Making room for modernism: The 1979 Sydney Theatre Company production of Patrick White's a cheery soul

Export | Feedback | Print
Resource Text: Article
Title Making room for modernism: The 1979 Sydney Theatre Company production of Patrick White's a cheery soul
Creator Contributors
Abstract/Description The question for theatre-makers is: how to make the stage new? How can theatre escape what is already given? 'The painter does not paint on an empty canvas', write Deleuze and Guattari, 'and neither does the writer write on a blank page; but the page or canvas is already so covered with preexisting, preestablished clich s that it is first necessary to erase, to clean, to flatten, even to shred, so as to let in a breath of air from the chaos that brings us the vision'. We might say that the stage, too, no less than the canvas and the page, is full of cliches, pre-established rhythms of characterisation and plotting, in dialogue and gesture, setting and design, which crowd on to every stage and ghost every performance.
Related Events
  • A Cheery Soul, Drama Theatre (Sydney Opera House), Sydney, NSW, 17 January 1979
Related Contributors
Source Australasian Drama Studies, ADSA, VIC
Issue 71
Page 89-111
Date Issued 2017
Language English
ISSN 0810-4123
Citation Andrew Fuhrmann, Making room for modernism: The 1979 Sydney Theatre Company production of Patrick White's a cheery soul , Australasian Drama Studies, 71, 2017, 89-111
Resource Identifier 68769