{"id":264,"date":"2018-07-02T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T00:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imaginedtheatres.dustysheldon.com\/?post_type=issue&p=264"},"modified":"2018-08-02T05:58:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T05:58:40","slug":"australia","status":"publish","type":"issue","link":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hauntings, Veneers, and Irreverence: Imagined Theatres in Australia<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2026 the veneer of civilised societies is very thin, a fragile thing that once broken brings forth monsters. (Flanagan: 2018)<\/p>\n

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Australia is haunted land. It is haunted by its inability to come to terms with its colonial history and by its continual refusal to acknowledge the place and significance of the First Nations Peoples. It is haunted by the spectre of climate change and the complicity of its corporations in obfuscating this reality. It is haunted by the monstrous apparatus that incarcerates refugees and asylum seekers in far-away locations \u2013 out of sight, in what Giorgio Agamben argues are \u2018states of exception\u2019 (2000: 40). It is also haunted, as are many \u2018advanced\u2019 societies, by a consumerist culture that that celebrates individualism over the collective. So, in this context then, the arts, as a space in which resistance emerges and alternative ideas are proffered, are vital. The arts, broadly speaking, are the conscience of the nation at a time when this nation, at least, desperately needs one. They refuse to be complicit and seek to open up landscapes of possibility: imagining alternatives to the status quo.<\/p>\n

Whilst they offer sites of resistance, they do this in the Australian context with a particular timbre. There is something peculiar perhaps, about the ways in which artists in this country engage with and respond to the political context they find themselves in. This is characteristic of all art forms but is particularly evident in the context of live art \u2013 theatre, performance, and comedy. There is a sense of irreverence for the proprieties of conservative culture \u2013 a desire that may perhaps reflect a national subconscious \u2013 to undermine, to laugh, and to play with seriousness. This in itself is a key element of the refusal of complicity.<\/p>\n

The striking thing about the collection of voices represented here, is the depth of their capacity to participate in this process of re-imagining: nation, land, people, ecology, being, and politics and to do so with thought, care and at times a smattering of the absurd.<\/p>\n

The contributions to Imagined Theatres: Australia<\/em> represent a diversity of theatre forms that reflect the breadth of activity being undertaken across the nation. They demonstrate that the idea of an Australian theatre is always evolving and therefore incomplete. Historically and up until the present day there has been a resistance to the idea of a single national theatre culture. Theatre is dispersed, and it has always intervened from a range of vantage points in the diversity of the nation \u2013 responding to stimuli from culture, politics and society. Given the size of the country and the vast distances between sites \u2013 the kinds of theatre work being developed include both the intensely local and also work that responds to and engages with global concerns.<\/p>\n

Responding to the structure of this project, where one text is in dialogue with a Gloss, is a very interesting experience for Australian theatre, where the question of arts criticism and its place in the performing arts has an ambivalent history. Current responses notwithstanding, and with the valiant exception of RealTime<\/em> (rest in peace), there is a strong history of resisting the critical paradigm in the arts. This has been exacerbated with the demise of mainstream arts journalism. The rise of new critical models such as this site and that of Witness Performance<\/em>\u00a0 (https:\/\/witnessperformance.com\/<\/a>), amongst others, are heartening and play a crucial role in both revitalising the discourse and in opening up new ways of thinking about and responding to the arts.<\/p>\n

We have really enjoyed assembling this provocative, witty, and significant collection of responses to an imagined theatre and we hope that it will give you, as readers, as much joy as it gave us, as Editors, during the construction and curatorial phases. We thank all of our contributors for their enthusiasm, care, and unbridled creativity.<\/p>\n

Peter, Helena, and Nicola.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Giorgio Agamben.\u00a0Means Without End: Notes on Politics. <\/em> Translated by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000.<\/p>\n

Richard Flanagan. “Our politics is a dreadful black comedy.” T<\/em>he Guardian<\/em>, 18 April, 2018.\u00a0https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2018\/apr\/18\/richard-flanagan-national-press-club-speech-full-politics-black-comedy<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia is haunted land \u2013 it is haunted by colonialism, by climate change, by refugee crises, and by crises of collective will. The pieces in this issue offer sites of resistance, with a particular sense of irreverence for the proprieties of conservative culture \u2013 a desire that may reflect a national subconscious \u2013 to undermine, to laugh, and to play with seriousness. Edited by Peter Eckersall, Helena Grehan, and Nicola Gunn.","protected":false},"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/issues\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/issues"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}