934. Kisch, proficient in several European languages, failed the dictation test that was set for him in Gaelic so he jumped five metres from aboard the ship docked in Melbourne, breaking his leg. The scandal mobilised the left-wing fraternity into a campaign in his support. Not long after, the government’s decision was rescinded in court where it was decided that Gaelic was not a European language, much to the chagrin of many Scots.

Here Comes Kisch! is described by Leslie Rees as a “rip-roaring politico-agitational chronicle”.58 The Bulletin’s Brian Hoad praised Here Comes Kisch! as “rare, heart stirring inspiration” and noted that “Brand and the New strike a good balance between the seriousness of the facts and a lightness of touch in the presentation” while Ken

Horler’s Party Wall on the same theme at the Nimrod was “far less successful”.59 The

Sun Herald’s Colin Menzies was exuberant in his praise. “Greatness” he said, “is to be found at the New Theatre in Newtown, where a wonderful political romp called Here

Comes Kisch! is into its third week”.60 Mark Carrey’s review of Here Comes Kisch! exalted it as a “political satire with teeth. A savage indictment of the reactionary

Australian government, at times a powerful anti-war statement, and a plea for free

58 Leslie Rees, Australian Drama 1970-1985 (North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1987), 275-6 59 Brian Hoad, The Bulletin (28 August 1984). Found in Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 60 Colin Menzies, Sun Herald (19 August 1987). Found in Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 282

speech. But apart from all that it’s also lively entertainment”.61 A radio adaptation of

Here Comes Kisch! was produced with a cast including theatre and television actors

Henri Szeps and Martin Sacks but as yet none of Mona Brand’s plays have received professional treatment in Australia.

Brand was animated by issues of “presumed universal importance”62 throughout her playwriting career, but this was largely subservient to the rigours of the party’s political oversight, resulting in plays that, while interesting in their themes and concerns, nevertheless often had to convey the ‘correct’ ideological position of the CPA. The second and third decades of her playwriting for New Theatre demonstrate a degree of insouciance in relation to upholding ideological doctrines. Consequently the plays of this period reveal the untapped ability that could have been honed had Brand’s plays been subject to professional literary, rather than political, critique throughout her career. Brand’s development demonstrates her ability to extemporise on any number of themes with varying degrees of success. That Brand’s plays from the 1960s are more complete dramatically and broader in theme as well being more critically acclaimed is due to New Theatre becoming more independent from the CPA.

61 Newswrite, No.186 (20 August–23 September 1984). Found in Mona Brand Papers, ML1011/73, Box 6. 62 Susan Pfisterer, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’, 168. 283

 

1(' / !,*4 / !&+ ' !,*"% ''(.,"('+; *%-,(3(**( '",(*( "'+,*&,"*',!/.7

While this thesis has thus far demonstrated the nature of the relationship between the

CPA and New Theatre playwrights, the broader significance of New Theatre’s contribution to Australian theatre development needs to be elaborated. This chapter seeks to assert the significance of New Theatre in relation to both its theatrical and political experimentation and innovation. Former CPA members attest to this often neglected aspect of Australia’s literary history. For example, Bernie Taft avers that the

CPA played an important role in Australia’s cultural development:

The party was a pioneer in the development of Australian folklore. In the early post-war years, especially, the party played a major role in the propagation of Australian culture, and this in turn energised and influenced many of us. A number of Australian artists were either members of the CPA or sympathetic to its ideas: these included Noel Counihan, Dorothy Hewett, Bernard Smith and Stephen Murray- Smith. In 1952, the CPA initiated the establishment of the Australasian Book Society, which published over eighty books between 1952 and 1979. The appearance of Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory in 1950 had a big impact, as did Eric Lambert’s The Twenty Thousand Thieves in 1951. The staging of Dick Diamond’s Reedy River, with its strong Australian flavour, was a highlight of

284

those years. Similarly the establishment of Overland in 1954 was an important addition to Australian culture.1

Laurie Aarons makes similar claims, and some of the works by writers cited by Taft have been the subject of critical analysis and their contribution to Australian literature and theatre noted. It is paradoxical, however, that New Theatre’s contribution to

Australian culture refutes the claim about the dearth of Australian plays in the first five decades of the twentieth century, their aesthetic merits notwithstanding. New Theatre did encourage and produce Australian plays in periods during which very few companies such as J.C. Williamson’s would consider staging. New Theatre also encouraged female playwrights, employing them as writers, at a time when they were generally shunned by commercial theatres, and well before the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

New Theatre’s social project was wide-ranging, and it produced plays that dealt with the plight of Aborigines, censorship, gender inequality, war and fascism, long before the advent of identity politics embraced by the New Wave. Ken Harper notes that there are only four “philosophical strands of particular theatre groups or companies” in

Australia: Louis Esson’s Pioneer Players (1921–25), the Emerald Hill Theatre in

Melbourne (1962–66), the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney (1960–) and the New Theatre movement.2 Despite its amateur status, New Theatre won the City of Sydney

Eisteddfod One Act Play Competition in 1938, 1939 and 1940. The contributions to

1 Bernie Taft, Memoirs of Bernie Taft: Crossing the Party Line, 52. 2 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre—The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne 1935-83’, 56-71. 285

New Theatre by established and respected writers such as Katharine Susannah

Prichard lent New Theatre an element of prestige. Prichard contributed several agit- prop sketches including Forward One that was produced by Sydney New Theatre in

1937. The sketch is about the conditions of shop assistants in a clothing store in which unionisation is the focus, when the women decide to strike. Prichard’s one act play

Women of Spain supported the struggle for Republican Spain against Franco’s fascism and was produced by the Workers’ Art Guild in Perth in 1937. Penalty Clause, also known as Solidarity, was produced by the Workers’ Art Guild in 1940 and it addressed the unsafe conditions in the gold mines. The dialogue reads very much like trade union agitation:

Flynn: The mineowners say we mustn’t strike to stop this murder of our mates. We mustn’t strike to stop this murder of our mates. We mustn’t strike to prevent the breaking up of a worker’s home—like Mick Watt’s home has been broken up. We must work on their blasted mines, site up wealth for them and take what’s coming to us without cracking a word. We must be punished for even making them obey the mining laws. Are we going to stand for it? Are we going to stand for having the whip cracked over us, every time we put up a fight for our rights? Are we going back to work for fear of the penalty clause?

Voice: No! NO! Not on your life!

Flynn: Don’t forget what Paddy Ryan said: the fight’s on boys. The fight’s always on. Stand solid. We’ll win this one like we did the last. And someday—we’ll smash the penalty clause!3

3 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 101. 286

New Theatre’s technique of targeting proletarian audiences saw them undertake such unorthodox ventures as taking a production down a mine. Producing the American play

The Candy Store in 1952 about a strike in a large US chain store, New Theatre was asked by the Miners Federation to take the show to Glen Davis, where miners were striking underground against Menzies’s decision to close down the shale oil coal mines. The strike was defeated but the show was a success with the miners and the locals.4

Another New Theatre innovation very similar to those the New Wave utilised decades later was the Living Newspaper style, a theatrical form originating in Russia and developed in the United States, out of which dramatic reportage emerged. This style was popular with New Theatre audiences in Australia, and its non-naturalistic method encompasses a variety of techniques vividly described as

a narrative method [that] combined historical documents and the latest news flashes with invented dialogue and brought together real figures of the past and present alongside invented characters, all presided over by the disembodied Voice of the Living Newspaper that rang across the stage by means of a loudspeaker. Projections, films, charts, the novel use of light, and scenery of both naturalistic and expressionist varieties were part of the technique. Music, both orchestral and vocal was used.5

4 Notes on the History of New Theatre (Australia: New Theatre, 1959), np. 5 Angela O’Brien, ed., Thirteen Dead: Reportage Drama from Wonthaggi Mine (Clifton Hill, Victoria: New Theatre Publications, 1993), xii. 287

As noted already, dramatic reportage of this type was originally utilised in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution to convey to semi-literate and illiterate Russian audiences in the simplest style the latest topical and urgent issues and problems as well as government announcements. Clifford Odets popularised it in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s with his plays Waiting for Lefty and Till the Day I Die. David

Carter notes that this style “entails thinking of propaganda, not as bits of political rhetoric insufficiently made over into art, but as an available narrative strategy”.6

An Australian example of Living Newspaper or dramatic reportage, albeit not quite as dramatically complete as Odets’s plays, is Thirteen Dead, about the mine explosion in

Wonthaggi, Victoria, that killed thirteen miners on February 15, 1937. The play is a result of a collaborative writing effort, another common practice at New Theatre, and which in this instance is believed to have included Catherine Duncan, her husband Kim

Keane, and well-known Australian story writer and novelist Alan Marshall. The response to New Theatre’s production at a packed King’s Theatre in Melbourne was, apparently, overwhelmingly positive, with the audience appreciative of “the departure from conventional dramatic form”, according to the Melbourne Herald.7 The Melbourne

Argus and The Age, while recognising and decrying its propagandist purpose, nevertheless acknowledged its vigour and daring.

6 David Carter, ‘Documenting and Criticising Society’, The Penguin Literary History of Australia, Laurie Hergenhan ed., 370-89 (Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1988). 7 Angela O’Brien, Thirteen Dead: Reportage Drama from Wonthaggi Mine, xv. 288

New Theatre’s encouragement of local content also demands a reconsideration of the commonly held view that very little Australian material was produced prior to Summer of the Seventeenth Doll or the New Wave’s supposed ‘innovations.’ It may be true that no major theatres were producing Australian plays, but this seriously limits the purview of inquiry and ignores the cultural significance of a theatre that inscribed in its constitution the encouragement of Australian writers. Nor was this empty rhetoric, but a commitment that is easily quantified: between April 1933 and December 1936, of forty- two New Theatre productions sixteen were by local playwrights, although many of these were short, agit-prop plays. According to Connie Healy, there were at least seven playwrights who wrote especially for New Theatre at one time: Dick Diamond,

Mona Brand, Joan Clarke, Nance Macmillan, Dymphna Cusack, Oriel Gray, and Jim

Crawford.8 Others who contributed include Leslie Rees, Mona Brand’s husband Len

Fox, David Williamson and Oriel Gray’s husband John Hepworth. Between 1937 and

1955, New Theatre staged 136 plays of which thirty-six were by Australians, as were all of the seven topical revues produced in this period. Twenty-two plays were by women, who also wrote most of the satirical revues.9

Between 1956 and 2007, there were 108 productions at Sydney New Theatre10 including adaptations by Australian playwrights including Alan Seymour’s The One Day of the Year, Nick Enright’s On the Wallaby and First Class Women, Barry Oakley’s The

Feet of , Alex Buzo’s Pacific Union, Stephen Sewell’s The Father We

8 Connie Healy, Defiance, 35. 9 Mona Brand, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre’, 1-8. 10 These figures are arrived at by me, adding the productions listed in the New Years 1932— The Plays, People and Events of 75 Years of Sydney’s New Theatre. 289

Loved on a Beach by the Sea and Traitors, John Romeril’s The Radioactive Horror

Show, David Williamson’s Don’s Party and Patrick White’s Season at Sarsaparilla.

Other writers to have their work produced by Sydney New Theatre during this period include CPA stalwarts Frank Hardy, Dick Diamond and Mona Brand, Dorothy Hewett and several collaborative efforts. New Theatre was also one of the first to employ resident female writers: Oriel Gray was the first in 1938 and Mona Brand occupied a similar position from 1955 onwards.

The plight of Aborigines and racial discrimination were key topics tackled by New

Theatre, resulting in several pioneering productions. Fountains Beyond by George

Landen Dann was first produced in 1942. However, the published version of Fountains

Beyond differs from the New Theatre production. The last act in the published version has Vic, in a fit of jealousy upon discovering Peggy’s infidelity, accidentally shooting and killing her. His friend, an old Aboriginal man, Henry, stumbles upon the scene and believes Vic killed Peggy according to tribal custom for her infidelity. Henry and Vic leave for Helpman Island, from where both Henry and Peggy hail, to bury Peggy in her tribal home.

The New Theatre production, however, differs from the published version. In New

Theatre’s production, Vic, defying tribal lore, does not kill Peggy, reinforcing colonial precepts about Aboriginal advancement in accordance with European custom:

Vic: you en’t worth I do no killin’. You en’t worth I go gaol ‘cause I do that! White man in me...him tells me them things! ...but black man...

290

him sees only one thing to do! But I en’t able to do that thing! I en’t able... to do it!11

The published version has far more pathos in Peggy’s death, albeit accidental. It is more in keeping with the Aboriginal custom of retribution for betrayal and infidelity.

Leslie Rees claims the play remains highly significant and is “the first serious drama about Aborigines on the fringes of towns”.12 Similar themes were explored to varying degrees by Oriel Gray in Western Limit but only a scene from this play exists.

Produced by New Theatre in 1946, the play’s protagonist is Charlie, a stockman with artistic talent, who has a white father and Aboriginal mother. Charlie attended a mission school where his talent for drawing and painting was encouraged. He is attracted to Pat, the pastoralist’s daughter. In keeping with the dominant ideology of the supposed inferiority of the Aborigines, Pat is wholly at ease in her position of social advantage and the concomitant bigotry. Idly listening to jazz tunes on the verandah,

Pat is startled by Charlie’s approach out of the darkness:

Pat: I had no idea there was anyone about...I didn’t hear a sound. Of course you do walk quietly, all you people.’’

Charlie: you mean ...aboriginals?13

As Charlie tells Pat some tribal stories involving goblins and terrible spirits, she becomes afraid but quickly regains her composure, saying “Funny—to be afraid of the

11 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 76. 12 Leslie Rees, The Making of Australian Drama, 168. 13 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box122. 291

dark. Of course they’re awfully simple people...your people.’’14 Pat’s condescending bigotry is remarkable for its blitheness. It exemplifies how official policy finds expression in everyday life, unwittingly and inadvertently, and it was precisely this attitude that Gray wanted to convey in Western Limit. Had We But World Enough and

Sky Without Birds as well as Mona Brand’s Here Under Heaven all dealt with the theme of xenophobia and the plight of Aborigines. Jim Crawford also dealt with this topic in Rocket Range which was produced by Unity/New Theatre15 in 1948, 1950 and

1955. Jim Crawford wrote around twenty plays, and virtually all were socially critical plays, animated by his political beliefs as a CPA member. He wrote exclusively for New

Theatre and he remains a playwright whose work has never been published or performed on the professional stage.16

Dealing with a theme controversial for its time, Crawford’s Rocket Range, a one-act play, deals with the reaction of Aborigines to the invasion by whites of their tribal hunting grounds. Crawford wrote it as a response to the Federal government’s intention to build a rocket range which would entail the removal of remote groups of

Aborigines from their tribal lands in central Australia.17 The play shows the Aborigines discussing the white interlopers’ offensive behaviour such as helping themselves to

Aboriginal women and camping near sacred sites. The Aborigines discuss their options: to leave or be expelled and face starvation and obliteration as a tribe. One warrior favours the adoption of a white man into their totem, but the other refuses and

14 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 122. 15 Unity was the name of the Brisbane section of New Theatre. 16 Connie Healy, Defiance, 194. 17 Connie Healy, Defiance, 151. 292

when the Aborigines become aware of the government’s plans for their site, they kill him as a trespasser, according to their custom. An investigating policeman arrives and shoots a warrior who is about to spear him. The tribe is rounded up, chained and taken away.

There is little of the dour sermonising or excessive rhetoric that characterise many other New Theatre writers’ plays on similar themes or in their plays of social critique.

The characters Namalka, Gimbin and Kajabbi all possess individual characteristics: humour, bravery, wisdom, and cowardice. Their talk about the invading lecherous and brutal white man is sardonic in its humour and apt in its characterisation of the destruction wrought by the invaders:

Gimbin: you’ve seen the white man?

Kajabbi: I’ve seen him. He wasn’t at his camp near the lagoon. I tracked him for miles. And beside the lagoon and beside his tracks it was always the same story. The crows and the flies are busy. He must have camped beside the lagoon and killed every living thing, as it came to the water. Kangaroos, curos, brolgas, wallaroos, ducks— even the sand goannas. They’re dotted everywhere—dead and rotting. I tracked him past the arawaba rock, the initiation ground where warriors of our tribe have been made for centuries. He’d used it as a lavatory. There was a dead kangaroo at the foot of the rock— newly skinned.

Gimbin: The madman! The criminal lunatic!18

18 Jim Crawford, Rocket Range, unpublished manuscript, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 107. 293

The play was entered in the British Drama League Festival in Sydney in 1946 where its ideological premise was peremptorily decried as rendering it unsuitable for the Festival, whereupon the judge threw it out, denouncing it:

I cannot but feel that this play has been chosen for presentation for no other reason than ideological propaganda, and as such, I have no option but to throw it out of what is designed as a ‘theatrical’ festival.19

The play was awarded half the possible marks for “the splendid impression left upon the spectators” but was roundly condemned for

the spectacle of an Australian policeman, even in the Woop-Woops, wading in like any Chicago gangster and shooting down his defenceless black brother...it is utterly slanderous upon a fine body of men... this, I am afraid, registers no marks, as it fails to advance the Drama...20

Crawford defended the play and its depiction of the role of the police as corresponding to reality, noting that “in fact, not one, but seven tribal Aborigines were shot by a police party in North Western Australia only six years before the play was written, in circumstances similar to those shown on stage.21

19 Connie Healy, Defiance, 153. 20 Connie Healy, Defiance, 153. 21 Connie Healy, Defiance, 153. 294

As versatile as other New Theatre playwrights, Crawford also wrote a musical play in three acts, Billets or Badges. The production date is not known nor is the year it was written. Set in Brisbane in 1912 the play opens outside the Trades Hall with the singing of the strike song The Wearing of the Badge. Women’s rights and the threat American big business, or foreign capital, are central themes. Frank is a wharfie whose girlfriend,

Phyllis Plumper, is the daughter of a businessman. Mr Plumper is described as “the heavy Victorian type, pompous, hypocritical and overbearing”. His wife is “dutiful and overbearing” and their friend, Special Constable Popplewhite, is “of poor physique and dressed to display it”.22 He wears a blue and white armband and carries a baton. Her father disapproves of her relationship with Frank, referring to him as a “coalheaver” instead of a wharf labourer. Mr Plumper attributes Phyllis’ rebellion to her association with “female Radicals and Suffragettes”. He threatens to cut Phyllis off financially if she marries Frank without his consent: “But perhaps the idea of love in a Cottage—or a

Spring Hill hovel—appeals to you?”23

Two wharf workers, Dick and Joe, overhear and disparage Plumper as a slum landlord who “owns dozens of dirty little high rent rabbit hutches”. Plumper regards them and disdainfully remarks, upon noticing their red ribbons in their buttonholes, “Ohmore red-ribboned unionists, hey? More strikers out to wreck Society?”24 The reference is to the tramway strike against the dictates of John Stillman Badger of Massachusetts.

22 Jim Crawford, Billets or Badges, MLMSS 6244, Box 64. 23 Jim Crawford, Billets or Badges, MLMSS 6244, Box 64. 24 Jim Crawford, Billets or Badges, MLMSS 6244, Box 64. 295

Gender equality is a concern of this play, as the impact of laws in which women’s property and wealth automatically become their husband’s upon marriage are shown to be anachronistic in the early twentieth century. Plumper himself inherited his wife’s shares in a company, thereby significantly augmenting his meagre wealth running a rent collecting and debt recovery business, as Phyllis reminds him. There is also Mrs.

Miller, a “practicing Socialist” who supports the strike. Dancing girls in period costume appear as members of the Indigent Ladies’ Seamstresses Association for Mutual

Improvement and Self Help, which Mr. Plumper helped them to form. However, they are not a union, because, as Plumper reminds them, “unions are low”.25 The women decide to disband the Association and form instead the Women’s Needleworkers Union and to affiliate with the Trades Labour Council.

The ‘Political Aims of the Australian Labour Federation’ are read out by Harry, a striking worker. Phyllis and her mother, who is sympathetic to Phyllis’s plight, consult Mrs.

Higgins, the wife of Arbitration judge Mr. Higgins. Mrs. Plumper is thus emboldened to confront her husband about the terms of their marriage settlement. Now cognisant of her political and legal rights, Mrs. Plumper demands her husband write a cheque for

Phyllis with which she and Frank, when married, can purchase a house. Plumper baulks at this, but eventually yields when she makes clear her awareness of the legal and political avenues open to her should he resist. The last scene is a mime sequence on a tram to the William Tell overture which ends with a rendition of them all singing

Ballad of the Badge.

25 Jim Crawford, Billets or Badges, MLMSS 6244, Box 64. 296

The housing shortage in Australia in the interwar and post war years was a social problem also taken up by Crawford in plays such as Welcome Home. The play is set in an overcrowded room in an industrial suburb in Melbourne. Bill is an AIF soldier, who has returned from the war, unannounced, after four years. The housing shortage is keenly felt as Bill, Mary, her sister Ida, Aunt May and May’s son Jimmy share a house which, as Ida says has “four beds and all the family furniture in two rooms, and mother flitting around in her petticoat because the kitchen gets so hot”.26 Privacy becomes a problem as does Bill’s drinking and bad temper. Bill reveals the horrors he had witnessed in the war and his disillusionment about a war for “democracy”.

Bill: I fought for democracy for four years, didn’t I? But when I come back and ask for a place to live they think I’m dopey. They never heard of such a thing.

Aunt May: You’ve got a place to live, haven’t you?

Bill: Since you took Ida into your bed, and put young Jimmy in the kitchen, we’ve got a place to bivouac, thanks to you.

Aunt May: It’s hard on young people, I know. You wouldn’t believe the number of marriages around here that are breaking up simply because young couples have to live jammed up in places like this. I read in the papers the other day that one of them bi “Liberal” blokes said they shouldn’t make them ready made steel houses. They were too much like sardine tins, he said. Sardine tins! I’d like to have him here for a month or two, and put him in the kitchen with young Jimmy. I’d give him sardine tins!27

The one-act play ends with Bill vowing to continue fighting for better housing.

26 Jim Crawford, Welcome Home, MLMSS 6244, Box 122. 27 Jim Crawford, Welcome Home, MLMSS 6244, Box 122. 297

Bill: I’m going to ask them why they can’t build houses like they built bombers, I’m going to ask councilors and politicians all sorts of things. And I’m not going to ask on my own either. I’m in the R.S.L aren’t I? I’ll be back in the Union when I start in the factory on Monday. Well, I’m going to get the R.S.L and the Union to ask these questions with me.28

Joan Clarke’s We’ll Build a Little House is a three-act play that also deals with the housing crisis in Australia in the 1950s. Jim and his new bride Jenny come home to his parents’ house and they feel that they are imposing.

Ma: I’ve got it all arranged, son, don’t you worry. Molly is going to sleep on the back porch where Mike slept. Tom sleeps on the bedsettee there and Mike will put up a stretcher in here.29

Such is the housing crisis that Molly’s boyfriend, Bob, attempts to entice her into marriage with the promise of not having to work “carting greasy food and greasy dishes” and a place of their own, rather than live in her cramped house. Molly claims to be uninterested in marriage as yet, antagonising Bob who says “you’re only saying that, Molly, because you’re scared of your Ma. If this big-shot brother of yours is such a smart newspaper man, then he ought to be able to find a room for his wife without putting you out on a poky little porch.”30

28 Jim Crawford, Welcome Home, MLMSS 6244, Box 122. 29 Joan Clarke, We’ll Build a Little House, MLMSS 6244, Box 122. 30 Joan Clarke, We’ll Build a Little House, MLMSS 6244, Box 122. 298

Ma attends the Progress Meetings, where they campaign for improved social services and Pop used to be in the Anti-Eviction Committee during the Depression years. He laments that “the working man had guts in those days” and that young fellas have had it too soft, that’s been the trouble—plenty of jobs around and always the price of a beer in our pocket. Lost a sense of mateship somehow—every man out for himself”. Mike is offended and retorts:

“Struth! Haven’t we earned a few beers? Five years in the Army, fighting for what? Damper and a billy of tea out on the rack somewhere? Might come to that yet—those blokes that are married with a couple of kids are doing it tough enough now—but meanwhile I’m getting what I can out of life, but that doesn’t mean I’m ratting on my mates”.

Almost all family members who work are union members. Tensions mount and resentment flares against Jim and Jenny who have “overcrowded” the house. Jenny and Jim decide to move into a double room above a pub owned by Jim and Mike’s friend George. Mike, who works for George, called in the union to defend a communist co-worker who was sacked, is also fired by the contractor building the pub. A brawl breaks out after George orders the beer turned off when he learns that the contracted workers are organising a strike. A brawl ensues, and when George calls the police Pop is arrested after clouting an officer in defense of the workers.

There is also outrage that George is allowed to build a “fancy” pub while there is such a housing shortage, which is shown to have a social impact on the lives of Molly and Jim.

299

The play ends with Ma deciding to raise these matters at the Progress Meeting, to which Pop agrees to attend as well.

Opposition to the propaganda of New Theatre productions began to emerge in this period. For instance, in 1949, New Theatre audiences were critical of the heavily

“political” plays being presented so New Theatre decided to offer lighter fare in the form of Ted Willis’s God Bless the Guv’nor. A modernised version of a Victorian melodrama, it was given an ironic proletarian twist suitable for a workers’ theatre. The play involves the corrupt union secretary, and in the course of the action the boss’s anti-union assistant’s daughter is discovered to be a Duke’s daughter. The anti-union assistant is made gardener at the Duke’s palace and the girl whom he believed was his daughter marries Austin, the boss’s son. The workers’ watering hole, the gin palace, is replaced by Austin’s Palace of Peace for Working Men, the villain meets an end befitting his perfidy and the audience is given water to drink and encouraged to shred their union cards. Despite the self-deprecating attempt to shake off its reputation as a serious theatre lacking in humour, The Australian Quarterly critic commented that “the New

Theatre boys and girls show they can take a laugh at themselves but it seemed to me there was a certain amount of risk in it, looking at the matter propagandistically”.31

Although the play was meant to be humorous, the left-wing, presumably specifically the hardliners in the CPA (although this is not explicitly stated or alluded to by Healy), were not impressed. Syd Davis provides an explanation:

31 Connie Healy, Defiance, 117 300

God Bless the Guv’nor was a light-hearted sort of thing...and some people in the left-wing movement decided that it was too critical of the working class. It pointed out certain of the failings that the working class is capable of...from time to time. And there was a bit of heavy criticism—if it was not strictly on the ‘correct political line’ it shouldn’t be played. And there were various plays which were read and then tossed out for that reason.32

Another New Theatre writer and CPA member was Nance Macmillan, also known as

Nancy Wills, who wrote Land of Morning Calm which also went by the name of

Christmas Bridge, which was produced by Brisbane New Theatre in 1952. Land of

Morning Calm is the Korean people’s poetic name for their land and the alternative title,

Christmas Bridge, is an allusion to General MacArthur’s promise that American and

Australian troops fighting in Korea would be home by Christmas.33 The play is set during the Korean War and its propagandist purpose is peace, with the action taking place on 5 November 1950 and set in a town marking the frontier between China and

Korea on the Tuman River. United Nations soldiers attempt to blow up the bridge over the Tuman River to prevent Chinese army support groups from arriving. The Koreans’ attempts to prevent the UN from blowing up the bridge are thwarted and an American newspaper reporter describes the mass slaughter of Korean civilians by American troops, brought to an end by the intervention of British troops.34 Its political propaganda notwithstanding, the play was heavily criticised by New Theatre members such as

Eddie Allison (actor and director) who discouraged Sydney New Theatre from

32 Connie Healy, Defiance, 117. The play is held in the Mitchell Library titled Christmas Bridge, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 157 and as Land of Morning Calm, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 87. 33 Nancy Wills, Shades of Red, 114. 34 Connie Healy, Defiance, 145. 301

producing the play after having seen the London Unity theatre production. There is no elaboration on the play’s shortcomings by Allison, but they may be of a similar nature to the criticisms made by George Petersen, Secretary of Brisbane New Theatre.35

George Petersen was a CPA member between 1943 and 1956 and Australian Labor

Party (ALP) member from 1968 when he was preselected as the ALP candidate for the seat of Kembla. He was expelled from the ALP in 1988 for voting against the new laws which favoured insurance companies in workers’ compensation claims. Petersen wrote to Miriam Hampson at Sydney New Theatre, pointing out some technical criticisms of the play, noting that:

In November 1950, the Yalu and Tuman rivers were frozen over and the Chinese volunteers actually crossed over the ice. It would therefore be unnecessary to blow up the bridge at that time. Nor could four men carry enough explosives to blow up a bridge of this nature; such bridges would be few and heavily guarded, probably with an anti-aircraft unit. A specialist like Slim [Parker] would be at least a Sergeant and the likelihood of a mixed nationality patrol was very rare.36

The play ran successfully for almost seven weeks in 1952 in New Theatre’s counterpart, the London Unity Theatre, with the title Land of Morning Calm and was subsequently produced by Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide New Theatre where it was well received by audiences.37 In Sydney it was produced in March 1953 under the title

35 Connie Healy, Defiance, 146. 36 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 14. 37 New Theatre Records, MLMSS6244, Box 14. 302

Christmas Bridge.38 In Australia a Herald columnist called Wills a traitor for celebrating a war in which Australian soldiers were dying and the Victorian Government tried to shut the play down without success.39

Interestingly, George Petersen mooted the idea of publishing a book of plays that existed only in typescript including the popular Reedy River and Jim Crawford’s Rocket

Range (this seems never to have eventuated) but rejected the possibility of including

Katharine Susannah Prichard’s play Brumby Innes not because of any aesthetic limitations that he could articulate, but because “it’s central theme is the glamorization of a fascist and is not in line with the democratic Australian tradition”.40 Brumby Innes is a bold play written in 1927, and bears some reflection of Lawrentian modernist influence with its emphasis on the interior lives of the characters and their sexuality and passion.41

38 New Theatre, The New Years 1932—The Plays, People and Events of 75 Years of Sydney’s New Theatre, 79. 39 Nancy Wills, Shades of Red, 115. 40 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. Secretary’s report from Minutes of Annual Conference of New Theatre held in Sydney 16-17 April 1954. 41 Brumby is a stockman, married to May. Her illusions about Brumby and bush life slowly disintegrate in a play that exposes the fear and violence intrinsic to such a life, and his sexual relationships with the Aboriginal women. Prichard attempts to write the Aboriginal dialogue in the dialect of the South Pandjima of the Kimberleys, although with limitations. However, the play won the Triad playwriting competition in 1927, in which Vance Palmer and Louis Esson both entered plays. Brumby Innes was considered too brutal and sordid for production and was not produced until forty five-years later, in 1972. Katharine Susannah Prichard, Brumby Innes and Bid Me To Love (Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1974), ix. Prichard’s writing up to her visit to the USSR in 1933 was modernist in style. Her acceptance of socialist realism after her USSR visit saw her work undergo a change for the worse, never again recapturing the spirit of curiosity and psychological insight evident in her work such as Brumby Innes, Coonardoo, Bid Me to Love and her short stories. 303

McMillan/Wills also wrote The Painter,42 based on the life of Aboriginal painter Albert

Namatjira, which premiered at Brisbane New Theatre in 1961. Inspired by his paintings at an exhibition she attended in 1938, McMillan/Wills was also outraged by the authorities’ treatment of Namatjira, who although he had sold hundreds of paintings earning thousands of dollars, was not permitted to use his earnings as he saw fit.

When he wanted to improve the camp of his people by obtaining a cattle lease, the federal authorities offered him a lease on the territory of a different tribe, which he rejected as it would have meant the abandonment of the tribe’s customs and culture.

Exempt from the laws prohibiting Aborigines from drinking alcohol by virtue of his status as an artist, Namatjira was nevertheless charged and convicted with providing alcohol to family and clan members. The Painter is written in a realist mode with characters that are a little too clichéd and stereotyped. However, the sense of injustice at Namatjira’s tragic plight is keenly felt. McMillan is perhaps the first dramatist to write a play about this important Aboriginal painter. The play quotes Namatjira himself:

“Better they shoot all of us, get rid of us and save us all this trouble if we are not allowed to live like men”.43 The play never toured other states.

McMillan/Wills’s only other play met with more success. Deep Bells Ring is a musical based on the life of Paul Robeson, the well-known US communist and activist who

McMillan had met at a World Peace Conference in 1949. The play was a commercial success and toured Australia in the commercial theatres after its premiere in Brisbane

42 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 100. 43 McMillan/Wills, MLMSS 6244, Box 100. 304

in 1987.44 McMillan/Wills also wrote The Ballad of Women with Dorothy Hewett in

1962. The manuscript is held at the Fryer library at the University of Queensland.

Catherine Duncan also wrote for New Theatre and had won critical acclaim for her verse drama The Sword Sung, for which she won the Sydney New Theatre League

Competition in 1937. Frank Clewlow was a judge in the competition and was also

Director of Drama at the Australian Broadcasting Commission. After the success of The

Sword Sung, Clewlow offered Duncan a job as scriptwriter on ABC radio.45 Duncan also wrote Sons of the Morning, an anti-fascist play, and she collaborated on Thirteen

Dead, about the Wonthaggi Mine disaster. She also worked for the Film Division for the

Department of Information and brought in one of her radio play colleagues, actor Peter

Finch, to narrate the documentary film she had worked on with Joris Ivens, Indonesia calling.46 Duncan, who was instrumental in getting Melbourne New Theatre into shape when Betty Roland fell ill with appendicitis in the 1930s, was a highly accomplished artist who worked extensively throughout Europe. Deane Williams describes her as:

Australian actor, playwright, film researcher, scriptwriter, director, film critic, archivist and collagist, Catherine Duncan, provides an example of the kind of fluidity and motion sought by members of Australia's creative community in the 1940s and 50s. Duncan was one of a number of Australian theatre/film practitioners who participated in the worldwide nexus of left cultural production. Although it would be possible to list Duncan amongst a host of actors and directors who

44 Connie Healy, Defiance, 146. 45 Deane Williams, ‘Catherine Duncan: As Others See Us’, Screening the Past, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/classics/cl_16/dwcl16.html (accessed 25/08/2010). 46 Deane Williams, ‘Catherine Duncan: As Others See Us’, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/classics/cl_16/dwcl16.html 305

garnered praise in the international setting, it is more appropriate to point to Duncan's work experience as a remarkable example of how, at a variety of levels, Australians were always connected to a complex intersection of international left-wing audio-visual cultures.47

One of the more significant figures in Australian cultural life who gravitated to New

Theatre was Albert Tucker, whose involvement photographing May Day marches and designing and painting sets has already been mentioned. There is also Hilda Esson, wife of Louis Esson of Pioneer Players fame. Hilda Esson directed numerous productions at Melbourne New Theatre for ten years during the 1940s, and headed the production committee. Les Tanner, well known cartoonist and twice winner of the

Walkley Award (1962 and 1965), illustrated many New Theatre production posters from the late 1940s through to the 1950s. According to Betty and David Milliss, Tanner also directed and acted in New Theatre productions.48 Victor Arnold, New Theatre director in the 1930s and 1940s, became head of the Melbourne branch of Actors’ Equity, becoming Secretary from 1958 onwards where he continued to champion the rights of

Australian actors. Oriel Gray went on to write for the popular television show Bellbird in the 1960s for over a decade. According to Gray, ‘progressive’ actors such as Peter

Finch and Lloyd Lamble as well as well-known and highly regarded radio writer Richard

Lane would occasionally attend New Theatre performances and “there was a good deal of carefully hidden excitement when we knew these notables were in the audience”.49

47 Deane Williams, ‘Catherine Duncan: As Others See US’, http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/classics/cl_16/dwcl16.html 48 My interview with David and Betty Milliss at their home in Concord, Sydney, 2009. 49 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 58. 306

A more unlikely affiliate is James McAuley, who gravitated to New Theatre but remained on the periphery. He is remembered with at least a grudging respect for his talent in the autobiographies of New Theatre writers Oriel Gray and Betty Roland.

McAuley collaborated with New Theatre and CPA members John Reid and Alan

Crawford on one of Sydney New Theatre’s most successful and critically acclaimed revues, I’d Rather be Left, in 1941. The production was a satire on the Australian bourgeoisie and right-wing and conservative political parties as well as, according to

Oriel Gray, an ironic comment on the 1937 Broadway musical revue I’d Rather Be

Right. The Rodgers and Hart production starred the conservative and patriotic George

M. Cohan and took a swipe at Roosevelt’s New Deal50, which was supported by communist parties internationally, including the CPA. I’d Rather Be Right was a hit with the well heeled crowd that constituted its Broadway audience and whose interests were antithetical to the New Deal.

In response, I’d Rather be Left mercilessly satirised the United , predecessor of the , with the song There’ll Always Be a Menzies while there’s a BHP, a satirical ditty which became popular among factory workers. The revue’s reputation spread beyond the socialist and left-wing milieu. Its visceral wit was appreciated by the news magnate Warwick Fairfax and his wife, who saw and enjoyed a performance. The attraction lay in the revue’s bouncing rhymes and witty political sallies, as expressed in these lyrics on censorship:

50 Garrett Eisler, ‘Kidding on the Level: The Reactionary Project of I’d Rather Be Right’, Studies in Musical Theatre 1, no.1 (2007): 7-24. 307

Oh years ago, I gave some dough To the funds of the U.A.P. But I suffered a defeat, in a certain seat, So Menzies said to me, You haven’t the nous of a mouse or a louse, Or the brains of a chimpanzee, You weren’t even meant for parliament So a Censor you can be. 51

Most of the lyrics are attributed to McAuley, who spent the rest of his life renouncing and distancing himself from the revue and his association with the New Theatre and the Australian left-wing. The Wireless Weekly in 1941 commented:

It is certainly the cleverest script the N.T.L [New Theatre League] has produced, and a great improvement on their previous effort, Off the Leash. Lack of continuity is the main fault. The first half is far superior to the second, which is saved by a raucous burlesque trial scene at the end. The show is certainly topical, the scenes including the opening of Sydney’s “first and last” air raid shelter, the G.N.A.T.S on parade, and lectures on A.R.P and first aid. Two generals sang a parody on “Play the Game, You Cad” and there is considerable decidedly Leftist political comment. All this was given with no great amount of skill, but considerable enthusiasm.52

McAuley’s left-wing sympathies were fleeting: he subsequently evolved politically into a

Cold War warrior and co-founder of Quadrant, which was partially funded by the CIA.

Yet he felt compelled, even three decades later in a Latham Memorial Lecture in 1976, to again disavow his involvement with New Theatre in co-writing I’d Rather be Left.

51 New Theatre: Fifteen Years of Production, np. 52 New Theatre Records, MLMSS6244, Box 149. 308

Without mentioning either New Theatre or the title of the revue when recalling how he disposed of the anarchistic and left-wing literature in his possession, he says

I’m sorry to say I got rid of my collection after the outbreak of war, because Special Branch were, not unreasonably, looking around for potentially subversive people, and I was already co-author of an anti- war musical revue that was running successfully.53

His refusal to describe the revue as a left-wing parody is indicative of his right-wing sensibilities and is an effort to downplay the revue’s impact and popularity and alienate himself from his previous, albeit brief, flirtation with an organisation affiliated with the

CPA. Oriel Gray says that after McAuley left New Theatre she never met him again.

However, she claims that “old mates who did were left with their mouths wide open when they began to sing songs from I’d Rather be Left. McAuley walked out. He did not want to be reminded of his brief involvement with the left”.54

McAuley’s contribution to Australian theatre is more significant than he cared to acknowledge because New Theatre was the first theatre in Australia to produce political revues. These revues became increasingly popular throughout the 1950s and took on such controversial themes as the Petrov Commission with Mona Brand’s Out of

Commission produced by New Theatre in 1955. Mona Brand has speculated on the impact of these revues and the extent to which the “satirical tone and the lively style” of the sketches “influenced the popular Phillip Street theatre of the 1960s and, in turn, the

53 James McAuley Papers, Mitchell Library, SB Bay 61, ML147/97, Box 13. 54 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 131. 309

highly successful Mavis Bramston Show—renowned for its pertinence and impertinence—qualities for many years exhibited at the New”.55 The star of the satirical television program the Mavis Bramston Show, Noeline Brown, recalls being so impressed by a New Theatre production of Frank Hardy’s Black Diamonds in Sydney in

1958 that she joined New Theatre. Her first production with New Theatre was in the satire Fission Chips: An Earthy Revue in 1959, which was co-written by Mona Brand,

Patrick Barnett, Hugh Mason and Ron Goldie. Brown was later cast with Frank Hardy in Douglas Stewarts’s Fire on the Snow at New Theatre.56

New Theatre’s revues were popular, but nothing matched the success of the musical

Reedy River. One of the most popular hits of New Theatre, it resuscitated New

Theatre’s flagging fortunes at the peak of the Cold War period in the 1950s. Reedy

River is a musical about the 1890s shearers’ strike and was first produced in 1953. It was also taken to suburban and country areas and by 1959 it had been seen by at least 130,000 people across Australia.57 Current estimates put the number of people who have seen the musical at 450,000.58 A collective effort, but attributed mostly to

New Theatre writer Dick Diamond, it mustered the talents of actors, dancers, writers and musicians. Reworking little-known folk ballads and bush songs, Reedy River was a huge commercial and popular success and was the impetus behind the revival of

Australian folk songs. The music of the eponymously titled song was written by Chris

Kempster, a singer in the production, with music set to Henry Lawson’s poetry. As a

55 Mona Brand, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre’, 4. 56 Noeline Brown, Longterm Memoir (Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 52. 57 Notes on History of New Theatre, Australia, New Theatre, 1959, np. 58 New Theatre, The New Years: 1932—, 17. 310

composer, Kempster went on to play a substantial role in the development of

Australian folklore appreciation in music, literature and theatre. The Bushwhacker Band also performed at the Sydney New Theatre production, and Helen Palmer, daughter of

Australian writers Vance and Nellie Palmer, wrote the song, Ballad of 1891. So great was Reedy River’s success that the Sydney production was recorded by Diaphon records, receiving wide coverage on radio stations. The musical popularised such songs as Click Go the Shears among others and since its publication many schools have mounted their own productions. Its popularity was such that whenever New

Theatre was in financial dire straits, it would dust off Reedy River.

However, popularity and artistic or theatrical quality are occasionally, mutually exclusive concepts. Miles Franklin attended a performance of Reedy River and lamented in a letter to Jean Devanny in January 1954 that

The play also made me very sad, as it shows how far we have to go yet before the drama catches up with the short story or the novel. Tyrone Guthrie was quite right in that, when he reported, “as yet neither literature nor drama can be said to exist in Australia.59

However, Franklin herself, according to Ferrier, had been a member of New Theatre

League60 and wrote Ghosts, a one-act play with Dymphna Cusack as their entry for the

National Radio Play Competition. The play was also entered in the New Theatre

59 Carole Ferrier, ed., As Good as a Yarn With You—Letters Between M. Franklin, K.S.Prichard, J. Devanny, M. Barnard, F. Eldershaw, E. Dark (Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 376. 60 Carole Ferrier, As Good as a Yarn With You, 375. 311

League competition in 1945 where it tied with Ric Throssel’s (Katharine Susannah

Prichard’s son) play Sailor’s Girl. 61

Miles Franklin was also involved with the New Theatre Review which was established in 1943. Lillian Diamond, Dick Diamond’s wife, edited mostly, while other notables such as Vance and Nettie Palmer, , George Farwell, Miles Franklin and

Frank Hardy all contributed to its pages. Increasing costs and dwindling audiences rendered the publication financially unviable. On 25 February 1943, New Theatre commenced a fifteen minute radio program on 3K2 at 2.30 every Sunday afternoon which included a guide to films and variety entertainment.62

In the political radicalism of the 1960s, actors were again drawn to New Theatre, partly for its left-wing history and also because work was always guaranteed, albeit without pay. It did, however, keep actors from straying from their craft. Notable Australian television and theatre actors who performed with New Theatre include Maggie

Kirkpatrick, Carole Skinner, John Hargreaves and Noeline Brown, as well as the founder of Q Theatre in Penrith, Doreen Warburton.

The innovations and activity of New Theatre, however constrained or limited they may have been by the underlying political imperatives of the CPA, nevertheless constitute

61 Carole Ferrier, As Good as a Yarn With You, 189. 62 Angela Hillel, Against the Stream: 50 Years of New Theatre, 14.

312

an integral part of Australia’s theatrical development. Yet Claire Dobbin mistakenly claims that there was “little tradition” of indigenous and street theatre in Australia prior to the New Wave.63 This is easily refuted by the evidence of the agit-prop sketches written to be performed on the street, from the backs of trucks, in parks and at factories, by New Theatre writers such as Betty Roland and others discussed in

Chapter Four. More recently, in Make it Australian Gabrielle Wolf, examines the history of the Australian Performing Group Pram Factory and the New Wave to draw the same conclusion as Dobbin. She notes that out of at least 350 Australian plays performed in

Melbourne between 1968 and 1981, the Australian Performing Group contributed one- third of these and “in so doing, it played a critical role in eroding the cultural cringe that had plagued Australia”.64 Without counting New Theatre productions of Australian plays in other states, Sydney New Theatre has produced 171 Australian plays and sketches between 1932 and 2007.65 Graeme Blundell, remaining exclusively within the parameters of traditional Australian historiography in its covert exclusion of New

Theatre, claims that “the theatre was imperialised: local writers weren’t welcomed and actors were wooden outposts of empire, never speaking like they really spoke at home”.66

Even a cursory glance at New Theatre’s play list contradicts Blundell’s statement.

Although New Theatre lacked the resources to develop to the standards of a

63 Hilary Glow, ‘Women’s Theatre and the A.P.G.’, Meanjin XXI (1984): 129-38. 64 Gabrielle Wolf, Make it Australian: The Australian Performing Group, the Pram Factory and New Wave Theatre (Strawberry Hills, Sydney: Currency Press, 2008), xiv. 65 These are my figures, counting the entries listed and marked as works by Australian authors in The New Years 1932—The Plays, People and Events of 75 Years of Sydney’s New Theatre. 66 Graeme Blundell, ‘Mamalove’, Weekend Australian (26-27 July 1997). 313

professional theatre (Devanny’s and Oriel Gray’s aspirations), according to Harper

“The New Theatres were probably the most experimental companies in Australia right up until the 1960s”.67 Furthermore, when the New Wave discovered Brecht and

Brechtian techniques in the 1950s and 1960s they were merely catching up to New

Theatre who had produced Sen ora Carrara’s Rifles in Sydney in 1939, long before

Brecht became fashionable. Admittedly it was not his finest play, but a coup for the left theatre nevertheless. In 1942, Sydney New Theatre produced Brecht’s anti-fascist play

The Informer.

Apparently it was notoriously difficult to secure the rights to produce a Brecht play in the post-World War Two period, but according to Marie Armstrong, who was a member of both the New Theatre and the CPA, it was achieved when another New Theatre member Eddie Allison and his wife attended the Berliner Ensemble in 1951.68 There he spoke with Helene Weigel, Brecht’s wife, who sent New Theatre a copy of Mother

Courage and her Children.69

New Theatre’s influence on broader cultural currents and developments, in training actors and writers who became professional, in developing techniques, as well as the themes they broached in their work as discussed in this chapter, demonstrate that the

67 Ken Harper, ‘The Useful Theatre’, 129-38. 68 Marie Armstrong, Alex and Annette Hood, Marie Armstrong Interviewed by Alex and Annette Hood in the Alex Hood Folklore Collection [sound recording], 2006. 69 Minutes of Management Meeting, 11 September 1951, New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 1. 314

New Wave was not so new and that New Theatre’s influence warrants further and more profound investigation than can be entered into in this thesis.

315

  

Oriel Gray, in relation to New Theatre and CPA members, ponders: “Do I make them sound ridiculous? If I do, I have failed them. They were not ridiculousI was sure about the best of them. I still am sure”.1 Despite their ambitious plans to redress society’s ills through New Theatre, their talents were in many instances circumscribed by subordination to the prescriptive and regimented demands from the CPA in cultural matters.

In demonstrating the nature of the relationship between New Theatre and the CPA, this thesis has brought to light a vital and interesting aspect of theatre development in

Australia. I have demonstrated the political and social context of New Theatre’s history and shown that while initially indifferent about cultural matters, the CPA did in fact have policies on art and culture following the decrees by Zhdanov in the USSR in 1934, although their implementation varied in different periods. The demand for socialist realism from New

Theatre writers was bound up with New Theatre’s social mission: to not only entertain but to instruct audiences and incite them to political action. The forming of the WAC into the

New Theatre League and subsequently New Theatre follows in the tradition of the workers’ theatre in the United States as well as Soviet theatre in terms of themes and approach.

The US New Theatre also had ties to the Communist Party of the United States and many of its playwrights were renowned left-wingers such as Clifford Odets, some were members

1 Oriel Gray, Exit Left, 42-44. 316

of the Communist Party while others were sympathisers. The establishment of the

Workers’ Art Club, which evolved into New Theatre was an initiative of Jean Devanny, a

CPA member and novelist who was inspired by the type of theatre she had seen in Berlin as a representative of the Workers’ International Relief, which was a CPA organisation.

Devanny’s conflict with the CPA over cultural matters and the approach to writers is symptomatic of the doctrinaire attitude to literature and art within the CPA. While initially dismissive of the ‘bohemians’ in the WAC, the CPA, as attested in the minutes of meetings at New theatre and in the CPA archives, eventually came to realise the potential for harnessing the ‘theatre’ towards political ends.

This is demonstrated most ably in the case of Betty Roland who wrote mostly agit-prop during her years with the CPA and New Theatre. Her denunciation of the CPA as Stalinist stooges resulted in her expulsion from New Theatre. Her plays were forthwith banned from

New Theatre, and they never produced another play by Roland.

That the CPA was responsible for how New Theatre functioned, determining its themes, dramatic technique and orientation is amply demonstrated by the unpublished material provided in the CPA and New Theatre archives, as well as in interviews, biographies and other material, including a textual analysis of the published and unpublished plays by New

Theatre writers, which I have used to substantiate my argument. To further strengthen my argument, I used archival material from the personal papers of Betty Roland and Mona

Brand. I am perhaps the first person to access Brand’s personal papers since her death in

317

2007. New Theatre management and production committees are demonstrated to have been comprised of CPA members, and this constituted their party work. The discussions in

New Theatre committees about the choice of plays demonstrate the tension over the political priorities and imperatives of the party organisation and the issue of the aesthetic qualities of the plays.

Although it is not clear whether New Theatre plays were altered to conform to the critiques of the production and management committees, I have nevertheless demonstrated that there is a thread of “obtuse censorship”2 that impacted on the playwrights’ work. The prescriptive ideological demands imposed on artists ran counter to the freedom of artistic expression so necessary for artists. Oriel Gray’s subordination to CPA dictates on theme and style also impacted on her work, with many of her plays suffering from the didacticism expected of socialist realism. Gray’s playwriting improved somewhat once she removed herself from the influence of socialist realist doctrine upon leaving the CPA. Perhaps her most artistically complete work and her personal favourite, Burst of Summer, was not produced by New Theatre because it was considered ideologically unsound. This incident highlights how the CPA influenced and intervened in New Theatre’s choice of plays and the running of New Theatre.

2 Susan Pfisterer, ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney New Theatre’, 168. 318

Mona Brand’s playwriting for New Theatre also had aesthetic shortcomings that were entirely bound up with the political ideology guiding her writing. As I have demonstrated, when the CPA began to implode in the 1960s in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s speech,

New Theatre writers experienced more freedom and it was during this time that Brand’s talent for comedy was freely expressed in the political revues she co-wrote for New

Theatre. Lacking the constraints of party dictates on her work permitted Brand a modicum of freedom to display her talents without fear of reproach, as she had been subject to on a number of occasions.

The history of New Theatre and its relationship with the CPA is complex and contradictory.

Although there are more negatives attributed to the influence of the CPA on New Theatre in this thesis, it is worthwhile remembering that New Theatre also provided the training ground for future professional work for many aspiring playwrights, directors and actors. It gave many women the opportunity to have their plays produced and was one of the first theatres to encourage and produce plays by Australian playwrights. Alan Marshall perhaps explains best the appeal of being a ‘committed writer’:

By merging my will to live and conquer with theirs an enlarged and more powerful comprehension of truth would be presented for my use and from this knowledge would come an enlightening synthesis and the compulsion to express it in words. It was not enough to observe life as an artist whose allegiance was only to his craft. This way the product had meaning only to one. I longed to produce something meaningful to all ... The writer blossomed not only from training in his period's rules on the sequence of words but from the experience of feeling upon his shoulders

319

the burdens of all people. It was only then that he acquired the knowledge to step forth as a trumpeter”.3

This thesis is but a preliminary examination into this vital aspect of Australia’s theatre history, and, in particular, into accepted theatre practice according to the lexicon of

Australian theatre history, and in the process I have attempted to close the gap, even if only a fraction, in the literature on Australian theatre. While I have examined the work of three of the more prominent New Theatre writers, there is an abundance of unpublished manuscripts to scrutinise by many other New Theatre playwrights, male and female, on many themes. Further research into this will undoubtedly yield interesting results, as Mona

Brand suggests when she states that “Perhaps it might be worth considering to what extent, if any, mainstream Australian drama has been fed by some vigorous upstream tributaries—and if one of those is New Theatre”.4

3 Alan Marshall, In Mine Own Heart (Melbourne, Victoria: Cheshire, 1963), 106-107. 4 Mona Brand, ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six Years in Radical Theatre: New Theatre’s Formative Years 1932-1955 and their Influence on Australian Drama’, 8. 320

   

'-+*"),+'(,!**!".%&,*"%

The New Theatre Records include manuscripts of many unpublished plays, musicals, short and one-act sketches, agit-prop, typescripts, lyrics and sheet music, performance advertisements, photos of productions, set designs, reviews, correspondence with trade unions and other affiliated organisations, minutes of management committee meetings and production committee meetings as well as reports of cultural conferences.

/!,*(*+=D=@:=DD<3",!%% "**13

MLMSS6244, Box 149

MLMSS6244, Box 1

MLMSS 6244 Box 100

MLMSS6244, Box 63

MLMSS6244, Box 152

MLMSS6244, Box 147

MLMSS6244, Box 13

MLMSS6244, Box 151X.

MLMSS6244, Box 130

321

MLMSS6244, Box 139

MLMSS6244, Box 93

MLMSS6244, Box 163

MLMSS6244, Box 162

MLMSS6244, Box 2

MLMSS6244, Box 159

MLMSS6244, Box 101

MLMSS6244, Box157

MLMSS6244, Box 149

MLMSS6244, Box 13

MLMSS6244, Box 50

MLMSS6244, Box56

MLMSS6244, Box 244

MLMSS6244, Box 59

MLMSS6244, Box 87

MLMSS6244, Box90

MLMSS6244, Box 93

322

MLMSS6244, Box 112

MLMSS6244, Box 136

MLMSS 6244, Box 137

MLMSS6244, Box139

MLMSS6244, Box 144

MLMSS6244, Box 145

MLMSS6244, Box 146

MLMSS 6244, Box149

MLMSS 6244, Box 80

&+-%1)*+3",!%% "**1

SB Bay 61, ML147/97, Box 20

SB Bay 61, ML147/97, Box 13

('*')*+3",!%% "**13

ML 1011/73, Box 6

ML1011/73, Box 17

ML1011/73, Box 7

ML1011/73, Box 8 323

ML1011/73, Box 17

,,1(%')*+3",!%% "**135

 ! ! 

MLMSS4648, Add-on 2018, Box 2

MLMSS4648, Add-on 2018, Box 6

MLMSS4648, Add-on 2018, Box 5

MLMSS4648, Add-on 1915, Box 7/1/6

MLMSS 4648, Add-on 2018, Box 4

MLMSS4648, Add-on 2018, Box 4/12

MLMSS4648, Add-on 2018, Box 2/1-2

MLMSS4648, Add-on 2018, Box 2/6

(*+!%,",!%% "**13

MLMSS5021, Add-on 1936, Box 3 (76) CY338

MLMSS5021, Add-on 1936, Box 4

MLMSS5021, Add-on-1936, Box 28

*1* "**13'".*+",1( -'+%'

Brand, Mona. On Stage Vietnam.

Brand, Mona. Going, Going, Gone

324

Gray, Oriel. Marx of Time. Hanger Collection, HO691.

Gray, Oriel. Milestones. Hanger Collection, HO692.

Gray, Oriel. Had We But World Enough. Hanger Collection, HO686.

",(*"' / !,* ('+,",-,"('3 ,, "**1 (  ",(*"3 -+,*%"' '-+*"),(%%,"('

SLV, MS10040, MSB 131

-"(*!")*+3,"('% "**1( -+,*%"

MS 5241, Addition, 3.12.91, Box 13, Betty Roland folder.

&)%% (/*(%%,"('

‘Correspondence With and About Katharine Susannah Prichard, Vance and Nettie Palmer’

15 May 1959. 672016/285/001.

Katharine Susannah Prichard, Women of Spain. Manuscript held at University of New

England, Dixson Library, NSW, Local ID: 331, Campbell Howard Collection.

-%","('+3",!%% "**1*!".+35

Workers’ Art Magazine: The Official Organ of the Workers’ Art Club, vol.1, no.1, April

1933, MLQ331.8506/1

 *(*+

Roland, Betty nee Maclean, Series Number: A6126, Control Symbol: 347,

Open with exception, Location: Canberra, Contents date range: 1935–1962, Barcode

1104859. 325

Roland, Betty (A) Series Number: A6126, Control Symbol: 77, Contents date range: 1935-

1956, Access status: open with exception, Location: Canberra, Barcode 332902.

Roland Betty A., Series Number: A6126, Control Symbol: 77, Contents date range: 1935–

1956, Barcode: 12012493, Location: Canberra, Access Status: open with exception.

Betty nee MacLean Roland, Series Number: A6126, Control symbol: 347, Reference

Copy, Series Accession Number: A6126/25, Barcode: 12012494, Contents date range:

1935–1962, Location: Canberra, Access status: open with exception.

New Theatre League Victoria, Vol. 1.Series Number: A6122, Control symbol: 417,

Contents date range: 1936–1958, Location: Canberra, Barcode: 332885.

CPA Central Executive Committee reports, Series number: A8911, Control Symbol: 41, contents date range: 1928–1933, Open status, Canberra, Barcode: 821411.

Mona Alexis Fox, (nee Brand), Report no. 8768, 20/12/1955, Australian Archives Series:

A6119/90, Item 2668

326

New Theatre League, Victoria, vol.1, Series: A6122/XR 1, Control Symbol: 417, Location:

Canberra, Contents date range: 1936–58, Barcode: 332885, Open with exception.

/!,* *(*+

These records contain intercepted documents by ASIO, reports by informants and other information gathered by surveillance of all New Theatres throughout Australia. These are held at New Theatre, King St Newtown, access granted by New Theatre manager Luke

Rogers.

A6122/XRI, Item no. 413, Title: Association Individual NTL, NSW, vol.1, July 1936-March

1952.

A6122/XRI, Item no. 414, Title: Association Individual NTL, vol. 2, Sept. 1952-Dec. 1957.

A6122/XRI, Item no. 416, Oct.1955- Oct. 1957.

A6122/XRI, Item no. 415, Adelaide New Theatre League, June 194-May 1955.

A6122/40, Item no. 411.

A6119/90, Item no. 266

A467/1Bun 89/pt2/SF42/81 New Theatre League, Fifth National Conference, Sydney,

1954, Report, no. 321, 9 June 1954, Mona Alexis Fox, (nee Brand), Australian Archives

Series.

 327

!++

Herlinger, Paul, The New Theatre: The Pre-War Years 1932–1939 (MA thesis, University of Sydney, 1981) Mitchell Library, MLQ792.099441/16.

Nguyen, Tuan Ngoc, Socialist Realism in Vietnamese Literature: An Analysis of the

Relationship between Literature and Politics (PhD diss., Victoria University, 2004).

O'Brien, Angela, The Road Not Taken [microform]: Political and Performance Ideologies at

Melbourne New Theatre 1935-1960 (PhD diss., Monash University, 1989).

',*."/+

Armstrong, Marie, Alex and Annette Hood. 2006. Marie Armstrong interviewed by Alex and Annette Hood in the Alex Hood folklore collection [sound recording] NLA.

Bracegirdle, Simon and Wendy Lowenstein. 1992. Simon Bracegirdle interviewed by

Wendy Lowenstein in the Communists and the Left in the arts and community oral history project [sound recording] NLA.

Brand, Mona and Hazel de Berg. 1967. Mona Brand interviewed by Hazel de Berg for the

Hazel de Berg collection [sound recording] NLA.

Brand, Mona and Hazel de Berg. 1983. Mona Brand interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the

Hazel de Berg collection [sound recording] NLA.

Gray, Oriel. 2 August 1995. Interview with Michelle Arrow. The tape recording of this

328

interview was loaned to me by Michelle Arrow for this thesis.

Gray, Oriel. 3 September 1995. Interview with Barbara Ann Harding. Transcript provided to me by Gray’s son Nicholas Hepworth.

Gray, Oriel. ‘Oriel Gray’, 13 December 2003, Verbatim, Radio National. ABC, Sydney:

Radio.

Levy, Jerome. Interview with Gabriela Zabala at his Home in Centennial Park, Sydney, 9

October 2008.

Milliss, Roger, Alex and Annette Hood. 2006. Roger Milliss interviewed by Alex and

Annette Hood in the Alex Hood folklore collection [sound recording] NLA.

Milliss, David and Betty. Interview with Gabriela Zabala at their Home in Concord, Sydney,

10 Dec. 2009.

Milliss, Betty and David. Interview with Gabriela Zabala at their Home in Concord, Sydney,

10 Jan. 2010.

Roland, Betty. 5 Feb. 1977. Interview with Suzanne Hayes [sound recording], Adelaide

TAFE.

Roland, Betty. Andrew Pike, Ray Edmondson and Peter Burgis. 1975. Betty Roland interviewed by Ray Edmondson, Andrew Pike and Peter Burgis [sound recording] NLA.





329

/+))*+3& 2"'+3#(-*'%+

Angry Penguins 1 (1941). Edited by D.B Kerr & Max Harris, Adelaide: The Adelaide

University Arts Association.

Angry Penguins 2 (1941). Edited by Max Harris, Adelaide: The Adelaide University Arts

Association.

Angry Penguins 3 (1942). Edited by Max Harris, Adelaide: The Hassell Press.

Angry Penguins 4 (1942). Edited by Max Harris and John Reed, Adelaide: The Hassell

Press.

Angry Penguins 5 (1943). Edited by Max Harris and John Reed.

Angry Penguins 6 (1944). Number to Commemorate Australian Poet Ern Malley. Edited by

Max Harris and John Reed.

Angry Penguins 7 (1944). Edited by Max Harris and John Reed.

Angry Penguins 8 (1945). Edited by Max Harris and John Reed.

Campbell, E.W. ‘We Must Defeat Fascism.’ Communist Review vol. VI, no.10 (October,

1939): 577.

Diamond, Dick. ‘Art and the Struggle.’ Communist Review (November 1943).

Fox, Len. ‘The Obscurity of Picasso’s Art’, Communist Review, no. 75 (November 1947):

729-30.

H.M. ‘A further reply to John Reed’s views.’ Communist Review (July 1944): 285-6.

330

Howard, Roy. ‘Roy Howard's Interview with Comrade Stalin.’ Communist Review 3, no.5

(1939).

Miles, J. B. ‘Art for the People.’ Communist Review, no. 84 (August 1948): 260-62.

Miles, J. B. ‘Socialism Brings Peace, Progress and Plenty.’ Communist Review vol. VI, no.

11 (November, 1939): 650

Mortier, Paul. ‘Artists and the Class Struggle.’ Communist Review, no. 78 (February 1948):

59-60.

Oldham, John. ‘Picasso and the Arts under Capitalism.’ Communist Review, no. 73

(September 1947): 661-3.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. ‘Hoax Renders Service to Literature.’ Communist Review

(March 1945).

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. ‘The Anti-Capitalist Core of Australian Literature.’

Communist Review (August, 1943): 106-7.

Roland, Betty. ‘Are You Ready Comrade?’ Communist Review, vol. V, no. 4 (April, 1938):

45-49.

Roland, Betty. ‘Vote No!’ Communist Review vol. V, no. 12 (December, 1938): 17.

Roland, Betty. ‘The Miners Speak.’ Communist Review vol. V, no. 11 (November 1938):

32-36.

Roland, Betty and Gordon Grant. Book Review. Communist Review, vol. V, no. 7 (July

1938): 54. 331

Roland, Betty. ‘Betty Roland Breaks With Stalinism.’ The Militant (March 1940),

Communist League of Australia and Fourth International. Sydney, NSW.

Shaw, R.M. ‘The Artist in Our Society’, Communist Review, no. 84 (August 1948): 258-60.

(($+'*,"%+

Aarons, Eric. What's Left?: Memoirs of an Australian Communist. Ringwood, Victoria:

Penguin Books, 1993.

Adams, Paul. The Stranger from Melbourne: Frank Hardy, a Literary Biography 1944-

1975. Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Publishing, 1999.

Paul Adams, ‘The Stranger from Melbourne: The Writing of Frank Hardy—A Literary

Biography 1944-1975’. Tirra Lirra 8, no.2-3 (1998): 18-27.

Adams, Paul and Christopher Lee eds. Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment.

Carlton North, Victoria: The Vulgar Press, 2003.

Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Translated and edited by Robert Hullot-Kentor.

Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minesota Press, 1997.

Afford, Thelma and Karrie Round. Dreamers and Visionaries: Adelaide’s Little Theatres from the 1920s to the Early 1940s. Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 2004.

Alexander, Fred. Australia Since Federation: A Narrative and Critical Analysis.

Melbourne, Victoria: Thomas Nelson (Australia) Litd, 1969.

‘An Interview with the Author of Enough Blue Sky: The Autobiography of an Unknown 332

Well-Known Playwright.’ . (Accessed 23

December 2010).

Armstrong, Madeline. ‘Burst of Summer.’ Observer 19 Mar. 1960: 13.

Arnold, Victor. ‘New Theatre.’ Australian Left News 3 (1939): 11.

Arrow, Michelle. ‘Written out of History? The Disappearance of Australian Women

Dramatists.’ Overland 155 (Winter 1999): 46-50.

Arrow, Michelle. Upstaged: Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last.

Strawbery Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2002.

Arvon, Henry. Marxist Aesthetics. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1973.

Auerbach, Eric. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton

NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Barbour, Judith. ‘Priviliged, Authentic, Transendent, Arcane: Limits of Naturalism in Some

Contemporary Plays.’ Southerly 37.1 (1977): 77-92.

Barcan, Alan. The Socialist Left in Australia 1949-1959. Sydney, NSW: Australian Political

Studies Association, 1960.

Beasley, Jack. Red Letter Days: Notes From Inside an Era. Sydney, NSW: Australasian

Book Society, 1979.

Beasley, Jack. Journal of an Era: Notes from the Red Letter Days. Earlwood, Australia. :

Wedgetail Press, 1988.

333

Beasley, Jack. A Gallop of Fire: Katharine Susannah Prichard: On Guard for Humanity—A

Study of Creative Personality. Earlwood, NSW.: Wedgetail Press, 1993.

Bedson, Jack and Julian Croft., eds., The Campbell Howard annotated index of Australian

Plays, 1920–1955. Armidale: Centre for Australian Language and Literature Studies. :

University of New England, 1993.

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. London: Pimlico, 1999.

Bernstein, Barton J. ‘New Light on the Korean War.’ The International History Review 3.2

(1981): 256-277.

Blake, Audrey. A Proletarian Life. Malmsbury, Victoria: Kibble Books, 1984.

Block, Ernst, Bertolt Brecht, Frederic Jameson and George Lukaćs. Aesthetics and

Politics: The Key Texts of the Classic Debate within German Marxism. Ernst Bloch,

George Lukasc, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodore Adorno. London, New York:

Verso, 2002.

Blundell, Graeme. ‘Mamalove.’ Weekend Australian 26 July 1997, Review Section 6. np.

Bracegirdle, Simon. My Lucky Life. Kelvin Grove, Queensland: Simon Bracegirdle, 1997.

Brand, Mona. Wheel and Bobbin: Poems. Sydney: Deaton & Spencer, 1938.

Brand, Mona. Daughters of Vietnam. Hanoi: Foreign Language Publication House, 1958.

Brand, Mona. Plays. Moscow: Progress, 1965.

Brand, Mona. Here Under Heaven: Three Plays. Sydney, NSW: Wentworth Press, 1969.

334

Brand, Mona. Enough Blue Sky: The Autobiography of Mona Brand, An Unknown Well-

Known Playwright. Sydney, NSW: Tawny Pipit Press, 1995.

Brand, Mona. ‘A writer’s thirty-six years in radical theatre: New Theatre's Formative Years

1932–1955 and their Influence on Australian Drama.’ In Australian Drama 1920–1955-

Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September

1-4, 1984. Armidale, NSW: Department of Continuing Education, University of New

England, 1986 (1-8).

Brand, Mona. Coloured Sounds: Poems. Potts Point, NSW: Tawny Pipit Press, 1997.

Brand, Mona. Strangers in the Land. London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., 1954.

Breton, Andre. Manifestos of Surrealism. Michigan: University of Michigan Press

Brisbane, Katherine. ‘Oriel Gray: The Art of Dedication.’ The National Times (13

September 1976) Theatre Section: 26-27.

Brisbane, Katherine. Plays of the 60s, vol 1. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2000.

Brisbane, Katherine. Plays of the 50s, vol. 2. Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 2004.

Brown, Edward J. Russian Literature Since the Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1982.

Brown, Noeline. Noeline: Longterm Memoir. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005.

Brown, Wilton John. The Communist Movement and Australia. Haymarket, NSW:

335

American Labor Movement History Publications, 1986.

Browning, Robert. The Complete Works of Robert Browning, vol. III. Ohio: Ohio University

Press, 1971.

Burke, Janine. Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker. Milson’s Point, NSW: Knopf,

2002.

Capp, Fiona. Writers Defiled. Ringwood, Victoria: McPhee Gribble, 1993.

Carr, Edward Hallet. Socialism in One Country: 1924–1926. Baltimore Md.: Penguin

Books, 1970.

Carroll, Dennis. Australian Contemporary Drama. Sydney, NSW: Currency Press, 1995.

Carter, David. ‘History was on our Side: Memoirs form the Australian Left.’ Meanjin 46.1

(1987): 108-121.

Carter, David. ‘Documenting and Criticising Society.’ The Penguin New Literary History of

Australia. L. Hergenhan ed., Victoria: Penguin Books, 1988 (370-89).

Carter, David. A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary

Career. Toowoomba, Queensland: Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1997.

Casey, Maryrose. Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre. St Lucia,

Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2004.

Caute, David. The Fellow-Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1988.

336

Clark, Katerina. ‘Socialist Realism with Shores: The Conventions for the Positive Hero’.

Socialist Realism Without Shores. Thomas Lahusen and Evgenii Aleksandrovich

Dobrenko eds. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.

Clark, C. M. H., and Michael Cathcart. Manning Clark's History of Australia. Carlton South,

Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1998.

Close, Robert. Love Me Sailor. Melbourne, Victoria: Georgian House, 1945.

Collins, Betty. The Copper Crucible. Brisbane, Queensland: Jacaranda Press, 1966.

Cosgrove, Stuart. Performance and Politics in Popular Drama. David Bradby et al eds.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Cramphorne, Rex. ‘Relieving Pressures.’ The Bulletin, 90.4631 (1968): 84.

Craney, Jan and Esther Caldwell. The True Life Story of—. St. Lucia, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1981.

Crawford, Jim. ‘Reflections on Three Plays by Mona Brand’. The Realist, no. 22 (1966):30-

32.

Cusack, Dymphna and Florence James. Come in Spinner. Melbourne, Victoria:

Heinemann, 1951.

Damousi, Joy. Women Come Rally: Socialism, Communism, and Gender in Australia

1890–1955. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994.

D’Aprano, Zelda. Zelda: The Becoming of a Woman. Carlton North, Victoria: Zelda

D’Aprano, 1977. 337

Darby, Robert. ‘New Theatre and the State: The Ban on Till the Day I Die, 1936-1941’.

Labour History 80 (May 2001): 1-19.

Deery, Phillip. ‘The Sickle and the Scythe: Jack Blake and Communist Party

‘Consolidation’, 1949-1956’. Labour History 80 (May 2001): 215-223.

Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth

Century. London: Verso, 1998.

Devanny, Jean. ‘The Worker’s Contribution to Australian Literature.’ Australian Writers

Speak: Literature and Life in Australia. Sydney, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1943.

Devanny, Jean. Point of Departure: The Autobiography of Jean Devanny. Carole Ferrier ed. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1986.

Devanny, Jean. Sugar Heaven. Sydney, NSW: Modern Publishers, 1936.

Docker, John. Australian Cultural Elites: Intellectual Traditions in Sydney and Melbourne.

Sydney, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1974.

Dowd, Bernard, E. Morris Miller, and William George Moore. Papers. Melbourne: T.C.

Lothian, 1909.

Drake-Brockman, Henrietta. Katharine Susannah Prichard. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1967.

Durgan, Andrew. The Spanish Civil War. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan,

2007. d’Usseau, Arnad and James Gow. Deep are the Roots. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 338

1946.

Dutton, Geoffrey. The Literature of Australia. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books Australia,

1976.

Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1990.

Eastman, Max. Writers in Uniform: A Study of Literature and Bureaucratism. New York:

Knopf, 1934.

Eisler, Garrett ‘Kidding on the level: The Reactionary Project of I’d Rather Be Right.’

Studies in Musical Theatre 1.1 (2007): 7-24.

Ellis, Cath. ‘Socialist Realism in the Australian Literary Context: With Specific Reference to the Writing of Katharine Susannah Prichard.’ Journal of Australian Studies 54-55 (1997):

38-44.

Ellison, Jennifer. ‘Telling Touch.’ The Bulletin 110.5639 (1988): 140.

Farwell, George, Katharine Susannah Prichard and Bernard Smith. Australian New

Writing. Sydney, NSW: Current Book Distributors, 1943.

Fensham, Rachel, Denise Varney, Maryrose Casey and Laura Ginters. The Dolls'

Revolution: Australian Theatre and Cultural Imagination. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly,

2005.

Ferrier, Carole. Romantic Revolutionary. Carlton South, Victoria: Melbourne University

Press, 1999.

339

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Jean Devanny as an ‘Australasian Woman of 1928’’. Hecate 35, nno.1-2

(2009):187-201.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Focus on Eleanor Dark: An Introduction’. Hecate 27, no.1 (2001): 6-10.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Women of Letters and the uses of Memory’. Wallflowers and Witches:

Women and Culture in Australia 1910-1945. Maryanne Dever, ed. St Lucia, Queensland:

University of Queensland Press, 1994. (73-90).

Ferrier, Carole. Introduction to Paradise Flow. Carole Ferrier ed. St Lucia, Queensland:

Hecate Press, 1985.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Dorothy Hewett: Australian Dramatist’. Lip (Oct.1976): 2-5.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Jean Devanny’s New Zealand Novels’. Hecate 6, no. 1 (1980): 37-47.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Jean Devanny’s Queensland Novels’. Linq 8, no. 3 (1980): 20-30.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘The ‘Working Class Novel’ in Australia: Katharine Susannah Prichard and

Jean Devanny’. Katharine Susannah Prichard: Centenary Essays. John Hay and Brenda

Walker eds. Nedlands, Western Australia: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and

University of Western Australia, Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, 1984. (13-28).

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Sugar Heaven and the Reception of Working Class Texts’. Hecate 11, no.1 (1985): 19-25.

Ferrier, Carole. ‘Jean Devanny, Katharine Susannah Prichard and the “Really Proletarian

Novel”. Gender, Politics and Fiction: Twentieth Century Australian Women’s Novels. St

Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1992. (101-117)

Ferrier, Carole. ed. As Good As A Yarn With You. Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge

University press, 1996.

340

Ferrier, Carole. As Good as a Yarn With You: Letters Between Miles Franklin, Katharine

Susannah Prichard, Jean Devanny, Marjorie Barnard, Flora Eldershaw, and Eleanor Dark.

Oakleigh, Victoria: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Ferrier, Carole and Rebecca Pelan. The Point of Change: Marxism, Australia, History,

Theory. St Lucia,Queensland: Australian Studies Centre, Dept. of English, University of

Queensland, 1998.

Fitton, Doris. Not Without Dust and Heat: My Life in Theatre. Sydney: Harper & Row,

1981.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organisation of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Fitzpatrick, Peter. ‘After “The Doll”’. Melbourne: Edward Arnold, 1979.

Fitzpatrick, Peter. ‘Asian Stereotypes in Recent Australian Plays’. Australian Literary

Studies 12, no. 1 (1985): 35-46.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Fitzpatrick Sheila, and Carolyn Rasmussen. Political Tourists: Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s–1940s. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008.

Foley, Barbara. Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction

1929-1941. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.

Fox, Len. Broad left, Narrow Left. Potts Point, NSW: Len Fox, 1982.

Fox, Len. Dreams at a Graveside: The History of the Fellowship of Australian Writers

341

1928–1988. Sydney, NSW: The Fellowship, 1989.

Freney, Denis. A Map of Days: Life on the Left. Port Melbourne, Victoria: Heinemann,

1991.

Gibson, Ralph. The People Stand Up. Ascot Vale, N.S.W: Red Rooster Press, 1983.

Giuffre, Giulia. A Writing Life: Interviews with Australian Women Writers. Sydney, NSW:

Allen & Unwin, 1990.

Giuffre, Giulia. ‘Reflections on a Literary Life: An Interview with Betty Roland’. The Bulletin

106, no.5439 (23 October 1984): 94-97, 100.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the

Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Gollan, Robin. Revolutionaries and Reformists: Communism and the Australian Labour

Movement 1920-1955. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1975.

Golomshtok, Igor. Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, The Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People's Republic of China. New York, N.Y.: Icon Editions, 1990.

Goodwin, K. L. A History of Australian Literature. London: Macmillan, 1986.

Gorky, Maksim, Katharine Susannah Prichard and Nina Oks. Creative Labour and Culture.

Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1945.

Graham, Helen. The Spanish Republic at War 1936–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2002.

Gray, Oriel. Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, 342

1985.

Gray, Oriel. Lawson. Montmorency, Victoria: Yackandandah Playscripts, 1989.

Gray, Oriel. The Torrents. Sydney: Currency Press in association with State Theatre

Company of South Australia, 1996.

Green. H.M. A History of Australian Literature, Pure and Applied 1923-1950, vol.II.

London; Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984.

Griffith, Gareth. ‘City and Bush in the Australian Theatre 1922-1988’. Populous Places:

Australian Cities and Towns. Sydney, NSW: Dangaroo Press, 1992. (31-47).

Haese, Richard. Rebels and Precursors: The Revolutionary Years of Australian Art.

Ringwood, Vic.: Allen Lane, 1981.

Harben, Denzil Dean. ‘Denzil Dean Harber: 1945: Religion in the Soviet Union: II.’ Marxists

Internet Archive .

(Accessed 27 February 2010).

Hardy, Frank. Power Without Glory: A Novel in Three Parts. Melbourne, Victoria: Realist

Printing and Publishing Company, 1950.

Harper, Ken. ‘The Useful Theatre: The New Theatre Movement in Sydney and Melbourne

1935–1983.’ Meanjin 43.1 (1984): 56-71.

Hay, John A., Brenda Walker and Katharine Susannah Prichard. Katharine Susannah

Prichard Centenary Essays. Nedlands, W.A.: Centre for Studies in Australian Literature,

University of Western Australia, 1984.

Healy, Constance. Defiance: Political Theatre in Brisbane 1930–1962. Brisbane: 343

Boombana Publications, 2000.

Hellman, Lilian. Four Plays. New York: Modern Library, 1942.

Helping Literature in Australia: The Work of the Commonwealth Literary Fund 1908–1966.

ACT: Government Printer, 1967.

Herlinger, Paul. ‘A New Direction for 'the New?’ Australasian Drama Studies 8 (1986): 97-

112.

Heseltine, Harry P. Acquainted with the Night: Studies in Classic Australian Fiction.

Townsville, Queensland: Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, 1979.

Hewett, Dorothy. Wild Card: An Autobiography 1923-1958. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin

Books, 2001.

Heyward, Michael and Robert Hughes. The Ern Malley Affair. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Hibberd, Jack. ‘Women’s Theatre and the A.P.G.’ Meanjin 43.1 (1984): 129-138.

Hicks, Granville. Proletarian literature in the United States: An Anthology. edited by

Granville Hicks et al., New York: International Publishers Co. Inc., 1935.

Hillel, Angela. ‘Oriel Gray: A Forgotten Playwright.’ Australian Drama 1920–1955: Papers

Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale, September 1-4,

1984. Armidale, N.S.W.: Dept. of Continuing Education, University of New England, 1986.

17-27.

344

Hillel, Angela and Dot Thomson. Against the Stream: 50 Years of New Theatre—

Melbourne New Theatre 1936–1986/What New Theatre Means to Me. Clifton Hill, Victoria:

New Theatre Melbourne, 1987.

Hingley, Ronald. Russian Writers and Soviet Society 1917-1978. London: Methuen, 1979.

Hoad, Brian. ‘More than a Touch of Class.’ The Bulletin 97.4978 (1975): 59.

Hocking, Jenny. Frank Hardy: Politics, Literature, Life. South Melbourne, Vic.: Lothian

Books, 2005.

Hollander, Paul. Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western intellectuals to the Soviet Union,

China, and Cuba, 1928–1978. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Hollier, Nathan. ‘Racism, the Realist Writers’ Movement and the Katharine Susannah

Prichard Award’. Australian Literary Studies 19, no. 2 (1999): 213-223.

Hollier, Nathan. ‘The Critical Reception of Bobbin Up’. Hecate 25, no. 1 (1999): 152-164.

Hutchinson, Garrie. ‘Here Comes Kisch!.’ National Times 30 Mar. 1984, sec. Theatre: 36.

Inglis, Amira. An Un-Australian Childhood. Melbourne, Victoria: Heinemann, 1983.

Inglis, Amira. The Hammer, the Sickle and the Washing Up: Memories of an Australian

Woman Communist. South Melbourne, Victoria: Hyland House, 1995.

Irvin, Eric. Australian Melodrama: Eighty Years of Popular Theatre. Sydney: Hale &

Iremonger, 1981.

345

Irvine, Dean Jay. The Canadian Modernists Meet. Ottowa, Ontario: University of Ottowa

Press, 2005.

Irving, Terry and Rowan Cahill. Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes.

Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press, 2010.

Jameson, Fredric. A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. London:

Verso, 2002.

Jillett, Neil. ‘A Runaway Success Began With Romance.’ The Age, 21 April 1978. Jones,

Hazel. ‘Review of 'On Stage Vietnam'.’ The Realist 27 (1967): 34.

Kershaw, Baz. The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention,

London.: Routledge, 1992.

Kapferer, Judith. Being all Equal: Identity, Difference and Australian Cultural Practice.

Oxford: Berg, 1996.

Kelly, Katherine E. Modern Drama by Women, 1880s–1930s: An International Anthology.

London: Routledge, 1996.

Kershaw, Angela. Forgotten Engagements: Women, Literature and the Left in 1930s

France. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.

Kadarkay Arpad. Georg Lukács: Life, Thought, and Politics. Cambridge,Massachusetts. :

Basil Blackwell Inc., 1991.

Kilner, Kerry and Sue Tweg. Playing the Past: Three Plays by Australian Women. Sydney,

346

NSW: Currency Press, 1995.

Kippax, H. G. and Harry P. Heseltine. A Leader of his Craft: Theatre Reviews. Sydney:

Currency House, 2004.

Koestler, Arthur. The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume of an Autobiography 1932-

1940. London: Vintage, 2005.

Lane, Richard. The Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama 1923-1960: A History Through

Biography. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1994.

Lawler, Ray. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. New York: Random House, 1957.

Lee, Christopher and Paul Adams. Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment. Carlton

North, Victoria.: The Vulgar Press, 2003.

Lenin, V. I. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972.

Lindsay, Jack. Decay & Renewal: Critical Essays on Twentieth Century Writing. Sydney:

Wild & Woolley, 1976.

Lindsay, Norman. Bohemians of the Bulletin. London: Angus & Robertson, 1977.

Lodder, Christina. Russian Constructivism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Love (ed.), Harold. The Australian Stage: A Documnetary History. Kensington, Australia:

UNSW Press, 1984..

Lovell, David and Kevin Windle. ‘Section 3. Moscow Takes Command: 1929–1937’. http://epress.anu.edu.au/oul/mobile_devices/ch03.html. (Accessed 20 December 2010).

347

Lovell, David and Kevin Windle. ‘Our Unswerving Loyalty.’

. (Accessed 18 February 2011).

Lukács, Georg. Soul and Form. trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT

Press, 1974.

Lukács, Gyoirgy. Realism in Our Time: Lterature and the Class Struggle. New York:

Harper & Row, 1964.

Lyons, Jill . ‘The Doll and the Umbrella.’ The Bulletin 78.4056 (1957): 26, 49.

Parkinson, G.H.R. Georg Lukács: The Man, His Work and His Ideas. London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.

Maltz, Albert. ‘Season of Celebration’. The Way Things Are and Other Stories. New York:

International Publishers, 1938.

Marcus, Judith and Tarr, Zoltan. Georg Lukács. New Brunswick (USA) and Oxford (UK):

Transaction Publishers, 1989.

MacQueen, Humphrey. The Black Swan of Trespass. Sydney, Australia: Alternative

Publishing Cooperative Limited, 1979.

Marshall, Alan. In Mine Own Heart. Melbourne, Victoria: Cheshire, 1963.

Macintyre, Stuart. 1901–1942: The Succeeding Age. Melbourne: Oxford University Press,

1986.

Macintyre, Stuart. The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality.

Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998. 348

Mally, Lynn. Culture of the Future: The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia.

Oxford, England. : University of California Press Ltd,1990.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Marx, Engels on Literature and Art. Moscow: Progress

Publishers, 1976.

Marx, Karl. The Poverty of Philosophy: Answer to the "Philosophy of Poverty" by M.

Proudhon. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978.

Maufort, Marc. Siting the Other: Re-visions of Marginality in Australian and English-

Canadian Drama. Bruxelles: PIE Lang, 2001.

McCallum, John. ‘Rattling the Manacles: Genre and Nationalism in the Neglected Plays of the Howard Campbell Collection 1920-1955’. Unemployed at Last!: Essays on Australian

Literature to 2002, for Julian Croft. Ken. A. Stewart, Shirley Walker, Julian Croft eds.

Armidale, NSW: CALLS, Centre for Australian Studies, UNE, 2002. (86-104).

McCallum, John. Belonging: Australian Playwriting in the Twentieth Century. Sydney:

Currency Press, 2009.

McKernan, Susan. A Question of Commitment: Australian Literature in the Twenty Years after the War. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989.

McKernan, Susan. ‘A Sensitive Soul in a World of Betrayers’. Australian Book Review no. 126 (1990): 27-28.

McLaren, John. Writing in Hope and Fear: Literature as Politics in Postwar Australia.

Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the Univeristy of Cambridge, 1996.

349

McLaren, John. ‘Stephen Murray-Smith: His Legacy’. The La Trobe Journal, no. 82 (2008):

19-26

McLaren, John. ‘Alan Marshall: Trapped in His Own Image’, Life Writing 1, no.2 (2004):

85-99.

McLaren, John. D. Australian Literature: An Historical Introduction. Melbourne: Longman

Cheshire, 1989

McLaren, John. ‘Bad Tempered Democrats, Biased Australians: Socialist Realism,

Overland and the Australian Legend’. Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment.

Carlton North, Victoria: The Vulgar Press, 2003. (53-69).

McLaren, John. ‘The End of the Affair: Intellectuals and the Communist Party, 1956-1959’.

Journal of Australian Studies, no. 78 (2003): 71-82.

McNair, John. ‘Visiting the Future: Australian (Fellow) Travellers in Soviet Russia’. The

Australian Journal Of Politics and History 46.4 (2000): 463-479.

Melbourne Writer’s Group. Thirteen Dead: Reportage Drama on Wonthaggi Mine. Clifton

Hill, Victoria: New Theatre, 1993.

Milner, Andrew. ‘Radical Intellectuals:An Unacknowledged Legislature?’ Constructing a

Culture: A People's History of Australia Since 1788. Verity Bergman, Jenny Lee (eds.)

Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia: McPhee Gribble/Penguin Books, 1988. 259-84.

Milliss, Roger. Serpent’s Tooth: An Autobiographical Novel.Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin

Books, 1984.

350

Modjeska, Drusilla. Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925–1945. London: Sirius

Book, 1981.

Modjeska, Drusilla. ‘Betty Roland talks to Drusilla Modjeska’. Australasian Drama Studies

8 (April 1986): 68-69.

Moore, Nicole. ‘An Interview with Betty Roland’. Southerly 67.1-2 (2007): 362-376.

Moore, Nicole. ‘The Burdens Twain or not Forgetting Yourself: The Writing of Betty

Roland’s Life’. Hecate 18.1 (1992): 6-26.

Moore, Nicole. ‘Obscene and Over Here: National Sex and the Love Me Sailor Obscenity

Case’. Australian Literary Studies 20.4 (2002): 316-329.

Moore, William, and T. Inglis Moore. Best Australian One-Act plays. Sydney, Australia:

Angus & Robertson, 1937.

Morgan, Joan. ‘Four Australian Plays.’ Australian Quarterly 14.4 (1942): 110-111.

Morris, Bernice. Between the Lines. Collingwod, Victoria: Sybylla Co-operative Press and

Publications, 1988.

Mortier, Paul. Art: Its Origins and Social Function. London: Current Book, 1955.

Murphy, James F. The Proletarian Moment: The Controversy Over Leftism in Literature.

Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

New Theatre. The New Years 1932—The Plays, People and Events of Six Decades of

Sydney’s Radical New Theatre. Sydney: New Theatre, 1992.

351

North, David. Anti-Semitism, Fascism and the Holocaust. Bankstown, NSW: Labour Press

Books, 1997.

Odets, Clifford. ‘Till the Day I Die’. Three Plays by Clifford Odets. London: Gollancz, 1936.

O'Loughlin, Iris and Marjorie Fitzgerald. ‘Four Australian Women Playwrights’. Australian

Feminist Studies 21 (1995): 129-152.

O’Loughlin, Iris. ‘A Bit of Ingenuity: Mona Brand’. Performing Women, Performing

Feminisms: Interviews With International Women Playwrights. Joanne Tompkins and Julie

Holledge eds. Brisbane, Queensland: Australian Drama Studies Association, 1997.

Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. London: Secker and Warburg, 1986.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm ; 1984. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.

Ovid. Metamorphoses. ed. Bloomington, USA: Indiana University Press, 1983. Transl.

Rolfe Humphries

Palmer, Nettie and Vivian Smith. Nettie Palmer: Her Private Journal "Fourteen years'—

Poems, Reviews and Literary Essays. St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland

Press, 1988.

Palmer, Vance and Harry P.Heseltine. Intimate Portraits and Other Pieces: Essays and

Articles. Melbourne: Cheshire, 1969.

Parkinson, G.H.R. Georg Lukács. London, Henley and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1977.

Pesman, Ros. Duty Free: Australian Women Abroad. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 352

1996.

Pfisterer Susan. ed. Tremendous Worlds: Australian Women's Drama 1890–1960.

Sydney: Currency Press, 1999.

Pfisterer, Susan. ‘Playing With the Past: Towards a Feminist Deconstruction of Australian

Theatre Historiography’. Australasian Drama Studies 23 (1993): 8-22.

Pfisterer, Susan and Carolyn Pickett. Playing With Ideas: Australian Women Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the Sixties. Sydney: Currency Press, 1999.

Pfisterer, Susan. ‘Brave Red Witches: Communist Women Playwrights and the Sydney

New Theatre’. Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself. Xavier Pons ed. Carlton South,

Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2002. 167-174.

Picot, Genevieve and Tony Watts. John Hargreaves—A Celebration: An Actor's Life as He

Saw It. Newport, Victoria: Parrot Books, 2000.

Plekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich. Selected Philosophical Works vol. V. Moscow: Progress

Publishers, 1976.

Poole, Gaye. ‘A Very Humanitarian Type of Socialism’. Australasian Drama Studies 21

(1992): 3-22.

Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge. New York:

W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. Child of the Hurricane: An Autobiography. Sydney,

Australia: Angus and Robertson, 1963.

353

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. Brumby Innes, and Bid me to Love. Sydney: Currency

Methuen Drama, 1974.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah and Ric Throssell. Straight Left: Articles and Addresses on

Politics, Literature, and Women's Affairs Over Almost 60 Years from 1910–1968. Sydney:

Wild & Woolley, 1982.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. Winged Seeds. London: Virago, 1984.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. Katherine Susannah Prichard: Stories, Journalism and

Essays. Delys Bird ed. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. ‘Forward One’. Tremendous Worlds: Australian Women's

Drama 1890–1960. Sydney: Currency Press, 1999.

Prichard, Katharine Susannah. Child of the Hurricane: An Autobiography. Sydney, NSW:

Angus and Robertson, 1963.

‘Queen’s Birthday Honours’. The Age. http://www.theage.com.au/national/queens- brithday-honours-20100613-y62o.html (Accessed 20 February 2011).

Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in

Petrograd. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July

1917 Uprising. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Rabinowitch, Alexander. The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in

Petrograd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

354

Radic, Leonard. The State of Play: The Revolution in the Australian Theatre since the

1960s. Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1991.

Radic, Leonard. Contemporary Australian Drama. Blackheath, N.S.W: Brandl &

Schlesinger, 2006.

Rees, Leslie. Towards an Australian Drama. Sydney, London: Angus and Robertson,

1953.

Rees, Leslie. The Making of Australian Drama from the 1830s to the Late 1960s. Revised edition. London: Angus & Robertson, 1973.

Rees, Leslie. The Making of Australian Drama: A Historical and Critical Survey from the

1830s to the 1970s. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1973.

Rees, Leslie. Hold Fast to Dreams: Fifty Years in Theatre, Radio, Television, and Books.

Sydney: Alternative Pub. Co-operative, APCOL, 1982.

Rees, Leslie. Australian Drama 1970–1985: A Historical and Critical Survey. Sydney:

Angus & Robertson, 1987.

Report of the Australian Unesco Conference on Playwriting Adelaide, 24th-30th March,

1962 Adelaide, South Australia: Australian Unesco Committee for Dance and Theatre,

1962.

Rifkind, Candida. Comrades and Critics: Women, Literature, and the Left in 1930s

Canada. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Robin, Regine. Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic. Stanford, California: Stanford

355

University Press, 1992.

Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich. 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror. Oak Park, Michigan: Mehring

Books, 1998.

Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich. Stalin's Terror of 1937–1938: Political Genocide in the

USSR. Oak Park, Michigan: Mehring Books, 2009.

Roland, Betty. Caviar for Breakfast. Melbourne, Victoria: Quartet Books Australia, 1979.

Roland, Betty. The Eye of the Beholder. Sydney, NSW: Hale & Iremonger, 1984.

Roland, Betty. The Touch of Silk (1955 revision); Granite Peak. Sydney: Currency Press,

1988.

Roland, Betty. An Improbable Life. Sydney, NSW: Collins Publishers Australia, 1989.

Roland, Betty. The Devious Being. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990.

Rooney, Brigid. Literary Activists: Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life. St Lucia,

Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2009.

Scharine, Richard G. From Class to Caste in American Drama: Political and Social

Themes Since the 1930s. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

Semmler, Clement and Derek A. Whitelock. Literary Australia. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire,

1966.

Service, Robert. Trotsky: A Biography. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press, 2009.

356

Smith, Bernard, George Farwell, and Katharine Susannah Prichard. Australian New

Writing no. 2. Sydney: Current Book Distributors, 1944.

Smith, Bernard. The Critic as Advocate: Selected Essays 1941–1988. Melbourne: Oxford

University Press, 1989.

Smith, Stephen. An Overland Muster: Selections from Overland 1954–1964. Brisbane,

Australia: Jacaranda Press, 1965.

Sochor, Zenovia A. Revolution and Culture: The Bogdanov-Lenin Controversy. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1988.

Solomon, Maynard. Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary. Detroit: Wayne

State University Press, 1979.

Sparrow, Jeff. Communism: A Love Story. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2007.

Spassova Dikova, Joanna. ‘Utopian Fathers, Dystopian Systems’. History of the Literary

Cultures of East-Central Europe: Types and Stereotypes vol. IV. Marcel Cornis-Pope and

John Neubauer eds. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company,

2010.

Spender, Dale. The Penguin Anthology of Australian Women's Writing. Ringwood, Victoria:

Penguin, 1988.

Stern, Ludmila. Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union 1920–40: From Red Square to the Left Bank. London: Routledge, 2007.

Stevens, Joyce. Taking the Revolution Home: Work Among Women in the Communist

357

Party of Australia 1920–1945. Fitzroy, Victoria: Sybylla Co-operative Press and

Publications, 1987.

Strahan, Lynne. Just City and the Mirrors: Meanjin Quarterly and the Intellectual front,

1940–1965. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Symons, Beverley, Andrew Wells, and Stuart Macintyre. Communism in Australia: A

Resource Bibliography. Canberra, Australia: National Library of Australia, 1994.

Syson, Ian. ‘It Just isn't Trendy at the Moment': Thinking About Working Class Literature through the 1990s’. Tirra Lirra 10, no. 2 (Summer 1999-2000)

Syson, Ian. 'It's My Party and I'll Cry if I Want To': Recent Autobiographical Writings of

Australian Women Communists’. Hecate vol.22, no.2 (1996) 144-153.

Taft, Bernie. Memoirs of Bernie Taft: Crossing the Party Line. Newham, Australia: Scribe

Publications, 1994.

‘The Pioneer Players: The Pioneer Players announce the production of a new and original comedy, in four acts, 'A Happy Family' by Vance Palmer.’ Reason in Revolt-Source

Documents of Australian Radicalism. University of Melbourne Department of Social and

Political Sciences and Monash University Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural

Studies. http://www.reasoninrevolt.net.au/pdf/b000079.pdf (Accessed 22 Feb. 2011).

Thomas, Sue. ‘Betty Roland’s The Touch of Silk and Granite Peak’. Australasian Drama

Studies 8 (1986): 81-94.

Thomson, Dot. My Method and a Little Madness: Stanislavsky Revisited. Clifton Hill,

Victoria: New Theatre Publications, 2000. 358

Thorpe, Daniel Wrixon. ‘Drama Night.’ All About Books for Australian and New Zealand

Readers 2, no. 11 (1930): 11.

Throssell, Ric. Wild weeds and windflowers: The Life and Letters of Katherine Susannah

Prichard. London: Angus & Robertson, 1975.

Throssell, Ric. My Father's Son. Richmond, Victoria: William Heinemann Australia, 1989.

Throssell, Ric. Wild Weeds and Windflowers: The Life and Letters of Katherine Susannah

Prichard. North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1990.

Tilley, Christine. ‘A Writer’s Thirty Six years in Radical Theatre: Perspectives on Mona

Brand’s Isolation from Mainstream Australian Theatre.’ Australian Drama 1920–1955

Papers Presented to a Conference at the University of New England, Armidale September

1 - 4, 1984. Armidale: Univ. of New England, 1986. 9-16.

Tilley, Christine. ‘Mona Brand: a Checklist 1935–1980’. Australian Literary Studies 10.1

(1981): 117-127.

Tompkins, Joanne, and Julie Holledge. Performing Women, Performing Feminisms:

Interviews with International Women Playwrights. Brisbane, Queensland: Australasian

Drama Studies Association, 1997.

Trotsky, Leon. The Suppressed Testament of Lenin. New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1946.

Trotsky, Leon. The History of the Russian Revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press, 1974.

Trotsky, Leon. ‘Leon Trotsky: Art and Politics in Our Epoch (1938).’ Marxists Internet

359

Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm (Accessed 28

February 2008).

Trotsky, Leon, Andre Breton and Diego Rivera. Culture & Socialism: A Manifesto, Art and

Revolution. London: New Park Publications Ltd, 1962.

Trotsky, Leon and Paul N. Siegel. Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art. New York:

Pathfinder Press, 1970.

Trotsky, Leon. Germany 1931–1932. London: New Park Publications, 1970.

Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution: Results and Prospects. London: New Park

Publications, 1971.

Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?

Detroit, MI: Labor Publications Inc., 1991.

Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. London: Redwords, 1991.

Trotsky, Leon. My Life. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970.

Turner, Graeme. National Fictions: Literature, Film, and the Construction of Australian

Narrative. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Voronsky, Aleksandr Konstantinovich. Art as the Cognition of Life: Selected Writings 1911-

1936. Oak Park, Mich.: Mehring, 1998.

Walsh, David. The Aesthetic Component of Socialism. Bankstown, NSW: Mehring Books,

1998.

360

Walsh, David. ‘Marxism, Art and the Soviet Debate Over Proletarian Culture’. World

Socialist Web Site. Part Three. International Committee of the Fourth International, 3 Oct.

2005. (Accessed 20 October

2009).

Walsh, David. ‘Bolshevism and the Avant-Garde Artists’. The Fourth International 20.1

(1994): 95-130.

Wells, Julie. ‘The Writers’ League: A Study in Literary and Working-Class Politics’. Meanjn

46, no.4, 1987.

Wells, Julie. ‘Red Witches: Perceptions of Communist Women Writers’. Wallflowers and

Witches: Women and Culture in Australia 1910–1945. Maryanne Dever ed. St Lucia,

Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1994. 147-162.

White, Richard and Penny Russell. Memories and Dreams: Reflections on Twentieth-

Century Australia : Pastiche II. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997.

Wilding, Michael. ‘Henry Lawson’s Socialist Vision’. Studies in Classic Australian Fiction.

Sydney, NSW: Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture, 1997. (32-75).

Wilding, Michael. ‘Pioneering Social Realism: William Lane’s The Workingman’s Paradise’.

Studies in Classic Australian Fiction. Sydney, NSW: Sydney Association for Studies in

Society and Culture, 1997. (76-108).

Williams, Deane. ‘Catherine Duncan: As Others See Us’. La Trobe University, Australia. http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/classics/cl_16/dwcl16.html (Accessed 18

March 2009).

361

Williams, John Frank. The Quarantined Culture: Australian Reactions to Modernism 1913–

1939. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press,

1977.

Williams, Justina. Anger and Love: A Life of Struggle and Commitment. Fremantle,

Western Australia: Fremantle Press, 1993.

Wills, Nancy. Shades of Red: Personal and Political Recollections of a Communist to Mark the Occasion of our Sixtieth Anniversary 1920-1980. Lota, Queensland: Communist Arts

Group, 1980.

Wolf, Gabrielle. Make it Australian: The Australian Performing Group, the Pram Factory and New Wave Theatre. Sydney: Currency Press, 2008.

Woolacott, L.L.. ‘Had We But World Enough’. The ABC Weekly, Sydney (28 Jan. 1950):

30.

Workers News Editorial Board. Betrayal: A History of the Communist Party of Australia.

Marrickville, NSW: Allen Books, 1981.

Zhdanov, Andrei. ‘Speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers’. Art in Theory 1900-1990,

Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger, eds. (Malden, Massachussets: Blackwell,

1998).

362

 

The Good Ship New Theatre

By Frank McNamara, to the tune of Good Ship Lollipop.

You’ve heard this song before

We sang it here last year

We’ve brought it back once more

For its message you must hear

This song will change your life

Its wisdom is profound

It has zip and fizz

What’s more it is

Polit-ically sound.

Chorus:

363

New Theatre’s dancing girls

We’re all its teeth and flashing curls

We’re bright and gay

‘Cause we sing and dance the socialist way

Propaganda is good news

Send the message with your shoes

It’s a bright new day

When you dance the Social-Realist way

Why not take a chance

Learn this great new dance

With its message so electric

‘Cause the steps are full

Oooooooooo—ooooooooo

Of Marxist dialectic

When the revolution comes

364

There’ll be no more tits and bums

It’s a woman’s day

When you sing and dance the Brechtian way

There’s a coming new red dawn

Chorus girls will be reborn

We will lead the fray

When we sing and dance New Theatre’s way

The quickstep and waltz

Are bourgeois and false

To the workers’ basic feeling

With a single tap

Oooooo—ooooooooooo

Capital is reeling

It’s a way to change the world

365

Wear a frilly dress

And blonde hair curled

‘Cause we sing and dance the socialist way.5

The Affluent Society6

By Q.E.D

Two barmaids cleaning up at closing time.

Mavis: Hey, Glad

Glad: yeah?

Mavis: You know what we’re livin’ in?

Glad: Sin?

Mavis: Oh, for crissakes, can’t you think of nothin’ else? I mean the place.

Glad: Alright, alright. I thought you meant you and Bert. I didn’t know you had a place. Last

I heard you were going to Centennial Park.

5 New Theatre Records, MLMSS 6244, Box 127. There is no date for this song 6 New Theatre Records MLMSS 6244, Box 129. This was perhaps written circa 1960s or early 1970s. 366

Mavis: Oh lord, you are one track, aren’t you? No, love, I’m telling you about this affluent society they’re talking about.

Glad: Who’s talking about it?

Mavis: All the fellers that come into the bar.

Glad: Oh, that. What’s it mean?

Mavis: Well, they’re always going on about it, ever since the Prime Minster said it. ‘We’re living in an affluent society.’

Glad: Is that good?

Mavis: well, Charlie, and he ought to know, being in the council and all that, Charlie told

Bert.

Glad: Charlie that drives the garbage truck?

Mavis: Yeah. He’s in with the blokes in the Town Clerk’s office and they get all the inside on what goes on.

Glady: Fancy?

Mavis: Oh, he does all right, does Charlie, reckons he can retire in another five years.

Glad: Fancy. Well, thanks for telling me, Mavis, it’s nice to know about these things; and you think he’ll be able to get you and Bert a ‘place’?

Mavis: I haven’t told you.

Glad: You haven’t? Oh! Well, go on. 367

Mavis: Charlie told Bert a affluent society means everybody don’t have to worry about nothin’! Plenty food, plenty clothes, plenty houses, work for everyone...

Glad: Fancy! Then the comms must have got in? Imagine after all these years of trying and the nasty things the papers keep saying about them, you wouldn’t think they could raise enough votes. It all goes to show, if you’ve got it, there comes a time...

Mavis: Oh, Glad! Will you, for Pity’s sake, shut up, love. It’s not the comms, it’s the Libs.

The Liberals are saying it, old Bob’s mob.

Glad: You can’t mean it?

Mavis: It’s in all the papers.

Glad: Well, that’s nice. Just at the right time. I suppose you and Bert can get a place now and...

Mavis: Not yet. Nothing under a tenner for two rooms and use of bath and kitchen.

Glad: Oh, well, everything doesn’t come at once. But you’ll be knocking off this part-time bar-maid jazz and getting married now Bert can get a decent job, I’ll bet.

Mavis: Oh, come off it, Glad! You know Bert’s got no trade, he’s got to take work where he can get it, seasonal you know.

Glad: Well, at least the price of meat and veg. will be down. That’s a good thing. Mum was only saying last night she couldn’t go on washing floors to stack up the pension forever.

Mavis: No, love, no. Prices have just gone up. It’s in the papers.

368

Glad: Well, you’ll pardon me for saying it, Mavis, but it sounds like the same old routine.

Nothing’s changed at all.

Mavis: That’s just it, Glad. We’ve been living in a affluent society all the time and we didn’t know it!

Glad: Fancy!

Extract from I’d Rather Be Left!7

Entracte – ARP Lecture

Lecturer: Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. Our lecture tonight in our serious of talks on Air-Raid Precautions deals with Bombs. Now Bombs produce a bang and a smell. In the case of high explosive bombs it is the bang that is to be apprehended and not the smell. The reverse applies in the case of gas bombs where the bang may be ignored but the smell should if possible be avoided.

Now I want to tell you about High Explosive Bombs. A high explosive bomb is a bomb filled with high explosives. It is so designed that upon striking any objects it goes off, or explodes. This creates a hole in the object hit. The important thing to remember is that big

7 New Theatre Records MLMSS 6244, Box 149. 369

bombs make big holes and little bombs make little holes. It is essential not to be in the hole at the time when it is made. This is achieved by being elsewhere. So the main duty of the

Air Raid Warden is to be elsewhere under all circumstances. That is the basic principle of all Air Raid Precautions. If at the commencement of a Raid one is not elsewhere one immediately goes elsewhither and is then referred to as being elsethere. Before going elsewhere, however, one should try to arrange for shelters for the civilian population who have to remain elsehere. This is done by placing above them concrete or other material greater in depth than the hole produced by the exploding of the bomb. You will see, of course, that if the explosion is produced by the wrong size of bomb the civilian may have to leave the shelter. This should be done through the door and in an orderly fashion. In the case of a very large bomb, however, the civilians will probably leave through the roof, and it will be less easy to maintain order. In such a case any incomplete civilians should be carefully collected and placed in containers provided for the purpose.

Now in the case of gas bombs. The difference between high explosive and gas bombs is this. With high explosive bombs one has to be elsewhere when the bomb explodes: with the gas bombs one has to be elsewhere both when it explodes and for some time afterwards. This is best achieved by being elsewhere in the first place and staying there.

However, there are precautions which one can take if one is not. Most gases are heavier than air and so lie close to the ground. The best way of dealing with them is to walk upright instead of proceeding on hands and knees while in a gas-infected area. If the gas is deeper than the height of a man a horse should be ridden. If deeper than the height of a horse an elephant should be ridden, the animal being first instructed to extend its trunk

370

vertically upwards and to keep its mouth shut. In extreme cases a giraffe may be used, the rider sitting on its head. Care should be taken, however, before employing the giraffe, to strengthen its neck with steel or reinforced concrete to overcome undue flexibility. Another method of dealing with gas, frequently employed in other countries, is to wear a gas mask, but these are not obtainable.

Songs from I’d Rather Be Left!8

Father Xmas’s Song

I come from freezing Lapland

To Sydney where it’s hot.

The Retail Trades employ me

So I must be on the spot.

I urge my reindeer onward,

And ride right down the map,

With a bag of London and Birmingham toys

Manufactured by the Jap!

8 MLMSS 6244, Box 149.

371

Now, I like the ice in Lapland,

But I don’t like Sydney snow,

Nor Davy Jones’ locker,

For that’s where all the profits go.

The rich man gets a Buick, and gives it to his wife,

The poor man gets a lemon,

And he can suck it all his life—

No kiddin’,

He can suck it all his life.

Don’t blame me if the value

Of my gifts is sometimes hidden,

The Retail Trades employ me,

So I must do as I’m bidden.

They give you wars and hunger,

Low wages and rising price,

372

Why should this be, you want to know?

Because Sydney Snow’s like ice!

Last year among my presents,

I brought a nice new war,

A 1940 model

It ought to last till ’44.

This year I bring a bag-full

Of taxes and the like,

More and more conscription,

But maybe not the right to strike.

Oh baby,

Maybe not the right to strike.

The Dowagers of Darling Point9

9 MLMSS 6244, Box 149. 373

Three Dowagers we, of Darling Point,

The choicest cuts of a well-bred joint,

And every morning we kneel down

To give a prayer of thanks

That our husbands are directors

Of the very biggest banks.

Yes, we may be silly women,

But even we can see

That it’s easy to sleep with the captain

Of some bigger industry.

Tho’ it may be uninviting

In point of actual fact, it’s a very good lurk not to do any work,

And that’s a solid fact.

Economics all Bolonics,

The solution’s plain to see,

Be a member of the Bunyip Aristocracy.

374

Tho’ our hubbies waste our leisure,

Because of their blood pressure,

Still there are amenities,

And tho’ you dine at table

With a man who isn’t able,

Who crams himself with phosphate

To restore a weathered prostate,

You’re never really far from Fortune’s knees.

The Chamber of Commerce has given a toast

To we Dowager Queens of the Eastern Coast.

We dress ourselves for cocktails,

Just like the English toff,

Tho’ we look like hell in the morning,

And we spread with our corsets off.

Oh! We may be silly women,

Who are scared of mice and bats,

375

But our hearts and homes are open

To all the Labour Rats.

For in finishing school we learned to play

The gracious hostess part,

Tho’ waiters blench when we speak French

To order a la carte,

There are boxes of silver foxes,

If only you will be,

A member of the Bunyip Aristocracy.

376