Juanita McCallum walked into a second-hand bookshop and asked for a copy of Wild Card. As she often did, she read it, filled the margins with handwritten notes, before giving it to me on my birthday. She was born in the 1930s and, like Hewett, grew up in sheep and wheat country, but that is where the similarities end. This book owes her a lot, thank you.
Iâd especially like to thank Piri Eddy, Emma Maguire, Grace Chipperfield, Melanie Pryor, Lauren Butterworth, and Alicia Carter who read and provided feedback during the post-PhD stage of this project, and Professor Emerita Julie Holledge who gave me the nudge to approach the Australian Playwrights Series.
To Aarne Neeme, Aubrey Mellor, Richard Roberts, Wesley Enoch, Shaun Gurton, and Rodney Fisher, your generosity and insight into your productions has been invaluable.
My thanks to Rob Lines, David Hobbs, Deanne Barrett, Bob White, Ciara Rawnsley at the University of Western Australia, Judith Seeff at Sydney Theatre Company, Rosie Shepherdson-Cullen and Jacqueline Bartlett at Melbourne Theatre Company, Xu Yang Chua at Belvoir, and Denis Del Favero, David Parker, Heidrun Lohr and Jeff Busby for hunting down production photographs and the permission to use their images.
A big thank you to Jenny Fewster for sorting through the AusStage data.
Special thanks to Natalie Stewart and Sophie Fosdick-McGrath at HLA Management, and to the Dorothy Hewett estate for their assistance with manuscripts and other materials.
To the team of librarians at Flinders University, the University of Adelaide, the State Library of South Australia, NIDA Archives and the National Library of Australia, your knowledge of each collection helped to navigate my way through the shelves and archives.
Iâd also like to thank series editor Associate Professor Jonathan Bollen who has been a source of encouragement and offered keen insight throughout the process of preparing this book.
This book was supported through the ADSA Publication Subsidy Scheme, so thanks to my colleagues in Australasian Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies.