HI SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR CENTRE FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION M. A. Part-II : English Semester-III : Paper G3 E4 Australian and Canadian Literature Semester-IV : Paper C-10 Critical Theory-II (Academic Year 2019-20 onwards) KJ M. A. Part-II English Paper G3 E4 Australian and Canadian Literature Unit-1 Major Trends in Australiam Drama Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Ray Lawler Contents: 1.0 Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Major Trends in Australian Drama 1.2.1 Check your Progress 1.3 Ray Lawler: Life and Works 1.4 Short Summary of the play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1.4.1 Check your progress 1.5 Act wise Summary of the play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1.5.1 Act I 1.5.2 Check your progress 1.5.3 Act II 1.5.4 Check your progress 1.5.5 Act III 1.5.6 Check your progress 1.6 Major/Minor Characters 1.7 Themes and Symbols 1.8 Answer to check your Progress 1.9 Exercise 1.10 Books for Further Reading. 1 1.0 Objectives After studying this unit you will be able to • Study development and major trends in Australian Drama • Understand the contribution of Ray Lawler to Australian Drama • Know life and works of Ray Lawler • Analyze the play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll • Assess the characters in the play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll • Examine various themes reflected in the play • Understand and appreciate the play 1.1 Introduction The first section of the present unit takes a brief survey of development and major trends of Australian Drama and the second section discusses the text, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler, a noteworthy playwright who contributed to the native tradition of Australian drama significantly. Ray Lawler , in full Raymond Evenor Lawler , (born 23 May 1921, Footscray, Melbourne, Vic., Australia) is an actor, producer, and playwright whose Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is credited with changing the direction of modern Australian drama. In 1955 the newly formed Elizabethan Theatre Trust chose his Summer of the Seventeenth Doll for its first staging of an original Australian play . Lawler staged this play in Melbourne in 1956 and the play’s success led to productions in London in 1957and in New York City in 1958. Its film version was made in 1959. The play criticised Australian cultural stereotypes in a natural style of languge; free of cliché represented a major break with the established tradition of drama in Australia . Lawler has many plays to his credit and in order to understand Lawler’s place in the tradition of Australian drama it is essential to take a brief review of Australian drama. 2 1.2 Major Trends in Australian Drama In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English culture entered and settled in Australia which is reflected through the medium of theatre also. Theatre in Australia was emerged in 1788. F.C. Brewer surveys the development in Australian drama in his book The Drama and The Music New South Wales (1892). The development of Australian Drama can be studied through three periodizations. Phase I : 1788- 1990 The History of Australian drama can be traced back to the colonial idea of theatre from the drama of David Burn which reflects a belief in theatre as a powerful cultural media in a new society. The History can be traced also in discussion and debate about theatre from the beginning of the colony in the official utterances of those who sanctioned and patronised early armature and convict productions who subsequently legislated and licensed theatres in to existence. Unil 1800, convicts were involved in all dramatic ventures of which there is no concrete record. As referred earlier in a new society especially in a convict society drama was one of the most civilized of human pursuits. It was an instrument for reforming vicious tendencies and maintaining social stability. Convict theatre was sanctioned for serving the useful social function. David Burn’s historical tragedies established his reputation as a founder of Australian drama. David Burn, wrote eight plays over the early two decades of the first phase of Australian Drama. His famous plays are The Bushrangers (1829) and Sydney Delivered (1845). The play Bushrangers deals with the themes of convictism and bush ranging . Most of the plays written in this period are modelled on the popular English plays. H. C. O. Flaherty’s Life in Sydney or The Ran Dan Club (1843), a picaresque modelled on the popular English play Tom and Jerry or Life in London . James Tucker’s Jemmy Green in Australia probably written at Port Macquarie in 1845 was modelled on the same English play. George Farquhar’s first play The Recruiting Officer was performed before sixty audiences at Port Jackson, in the presence of Governor Phillip and the officers of the garrison. In the 1830s and 1840s the local items such as songs, ballads, recitations, comic or satirical skills were introduced throughout the performances. Edward Geoghegan was a significant Australian dramatist in this period. He wrote at nine plays and 3 performed at the Royal Victoria in the 1840s. His famous play The Currency Lass presents a story of a native girl who is very talented and makes arrangements for a marriage very skilfully. A local play Negro Vengeance , A Tale of the Barbados were written and performed in Maitland in the decade of 1840s and in the later 1840s and early 1850s Francis Belfield, a Melbourne actor wrote three plays Retribution or The Drunkard’s Curse, Rebel Chief and Zisca the Avenger which were performed by Queen’s Theatre Company. Pantomime, a popular Victorian form, which deals with the scope for local or topical allusion is also emerged in the Australian Drama .Pantomime is a mixture of romance and realism. The famous manuscript of John Lazar’s Grand Easter Pantomime at the Royal Victoria in Sydney in 1846 includes St. George and the Dragon or Harlequin and The Seven Champions of Christendom. This expresses the local scene, background, people, society of Sydney. The Christmas Pantomime includes Harlequin Jack Spratt or The Fire Fiend and The Fairy of the Evening Star was performed at the Royal Victoria in Sydney in 1844. One of the major developments in Australian drama was the result of discovery the gold. In the early 1850s the gold was discovered in New South Wales and Victoria. It gave a new impetus to Australian drama. The sudden growth in population is the initial effect on theatre construction. It is in goldfields townships like Ballarat, Bendigo and Bathurst as well as the main cities like Melbourne and Sydney. By the mid 1850s Melbourne and Sydney constructed the theatres of the capacity of three thousand audiences at one time and one place. The major theatres established in Australia were Melbourne’s Theatre Royal and Sydney’s Prince of Wales Theatre. Marcus Clarke was the prominent playwright of the late 1860s &1870s, who through his works reveals the difficulties and problems faced by the talented playwright in the increasing period of specialization. He wrote twenty odd plays and fragments. More than dozen of them were performed. His dramatic writings were the experimentation with the available forms and sense of frustration. Clarke’s novel His Natural Life discusses the theatrical imagination, methods of melodrama, its dialogue & character, plot & creation and effect of using spectacle and tableau (models). 4 The period 1870s to 1890s is known as the golden era of Australian theatre. It is also refered as the time of local melodrama. Australian and Anglo-Australian melodrama flourished through the works of Alfred Dampier and George Darrell. The themes of Australian melodrama such as convictism, bush-ranging and gold discovery is the victim of concentration in competing with other kind of drama. George Darrell is one of the best Anglo- Australian melodramatists. His sixth play The Sunny South published in decade of 90’s is about the colonial life, bush- ranging goldfield’s excitement etc. It has achieved fifteen hundred performances in Sydney and Melbourne in1883, 1885, 1891 as well as in London and America and touring productions throughout Australia and New Zealand. Alfred Dampier was another reputed author, co-author, adaptor, producer and actor of the Australian melodrama. His first successful stage adaptation of His Natural Life in 1886 gave him a popularity through a decade. In this period he produced more than a dozen plays. The later period included contemporary urban melodramas such as Thomas Somer’s Voice of the Night (1886), Marvellous Melbourne (1889) and The Great City (1891). In this period there is American influence on Australian melodrama in the plays of Cooper as well as Darrell, but it is strong in Dampier’s work. The Sunny South in the comparison with Marvellous Melbourn is a much more fragmented and violent play. The dominance of large-scale overseas theatrical interest and rise of the film industry in early 20 th century and beginning of non-commercial theatre become major causes of decline of Australian melodrama. Phase II : 1900- 1960 The second phase starts with the establishment of permanent theatre, locally written plays began to appear in increasing numbers, especially in Sydney. The most significant Australian playwrights of this period were Edward Geoghegan, Louis Esson and Ray Lawler. This period witnessed the fitful and uneven development due to tensions and pressures of new dramatic practices and changing social realities. The new drama established in this period tries to emphasize the aspects of oppositions to established theatrical practices. The impetus of the new kind of local drama from the mid 1960’s, 5 an earlier ‘post-colonial’ or ‘nationalist’ phase in Australian drama seemed to have been naturally defined.