I am delighted to introduce Volume 18 of the revised Australian Playwrights Series now identified through its extended title of Australian Drama, Theatre and Performance. The Australian Playwrights Series published its first monograph, Veronica Kellyâs study of playwright Louis Nowra, under the banner of Rodopi Press Amsterdam, in 1987. Volume 8, published in 2000, saw Peta Tait edit Body Show/s: Australian Viewings of Live Performance, marking the expanded field of studies in performance and spectatorship. I pay tribute here to both Veronica Kelly and Peta Tait as former editors of this important international outlet for Australian scholarly research.
The revised series with Brill aims to contribute to the interpretation, critical analysis, promotion, and wider understanding of Australian drama, theatre and performance in the international field. Yet the key feature of the series remains central â each monograph has offered an in-depth study aimed at furthering our knowledge of Australian theatre and performance. Richard Murphetâs monograph is a fine example of this tradition. Acts of Resistance: Writing and Directing in Late Modernist Theatre offers a close, in depth and comparative study of three writers and directors. Its viewpoint is that of the theatre artist and the complex intuitive and collaborative processes that bring a work into being. The artists are Australians Jenny Kemp and Richard Murphet, and American Richard Foreman. Each of these artists, according to Murphetâs compelling argument, shares a late modernist framework that continues the resistant stance of artists against tradition, here dramatic realism and the subordination of theatre to text, while offering a deep insight into how the works work as theatre. This new volume offers an in-depth study of theatre for our times.
Denise Varney
University of Melbourne,
Series Editor