Resource | Text: Article | |
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Title | Adelaide Theatre Group | |
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Source | Philip Parsons, Victoria Chance, Companion To Theatre In Australia, Currency Press with Cambridge University Press, Sydney, NSW, 1995 | |
Page | 32-33 | |
Date Issued | 1995 | |
Language | English | |
Citation | Jo Peoples, Adelaide Theatre Group, Companion To Theatre In Australia, 1995, 32-33 | |
Resource Identifier | 59036 |
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Amateur dramatic company, founded in 1946 by Francis Flanagan, Margaret Day, Douglas Calder and Lewis Burgess. Closed 1984. venues 1946-62 various. 1963-1984 Sheridan Theatre. directors 1946-58 Francis Flanagan. 1963-72 Colin Ballantyne. 1980-83 Doug Leonard. first production No Triangle This by Doug Calder, 1946 in Stow Hall. Designer: Jacqueline Hick. Director: Phyllis Orphel. landmark productions The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams, 1964. Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, 1966 Adelaide Festival. Macbird by Barbara Garson, 1968 Adelaide Festival. Pacific Rape by Colin Ballantyne, 1970. Jack the Ripper by Ron Pember and Dennis Di Marne, 1977.
During the decade from 1963 the Adelaide Theatre Group enjoyed high achievement and popularity in the intimate and unconventional Sheridan Theatre in North Adelaide. Experimenting in form and content, it became the wellspring for professional theatre in Adelaide. The group opened in 1946 with a comedy by Douglas Calder, one of its members, although it was established to present plays written or translated from French by South Australians. French theatre was the particular interest of Francis Flanagan, the principal early director and designer.
On 20 July 1960 the Adelaide Theatre Group came to national attention when it presented the premiere of Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year, after its controversial rejection by the Adelaide Festival board. Jean Marshall directed the production. In 1963 the group converted a colonial house in North Adelaide into the Sheridan Theatre. It was intimate and flexible, without fixed seating, and the audience often sat at tables. The group opened at the Sheridan with Trio in Gunshot, three one-act plays written for the occasion by Colin Ballantyne, who became the major director at that time. The group's repertoire was solidly advanced, if not avant-garde: new English, American and European plays and some Australian works.
The 1960s were the group's most fruitful period and by 1980 it had largely dispersed. Doug Leonard attempted to revive it over the next three years with productions of Shakespeare and other classics, but problems associated with the Sheridan Theatre defeated him and the Adelaide Theatre Group ceased to exist in 1984. Well-known actors who worked for it included Ron Haddrick, Alexander Hay and Edwin Hodgeman. In the early days leading local painters such as Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz, Doug Roberts and Jeffrey Smart designed the sets.