Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White: Governing Culture

By Denise Varney and Sandra D'Urso

‘Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White’ details the rejection of two Patrick White plays by the Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in the early 1960s. In 1961 the board of governors rejected a proposal to include the world premiere of White’s first major play ‘The Ham Funeral’ for the 1962 festival. In 1963 it rejected a proposal to premiere a subsequent play ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ for the 1964 festival. These two rejections were taken up in the press where the former was referred to as the ‘affaire “Ham Funeral”’ and the latter was greeted as ‘here we go again’. ‘Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White’ documents the scandal that followed the board’s rejections of White’s plays, especially as it acted against the advice of its own drama committee and artistic director on both occasions.

Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso analyze the two events by drawing on the performative behaviour of the board of governors to focus on the question of governance. They shed new light on the cultural politics that surrounded the rejections, arguing that it represents an instance of executive governance of cultural production, in this case theatre and performance. The governing body was a self-appointed private board comprising wealthy men, who were representative of an Adelaide establishment made up of business, farming, newspaper and military interests.

The central argument of ‘Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White’ is that aesthetic modernism in theatre and drama struggled to achieve visibility and acceptability, and was perceived as a threat to the norms and values of early to mid-twentieth-century Australia. The authors argue that when modern drama entered the stage, its preference for aesthetic experimentation over commercial considerations challenged regimes of value based on the popular appeal of musicals, touring productions and overseas imports. The resistance to that prevailing theatre culture and the provocation of Patrick White’s plays provide a prime example of Australia in transition between its colonial heritage and modern future. The 1960s set the scene for the confrontation between modernist experimentation and arts governance, and between aesthetic and commercial values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781783088379

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Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White

Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance

Anthem Studies in Theatre and Performance takes a broad, global approach to cultural analysis to examine and critique a wide range of performative acts from the most traditional forms of theatre studies (music, theatre and dance) to more popular, less structured forms of cultural performance. The twenty-first century in particular has seen theatre and performance studies become a major perspective for examining, understanding and critiquing contemporary culture and its historical roots. In addition to traditional theatre studies, then, the series takes as its subject international folk performances, minstrel and music hall shows, vaudeville, burlesque, ballroom dance, rock concerts, professional wrestling, football and soccer matches, snake charming, American snake-handling religions, shamanism, street protests, Nascar or Formula 1 races, tractor pulls, fortune telling, circuses, techno-mobbing, the gestures of painting and writing, and even the performance that denies itself, that pretends that it is not play(ing). Performance is thus a vital manifestation of culture that is enacted, a form to be experienced, recorded, analysed and theorized. It is among the most useful and dynamic focus for the global study of culture.

Series Editor

S. E. Gontarski – Florida State University, USA

Editorial Board

Alan Ackerman – University of Toronto, Canada

Herbert Blau – University of Washington, USA

Enoch Brater – University of Michigan, USA

Annamaria Cascetta – Università Cattolica, Milan, Italy

Robson Corrêa de Camargo – Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil

Stephen A. Di Benedetto – University of Miami, USA

Christopher Innes – York University, Canada

Anna McMullan – University of Reading, UK

Martin Puchner – Harvard University, USA

Kris Salata – Florida State University, USA

W. B. Worthen – Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White

Governing Culture

Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2018

by ANTHEM PRESS

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or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

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Copyright © Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso 2018

The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-835-5 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78308-835-4 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1.The Archive, Governance and Sovereignty

2.‘Words Fail Me’: The Ham Funeral and the 1962 Adelaide Festival

3.Night on Bald Mountain and the 1964 Adelaide Festival

4.The ‘Clowns’ Who ‘Cling to the Past’: A Sovereign Decision and the Practice of Exclusion

5.The Sovereignty of the Plays and Opportunities for New Publics

Index

Illustrations

0.1Amanda Muggleton as Alma Lusty in Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral, directed by Adam Cook. Adelaide Festival of Arts, State Theatre Company of South Australia, 2012. Photo: Shane Reid

0.2Julie Forsyth as Miss Quodling in Patrick White’s Night on Bald Mountain, directed by Matthew Lutton. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, 2014. Photo: Pia Johnson

1.1Letter from Charles Wicks to Patrick White. 24 April 1961. Courtesy of State Records of South Australia

2.1Program Cover. The Ham Funeral, World Premiere Season, produced by the Adelaide University Theatre Guild at the university’s Union Hall, 15–25 November 1961. Courtesy of the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide

2.2Ephemera. List of Borrowers of The Ham Funeral. Adelaide Festival Correspondence, 1959–1962. Courtesy of State Records of South Australia

2.3Geoff Revell and Jacqy Phillips as the Two Ladies in State Theatre Company of South Australia’s 2012 production of The Ham Funeral. Photo: Shane Reid

2.4Letter from Patrick White to Charles Wicks, 26 April 1961. Courtesy of State Records of South Australia

3.1Program Cover for World Premiere of Night on Bald Mountain by Patrick White, 1964. Courtesy Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide

3.2Nita Pannell as Miss Quodling in Night on Bald Mountain by Patrick White, 1964. Guild Theatre at Union Hall, University of Adelaide. Photo: Sheridan Photography

3.3Alexander Archdale as Hugo Sword, Barbara West as Stella and Joan Bruce as Miriam in Night on Bald Mountain by Patrick White, 1964. Guild Theatre at Union Hall, University of Adelaide. Photo: Sheridan Photography

3.4Letter from Harry Medlin to Stefan Haag. 31 January 1963. Courtesy of the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide

3.5Poster for World Premiere of Night on Bald Mountain by Patrick White, 1964. Courtesy of the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide

4.1Cartoon by Pep, 16 December 1961. The Bulletin. Courtesy of Bauer Media Pty. Ltd./The Bulletin

Acknowledgements

Research for this book was made possible through the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Scheme. The book would not have been possible without the funding to visit the archives that we draw on so extensively in this book. We have been fortunate to be able to work with many archivists and library staff, who have provided invaluable assistance with the research. We are especially grateful to staff at the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne, the Barr Smith Library at the University of South Australia, the State Library of South Australia (State Records Section), the Adelaide Festival Archive and the National Library of Australia. Librarian Andrew Cook at the Barr Smith Library has been a constant source of information for the project and has been incredibly helpful and supportive. His information about Beryl Sheasby, former board member and secretary of the University of Adelaide’s Guild Theatre and correspondent with Patrick White, led us to an amazing array of sources. In 2010, Sheasby donated her collection of archival materials that became the Patrick White Collection at the Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide. This collection sheds new light on the important and often little recognized work of academic and professional staff involved with making of theatre on university campuses and their contribution to the development of modern Australian drama.

We especially thank Philippa Moylan for her impeccable editing support. Her enthusiasm and excellent humour helped get us over the line especially with the archival notes. We are immensely grateful to the Adelaide Festival for permission to reproduce images from its holdings in the State Records of South Australia and to photographers Pia Johnson and Shane Reid for providing images of recent productions of Patrick White’s plays.

Finally, we thank our colleagues in the Australia Centre in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, particularly Ken Gelder and Amanda Morris. And our family and friends.

INTRODUCTION

In March 2012, the Adelaide Festival of Arts staged an exuberant steampunk version of Patrick White’s comic play The Ham Funeral, originally written in London in 1947 and first performed in Adelaide in 1961. The 2012 production celebrated the centenary of the writer’s birth and marked 50 years since the Board of Governors of the 1962 Adelaide Festival had refused to stage the play’s world premiere. Amid claims of philistinism, paternalism and amateurism, the Board had determined that the play’s unsavoury themes, modernist form and poor box-officeoutlook made it unsuitable for a festival production. In recognition of the troubled history between the Adelaide Festival and White, 2012 Artistic Director Paul Grabowsky announced that the new production, directed by Adam Cook, would pay ‘tribute to our Nobel Laureate’ and finally see ‘unfinished business finished’.¹ The Festival production, presented by the State Theatre Company of South Australia, made amends with a dazzling interpretation that drew out the flamboyant theatricality, humour and pathos of the play (Figure 0.1).

Figure 0.1 Amanda Muggleton as Alma Lusty in Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral , directed by Adam Cook. Adelaide Festival of Arts, State Theatre Company of South Australia, 2012.

Photo: Shane Reid.

In May 2014, Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre staged White’s ambitious and challenging modernist drama, Night on Bald Mountain, written between 1963 and 1964. As was the case with The Ham Funeral two years earlier, the world premiere of Night on Bald Mountain was rejected by the Board of Governors for the 1964 Adelaide Festival and took place instead at the University of Adelaide’s Union Hall theatre. At the Malthouse Theatre 50 years later, director Matthew Lutton’s production earned high praise for its ‘truthful and scrupulously faithful version that gathers immense power as it unfolds’.² The 2014 revival introduced contemporary audiences and critics to a little-known play whose complexity and startling symbolic imagery and language were brought to life by the creative team, who drew out the modernist aesthetic from the play’s naturalist veneer. The combined effect of satire and symbolism was a masterful realization of the nascent brilliance of White’s writing for theatre (Figure 0.2).

Figure 0.2 Julie Forsyth as Miss Quodling in Patrick White’s Night on Bald Mountain , directed by Matthew Lutton. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, 2014.

Photo: Pia Johnson.

These two recent productions followed the stylish Sydney Theatre Company production of White’s second play, The Season at Sarsaparilla (first performed in 1962) in 2007.³ Director Benedict Andrews made extensive use of live streaming video cameras and screens to reinterpret the text by means of contemporary intermedial theatre. This mode of theatre crosses the conventional boundaries separating live theatre from film in an attempt, as Christopher Balme puts it, ‘to realise in one medium the aesthetic conventions and/or patterns of seeing and hearing in another medium’.⁴

Developments in theatre technology and performance practice undoubtedly contributed to these provocative and thrilling stage interpretations that capture White’s theatrical imagination and social commentary as never before. They have initiated a re-engagement and re-evaluation of White as a major Australian playwright whose body of dramatic work extends to eight full-length plays written and produced in two periods: the early 1960s and between the late 1970s and mid-1980s. They are published in two volumes by Currency Press Australia.⁵ With more than 28 productions to date, the majority focusing on the early plays, the early controversies have much to teach us about the emergence of modern Australian theatre and drama.

In this book, we return to the Adelaide Festival of Arts, The Ham Funeral and Night on Bald Mountain to understand what happened, and why, and to ask if it could happen again. With hindsight, it becomes apparent that the events and controversies were indicative of a dynamic period of cultural production that enveloped and nourished the Adelaide Festival even as it resisted the plays it attracted. For theatre, this would lead to a greater acceptance of Australian-authored drama and the different audiences it attracted. We examine the controversies by reading previously untapped sources that not only mark out the scene of conflict but also reveal the emotional, reputational and artistic toll on the people involved. One of our driving interests in the book is to provide an account of the relationship between artists and the powers that be – civic authorities, senior management and producers – that continues to this day. For this purpose, we use the Foucauldian terms governmentality and biopower to trace the ways in which theatrical bodies – writers, directors, actors – are regulated by the authorities. We also look to Carl Schmitt’s writings on sovereignty to theorize the unquestioned authority and power of the Board of Governors in 1961 and 1963, and the decision-making practices in the early years of the Adelaide Festival. Embedded in these events there is a further history, that of public–private funding for the arts, the push for merit-based peer review and the role of independent theatre. Above all, the book considers The Ham Funeral and Night on Bald Mountain as two case studies at the heart of which is the greater presence of modernism on the Australian stage.

Our major theme is the idea of governing culture as it relates to the early years of the Adelaide Festival. The subtitle inadvertently but happily, echoes an earlier book Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities of Government (1998), which takes a Foucauldian approach to understanding the rationality of political governance in modern Australia.⁶ Our focus on governing culture grows out of our analysis of the rejections of White’s plays in the early 1960s. Drawing on Michel Foucault, we analyse how the Governors of the Adelaide Festival effectively governed culture – in this case, the theatre – in an effort to regulate the moral values and way of life of a populace against the threats perceived to be embedded in modernist art.⁷ Built into the Board’s operational rationality was a hierarchical approach to the arts that allowed authority figures to determine which works of art were to be included or excluded on the basis of moral worthiness, coupled with adherence to recognized generic forms and associated popular box-office appeal. In basing our study on Foucault’s writing on governance and governmentality, we make connections between Adelaide in the early 1960s and broader understandings of the rationality of government and the governance of the arts in the modern era.

Turning to White’s theatre, we argue that the specificity of the plays elevated the potential for conflict between a conservative Establishment and modernist progressives. As a body of work, White’s plays are notable for their illuminations of contemporary social and community life, urbanization, religion, sexuality and the environment – in short, the continuing force of modernity and its impact on people, culture and place. The aesthetic style of the plays is compared to the Theatre of the Absurd.⁸ But they were also, for their time, astonishingly innovative representations of modern Australian language,