Event | The Drovers | |||||||
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Venue | Willard Hall, Adelaide, SA | |||||||
Umbrella Event | South Australian Catholic Schools Drama Festival | |||||||
First Date | 30 June 1966 | |||||||
Dates Estimated | No | |||||||
Status | Amateur | |||||||
World Premiere | No | |||||||
Description | Life in the bush is hot, hard and not for the faint-hearted. Under the extreme sun of Northern frontier country a pack of itinerant drovers thrive in the land they call home. A freak stampede brings 'Briglow' Bill and his mates face to face with mortality and their masculinity and mateship are tested. All the while, Pidgeon, a young Aboriginal boy, watches the white fellows. He sees something the drovers cannot speak of and, for Briglow, this silence is as stifling yet as familiar and as comforting as the heat that surrounds them all.
The Drovers is a bush drama that is rich with tension, grim stoicism and heightened masculinity of the, notably, all-male characters. Clipped sentences and straight-talking speak of the no-nonsense attitude necessary to survive in the remote bush of the 1920s. The play draws us to the campfire where, in light and heat, we see the relationships the drovers experience: between each other, between white man and Aboriginal man, between man and land and, finally, the ultimate and unavoidable relationship: a man's connection with life and death. PRODUCTION HISTORY The Drovers was first performed by the Pioneer Players at the Playhouse, Melbourne, 3rd December, 1923. It has since been performed throughout Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. In March 1940 The Drovers aired as a radio play produced by ABC Radio. |
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Description Source | Website | |||||||
Primary Genre | Theatre - Spoken Word | |||||||
Secondary Genre |
Drama
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Subjects |
Australians
Masculinity Relationships |
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Text Nationality | Australia | |||||||
Production Nationality | Australia | |||||||
Event Status | Completed | |||||||
Data Source |
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Event Identifier | 112602 | |||||||
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