The Book Show

Playwright Louis Nowra describes some political theatre as 'cardigan dramas' and says that rather than breaking boundaries it has become conformist.

This was his assessment after reading Hilary Glow's book on the state of political theatre in Australia called Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda.

So what is the state of political theatre in Australia?

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Ramona Koval: Playwright Louis Nowra describes some political theatre as 'cardigan dramas' and says that rather than breaking boundaries it has become conformist. This was his assessment after reading Hilary Glow's book on the state of political theatre in Australia called Power Plays where she looked at the contribution to drama of playwrights like Hannie Rayson, Stephen Sewell, Katherine Thomson, Reg Cribb, Ben Ellis, Andrew Bovell, Wesley Enoch and Patricia Cornelius. So what is the state of political theatre in Australia? Louis Nowra joins us in Sydney, and in our Melbourne studio I'm joined by Julian Meyrick who is associate director at the Melbourne Theatre Company, and he's now a post-doctoral Fellow at La Trobe University.

Louis, to you first. You described Australian political theatre as a sort of 'cardigan drama'. What do you mean by that?

Louis Nowra: I think it goes back a long time, and one has to remember that political theatre in Australia has been going strongly for about 60 or 70 years. It goes right back to the 30s and 40s and 50s. And they used to portray the working class as the authentic Australian on stage, and this has continued right up until now. This authenticity generally shows when the working class are on stage and they're generally dressed in dreary cardigans which reinforces the notion that they are the authentic Australians. So it's a slight term of abuse; I hate cardigans.

Ramona Koval: So the wardrobe from 1930s is still in action on the stages.

Louis Nowra: Yes, you do see it. I was brought up in the working class on a housing commission and I always get the feeling like...Aborigines and political drama and illegal refugees, that they're saints and they're sort of dressed drably in order that the audience get the whole idea that it is realistic and that they are authentic, and it's sort of just a stereotype.

Ramona Koval: You wrote a review on Hilary Glow's book on theatre in Australia suggesting that there's sort of a conformist approach to political theatre. Tell us about this conformist approach. Give us some examples.

Louis Nowra: First of all I've been thinking about this issue for years, and when I was reviewing Hilary Glow's book, which is coming out tomorrow in Australia in Literary Review, it sort of clarified a lot of issues for me. One of the things about it, if you go back to the 40s and 50s, the Betty Rolands, Mona Brands and Dymphna Cusacks were communists and left-wingers, and their plays were agitprop political plays, and it was always conformist; the working class were right, the communist party was right.

If you go up until now, one of the things is that it is such a conformist idea that they only write about limited topics. So you've got these limited topics about illegal refugees, rural dramas about Aboriginal dispossession, and you've got a couple of other topics. And I actually think to myself this is the problem with Australia; we are a very conformist nation, and it seems we only have certain themes that we can talk about, and during the John Howard years it was anti-Howard plays, exactly as it was in England with anti-Thatcher plays. The trouble is the plays are not very good, they do play to the converted, and even though a lot of the playwrights say it's conversation, it isn't, it's just a monologue.

Ramona Koval: Julian, what are your thoughts about what you've just heard?

Julian Meyrick: I can understand Louis feels as he does. I tried to wear my cardigan today, Louis, but unfortunately it had a hole in it, sorry about that. I think though that the notion of political theatre is far older than the 1940s. I mean, really honestly, talking about politics is something that drama has done since the time of Euripides or probably Aeschylus. So it's always been there as a subject matter. I think as regards the individuals plays, the ones that Hilary talks about in her book, some of are better than others, that goes without saying, but that's true of every particular area. As to the business of conformity and the general trope, as it were, of political theatre, I think that there is a real issue there. I was caused to reflect on that, much like Louis. I don't know if my analysis would be exactly the same but I think there's something there to be explained.

Ramona Koval: Well, what do you think the issue is?

Julian Meyrick: It's to do with why political theatre has taken the form that it has today in such a way that Louis can say that really it began in the 1940s. But before we get to that, and it is an important issue and I'm sure Louis will have lots of thoughts on it like I do, the first thing to say about Hilary's book is it is a book of history. It is looking at a particular period of our dramatic creation...

Ramona Koval: And Hilary Glow says that in the 70s and 80s that was, I suppose, a heyday of political theatre in Australia, with a feeling with graduates that the purpose of theatre work was to be responsive to the world around them.

Julian Meyrick: It was a heyday for lots of types of drama, and political drama was one of the things that got a good airing, I suppose. But in the last 11 years until the last election, at any rate, I think the perception has been that as far as general air time is concerned, then the most access and the most time has really been on the right, and therefore to find most plays on the left is perhaps not that surprising.

Ramona Koval: What do you think about that, Louis?

Louis Nowra: First of all I have to say to Julian that in the article that's coming out tomorrow I do go back to ancient Greek drama and Elizabethan drama about the use of politics. I'm talking about Australian theatre and Australian political theatre. Of course, you see, most of the people who go to the theatre and write for theatre are small-l liberals and leftwing, and so you do get a kind of agreement between the audience and what's on stage; this is the dinner party topic of the year, illegal refugees or whatever it is.

My argument has always been that the concept of political theatre is a puritan ethos and it's basically going 'You're going to pay $50 and, boy, we're going to educate you if you don't agree with what we're actually saying on stage.' And I hate the whole idea of this. I quote Reg Cribb from Hilary Glow's book who goes, 'Well, political theatre is entertainment with a message,' and I think that's one of the most horrible things to actually come up with.

When you think of the great playwrights, whether it's Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, you actually think, well, you're getting to know people on stage, you're getting to know the messiness and complexity of what's actually happening on stage. The trouble with political theatre in Australia now, it sets up binary opposites, like black versus white, male versus female, old versus young, conservatives versus leftwing. So you've got this stereotypical notion that we're made up of opposites, whereas real life is incredibly subtle, full of light and shade.

And the trouble about these political plays...and when you actually think of them, how many do you remember that have actually lasted? Essentially political plays...which is fine if you want to be ephemeral, if you want to be of your time, you do it, but I don't want to sit there and be told by an arrogant playwright this is the way I should think about the world.

Ramona Koval: Julian, political theatre can come in many hues, but does a play have to be branded as political to be political?

Julian Meyrick: I was thinking of The Marriage of Figaro really and thinking about how startlingly unfair the action of that drama is and yet how much fun it is and how much unfairness is part of its fun. But, listen, I do know what Louis is talking about and I actually think that probably so do most of the playwrights that Hilary talks about in her book. The project of the book is different from the project of the playwrights. The project of the book I think is very much concerned with showing how dramatic production, at least the writing of drama, is a serious intellectual exercise, and I thought today it has a sort of pipe-smoking, mutton-chop feel to it that makes you think, yes, this is all jolly serious and we really must take it seriously. I think when the playwrights are quoted in the book they're often more 'artisanal' in their approach.

But let me just share with you my thoughts about political theatre which is that at least as far as the 20th century is concerned, political plays were targeted usually at censored or repressed societies, and therefore the drama that came from them, originally in agitprop but later in mid century Brechtian drama, was very much centred around information.

Ramona Koval: So there's a dangerousness of the performance anyway.

Julian Meyrick: Well, originally it was about the fact that people don't have the information, they need the information, what's the quickest way of getting them the information...

Ramona Koval: And not a pamphlet.

Julian Meyrick: Not a pamphlet, go out and do it on your soapbox or whatever it is. And I think that that was probably true generally up until the end of censorship in 1969, but nobody can really say anymore that absence of information is a problem for a contemporary audience.

Ramona Koval: So they can get that information from somewhere else.

Julian Meyrick: Well, yes, from reports or the Google. So that leaves the project of political theatre in the last 20 or 30 years in a very different position than the one that it's had for the majority of the last 100 years.

Ramona Koval: Louis Nowra, you're critical of some of the positive reception that these works receive by reviewers, despite having written what you describe as 'bad plays'. You single out Hannie Rayson's play Two Brothers as an example of this. Why have they got positive receptions then?

Louis Nowra: You have to understand that most reviewers are the same middle class, left-leaning people as the playwright and most of the audience. I spent a bit of time on Two Brothers by Hannie Rayson. One, it is a bad play, it is the binary opposites; evil conservative brother, nice leftwing brother. The interesting aspect about this is Andrew Bolt of The Herald Sun, who is permanently hyperventilating about issues, went after Hannie Rayson, not only the play but I thought he went after her, which was very, very unkind, but the interesting aspect for me is all these political playwrights have actually talked about how they're under siege and how they're criticised and everything, but they've actually had an incredibly good run from the reviewers.

I actually quote John McCallum who's written reviews for The Australian for 20 or 30 years, and in a recent review he says about the Cronulla riots, 'It doesn't work terribly well. I saw the play myself, it was a terrible play. But that's sort of okay because the issues are important.' And you think, I am not going to pay $40 to go and see a bad play because the issues are important. These playwrights have never been criticised and tackled on this issue, and when they have been there's a lot of hissy fits, and the trouble is a bad journalist like Andrew Bolt was attracted to a bad play. But it just showed how infrequently these playwrights' view of the world is criticised.

Ramona Koval: And you ask the question about whether you have to write about social and political issues to be accepted as a bona fide Australian playwright. So what do you think?

Louis Nowra: Look, these are wonderful playwrights, I know some of them personally myself, they're decent, well-intentioned and everything, and you do look at all the names, and you read out the names and everything, and you think, well, yes, do you have to be a political playwright to be accepted as a respectable, important playwright in Australia? And again, this is a personal aspect, I am drawing towards...

Ramona Koval: Well, presumably the audience want to go to these plays...

Louis Nowra: Do they?

Ramona Koval: I don't know. Is this not the reason why play companies put them on, Julian?

Julian Meyrick: We do all sorts of plays. Having sat at the programming table at the MTC year after year, it's not quite one of each but it's not far from it...

Ramona Koval: One of each of what?

Julian Meyrick: Well, in terms of genre and style and approach. I mean, you go to a restaurant, you eat different things, it's the same with going to the theatre. You expect diversity and political plays is one of the things that plays can do.

Ramona Koval: But these kind of political plays, they go down well?

Julian Meyrick: If they're well done. I think the point, and perhaps it's Louis' point, maybe it's even my point, is that drama is a kind of an art of competence first and an art of content second.

Ramona Koval: How do you mean? It has to look like a play and behave like a play?

Julian Meyrick: Yes, it has to work as a play if it's to work as a political play.

Ramona Koval: But Louis says that some bad political plays get ticks because of the content.

Julian Meyrick: Well, I'm not so sure about that. That's an impression about Australian reviewing, it's not something that I'm particularly aware of. I think you could extend the case and go, well, most Australian drama gets a kind of soft approach really because there's so little of it in the mainstream repertoire.

Ramona Koval: Do you think that playwrights are nervous about writing political theatre, Julian?

Julian Meyrick: I think there's an interesting question of conformity there. Louis says (and I think with some justice) that certain things are on the agenda and certain things are off, and he also says that Australia is a profoundly conformist society and I have to say that is my experience too, it is. So your problem comes with addressing things that are not part of the accepted political discourse.

Ramona Koval: All right. Let's do a thought experiment. Louis, tell me what kind of play you'd like to see...maybe you wouldn't like to see any political play, but a balanced kind of political play. What would the subject matter be?

Louis Nowra: I'm not against political theatre, I'm just against what it can do, what are the possibilities of political theatre, and the trouble is most of it is agitprop. And there are very, very few good plays that I can actually say, and this is the only criterion really, is whether they've stood the test of time, and I can hardly think...now, the most popular in Elizabethan theatre was a play by Thomas Middleton called A Game of Chance and eventually it was banned. It was very, very popular and very, very political. You try to read it now and it's an allegorical mess because you don't pick up the references of the time and everything.

So they're actually extremely hard to write, political plays where the complexity of human emotions, the complexity of why people do things...I'll give you an example, there is a political undertone to Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth about corruption in the south and everything. But he makes sure it comes through the emotional arc of the characters, that in fact it's not the issue driving it, it's the characters who are actually driving this particular subtext issue. That's really interesting to me because you get to know the people.

To me, the most popular political play that's ever happened in Australia that's changed people's view about other people was Wogs Out of Work. It was an entertainment. These people took the word 'wog' and made it cool, they made it hip, and they had people who had never been to theatre come to the theatre, roar with laughter, self-recognition and everything. You think, yes, that was a piece of political theatre and it changed people through humour and through self-mockery, and as I say in the article, there's a lesson in this.

Ramona Koval: Well, that article will be out tomorrow in The Australian's Literary Review. Louis Nowra, thank you so much for joining us on The Book Show.

Louis Nowra: Pleasure.

Ramona Koval: And Julian Meyrick, thank you.

Julian Meyrick: Pleasure.

Ramona Koval: Louis is a playwright, screenwriter, librettist, novelist, memoirist, and that review of Hilary Glow's book Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda comes out tomorrow. And Julian Meyrick is a post-doctoral Fellow at La Trobe University and formally director and literary advisor to the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Guests

Louis Nowra
playwright, screenwriter, librettist, novelist and memoirist.

Julian Meyrick
Post-doctoral fellow in La Trobe University's theatre and drama program and former associate director at the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Further Information

Australian Literary Review
Louis Nowra reviews Hilary Glow's book Power Plays in the July issue of the ALR.

Presenter

Ramona Koval

Producer

Sarah L'Estrange