A Letter from the Past (Part 4)

Yesterday, I was reprimanded by someone for being so slow in getting the next installment of A Letter from the Past. "It's Thursday!" they said.

My apologies to everyone for promising a next installment on Monday and not delivering. It has been a frantic week of interviews, writing, Anzac Day and going to shows.

So, back to my series of extracts from Entertainment Arts in Australia - 1968. The critic.

The status and role of critics is changing and their position within our small community is altering dramatically.

This year's Sydney Writers Festival is having a forum on blogs as well as the changing face of theatre criticism. SAMAG at the Australia Council is having a forum in a week or two about critics as well (but no critics will be speaking??). It's a bit of a hot topic.

Alsion Croggon's Theatre Notes recently had a great discussion about some mainstream theatre criticism that she was brooding over. She took some of them to task for reproducing press release copy in some of their reviews.

But that is now. Let's have a gander at 1968...


The Critics
People agree that a nation gets the theatre it deserves, but there is some quarrel as to whether the theatre gets the critics it deserves, or the critics get the theatre they deserve. Here are some of their opinions, and some opinions on them.


Some people in the theatre comment on criticism:

The history of Australian theatre, unlike the history of European theatre, is simply a history of first nights. Unfortunately, critics think that once they have seen a play, they have done their bit with the play. I think often they should go back and have a second look.
John Tasker, Director

There is a core of them who manage to put things in the right box, and judge them in that box instead of in the context of one whole overall field.
Desmond Digby, Opera Company Director

I think it is pretty outrageous. I think they are far too sure of how they want a play to be done. I also think that there is a general atmosphere of knocking, or if they do praise they take it away with the other hand later on.
Alexander Archdale, Director, Community Theatre

What critics!
Robin Lovejoy, Director, Old Tote Theatre


The critics have their say about the main weaknesses in Australian theatre:

1. We still have a psychological tendency to look overseas for the theatre which is fashionable and famous there
2. There is a lack of playwrights and creative artists
3. We do not have enough actors experienced in the style needed to present the classics, or enough directors with intelligence and imagination to impose their views on the classics as they affect modern society.
Harold Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald

I don't know that we have any basic weaknesses. There is not a very large pool of qualified people to draw on like, say, the National Theatre in England - we're scratching a bit. But I think there has been a great improvement in production in Australia in the last ten or fifteen years.
Geoffrey Hutton, The Age

There are very few interpreters of plays in the country - there are a lot of people who do a workmanlike job on a production. The scripts are often held in much more awe than is necessary. There is [also] a lack of good administration, and the misuse of people.
Catherine Brisbane, The Australian

Well, I think the musicals might die away a bit, and the music perhaps be integrated more generally into productions. Nobody knows what the public wants. If they did, all theatre people would be millionaires.
Howard Palmer, The Sun

I do not see any significant changes or developments in local theatre in the past twelve months or so... Drama as drama is being left almost entirely now to the fringe theatres, the commercial theatre seems to have given drama away almost entirely for light farce.
Norman Kessell, Daily Telegraph


Tomorrow, I will give you a couple of extracts from sections of the book entitled Towards a New Theatre. It looks at the training of actors from the point of view of directors and teachers of theatre.


All extracts above are from:
Entertainment Arts in Australia
Copyright Paul Hamlyn Pty Ktd 1968