Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White: Governing Culture

by Denise Varney, Sandra D'Urso

Overview

In the early 1960s the board of governors of the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia rejected two Patrick White plays, The Ham Funeral in 1962 and Night on Bald Mountain in 1964. Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White documents the scandal that followed the board’s rejections of White’s plays, especially as it acted against the advice of its own drama committee and artistic director on both occasions. Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso analyze the two events by drawing on the performative behaviour of the board of governors to focus on the question of governance. They shed new light on the cultural politics that surrounded the rejections, arguing that it represents an instance of executive governance of cultural production, in this case theatre and performance. The central argument of the book is that aesthetic modernism in theatre and drama struggled to achieve visibility and acceptability, and posed a threat to the norms and values of early to mid-twentieth-century Australia. The recent productions indicate that despite the Adelaide Festival’s early hostile rejections, White’s plays endure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783088355
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	09/15/2018
Series:	Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance,Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture , #3
Pages:	130
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Denise Varney is professor of theatre studies and co-director of the Australian Centre in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Australia. She publishes on Australian theatre, feminist and women’s theatre, theatrical modernism, and theatre and ecology.

Sandra D’Urso holds a PhD in performance studies and is currently a researcher at the Australian Centre in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Australia. D’Urso has published in the areas of theatre and politics, performance art in the twenty-first century, Australian aesthetic modernism and the plays of Patrick White, as well as in contemporary Australian poetry.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The Archive, Governance and Sovereignty; 2. ‘Words Fail Me’: The Ham Funeral and the 1962 Adelaide Festival; 3. Night on Bald Mountain and the 1964 Adelaide Festival; 4. The ‘Clowns’ Who ‘Cling to the Past ’: Sovereign Decision and the Practice of Exclusion; 5. The Sovereignty of the Plays and Opportunities for New Publics; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘This timely book emphasizes the vitality of Patrick White’s plays and his contribution to current Australian theatre. Although White’s 1973 Nobel Prize was for his novels, Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso present a compelling and detailed case for the drama’s enduring status. Their thoughtful exploration of the 1960s rejection of White’s drama reveals a radical challenge to types of modernist governance and sovereignty including the Australian separation from British culture.’
—Peta Tait FAHA, Emeritus Professor, Theatre and Drama, HUSS, La Trobe University, Australia