Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda, Hilary Glow Sydney: Currency Press, 2007, PB, RRP $32.95 ISBN: 978-0-86819-815-6 website
'We don't want our artists to be lecturing us about what's wrong with the world. We want to be transported to another world' – Franklin, in Stephen Sewell's 2006 play, It Just Stopped.
As Australians wait for a Federal election, Hilary Glow's book is
timely evidence that what is wrong with the world is what politicians
would have us believe. Controlling agendas is what they do — assisted
by battalions of media advisers, 'in the wings' as it were, the doctors
of dishonesty, the specialists of spin. But there are 'countervailing
voices' out there that will not be so easily silenced.
Somewhere in the chatter, phrases such as 'core Australian values', 'a
nation united', 'the stolen generation', 'children overboard', 'the
Pacific solution', 'protecting our borders' and 'refugees' are bandied
around. Not to mention 'the war on terror'.
Should we be afraid? Well, not so much of 'these people' (John Howard's
dismissive term for asylum-seekers and refugees in general; also the
title of Ben Ellis's play written in 2003) as of those who would argue
we need protection. And they want to decide the degree. 'We're from the
government and we're here to help.' But who, exactly?
In Power Plays: Australian Theatre and the Public Agenda,
Hilary Glow examines contemporary writers whose work in the past decade
or so has been staged by mainstream companies like Melbourne Theatre
Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Sydney Theatre
Company, Queensland Theatre Company, and Black Swan Theatre of West
Australia. The writers are Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Reg
Cribb, Ben Ellis, Wesley Enoch, Hannie Rayson, Stephen Sewell and
Katherine Thomson. But others, including film makers, find a place in
the discussion as well.
While the plays are about power and its abuse, the book's particular
focus is the ends to which characters will go — on both sides of the
argument — in wielding the power they have. As always, the stated
purpose is rarely the real agenda. It will be no surprise then, for any
lover of theatre, and even those who get their news (and too often
their opinions) from TV and newspapers alone, that John Howard and his
cohort cop most of the flak.
It's no accident that the last dozen or so years have seen Australian
playwrights, both indigenous and white, re-emerging, no longer confined
to theatre on the fringes, but now the mainstream. That development is
significant.
Each writer wrestles with the issues seen as crucial to