AUSTRALIA IN 50 PLAYS is Julian Meyricks lively and accessible account of the remarkable relationship between our national drama and our national life, examining fifty outstanding plays of diverse content and style that have appeared in the 120 years since Federation. Energetic, entertaining and original, Meyrick shows the key contribution drama has made to the development of modern Australia through its role in the major issues of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the impact of two world wars, the ravages of the Great Depression, the changing role of women, the gradual acknowledgement of First Nations culture, the social liberation of the 1970s, and the economic rationalism of the 1990s. It argues for an expansive idea of nationhood as a key driver of debate in the political, social and cultural challenges that face contemporary Australia, while exploring the surprising links between our drama, our history and our collective life.
Julian Meyrick is a theatre director, historian and cultural policy analyst. He was Associate Director and Literary Adviser at Melbourne Theatre Company, 2002-07, where he established the new play development program, Hard Lines. Currently, he is Strategic Professor of Creative Arts at Flinders University, Artistic Counsel of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, and a member of both Currency House editorial committee and Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Board. He has directed more than forty award-winning theatre productions, and has written for the Conversation, Daily Review, InDaily, the Monthly and the Sydney Review of Books. His latest book Australian Theatre after the New Wave was published by Brill last year.
