The Ham Funeral
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The Ham Funeral
''The Ham Funeral'' is a play by Australian writer Patrick White. It was written in 1948 and is loosely based on a painting by William Dobell, ''The Dead Landlord''. Plot The play is set in a filthy rooming house in the depressing context of post-war London, and has as its protagonist a young poet whose attempted seduction by the aptly named Mrs Lusty, his landlady, drives the tragicomic drama. The 'ham funeral' of the title is the feast to mourn the sudden death of Mrs Lusty's husband, held in Act 2. Performances ''The Ham Funeral'' was submitted for and controversially rejected by the 1962 Adelaide Festival. It was instead performed by the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild in November 1961. Major revivals include productions by Sydney Theatre Company in 1989, Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre in 2005, Sydney's Belvoir in 2000, and the State Theatre Company of South Australia and Adelaide Festival in 2012. Reception Australia's New Theatre company described the play as "one ...
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Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and stream of consciousness techniques. In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature", as it says in the Swedish Academy's citation, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize.J. M. Coetzee won the award in 2003 as a South African citizen, before he became an Australian citizen in 2006. White was also the inaugural recipient of the Miles Franklin Award. Childhood and adolescence White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to Victor Martindale White and Ruth (née Withycombe), both Australians, in their apartment overlooking Hyde Park, London on 28 May 1912. His family returned to Sydney, Aust ...
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William Dobell
Sir William Dobell (24 September 189913 May 1970) was an Australian portrait and landscape artist of the 20th century. Dobell won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on three occasions. The Dobell Prize is named in his honour. Career Dobell was born in Cooks Hill, a working-class neighbourhood of Newcastle, New South Wales in Australia to Robert Way Dobell and Margaret Emma (née Wrightson). His father was a builder and there were six children. Dobell's artistic talents were evident early. In 1916, he was apprenticed to Newcastle architect, Wallace L. Porter and in 1924 he moved to Sydney as a draftsman. In 1925, he enrolled in evening art classes at the Sydney Art School (which later became the Julian Ashton Art School), with Henry Gibbons as his teacher. He was influenced by George Washington Lambert. He was also gay and consequently never married, while several of his works carried strong homoerotic overtones. In 1929, Dobell was awarded th ...
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Adelaide Festival
The Adelaide Festival of Arts, also known as the Adelaide Festival, an arts festival, takes place in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in March each year. Started in 1960, it is a major celebration of the arts and a significant cultural event in Australia. The festival is based chiefly in the city centre and its parklands, with some venues in the inner suburbs (such as the Odeon Theatre, Norwood) or occasionally further afield. The Adelaide Festival Centre and River Torrens usually form the nucleus of the event, and in the 21st century Elder Park has played host to opening ceremonies. It comprises many events, usually including opera, theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, cabaret, literature, visual art and new media. The four-day world-music event, WOMADelaide, and the literary festival, Adelaide Writers' Week, form part of the Festival. The festival originally operated biennially, along with the (initially unofficial) Adelaide Fringe; the Fringe has ta ...
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University Of Adelaide Theatre Guild
The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild is a South Australian not-for-profit amateur theatre companyHibberd, M, 2012, About the Theatre Guild, http://www.adelaide.edu.au/theatreguild/about/ based on the North Terrace campus of the University of Adelaide. Established in 1938, the Guild is formally recognised as a society associated with the University, as well as being recognised as a club within its Clubs Association. It is one of Australia's longest running amateur theatre companies. History The Theatre Guild formed in 1938 alongside a number of local Australian theatre groups aiming to develop intellectual and experimental theatre, and in particular Australian theatre.Round, K, 1999, ''As Many Lives As A Cat? The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild, 1938-1998''. Openbook Publishers, p12. . In the context of acclaimed international university theatre groups, including the Dramatic Societies at Oxford and Cambridge, its academic founders believed that universities "had a r ...
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Sydney Theatre Company
Sydney Theatre Company (STC) is an Australian theatre company based in Sydney, New South Wales. The company performs in The Wharf Theatre at Dawes Point in The Rocks area of Sydney, as well as the Roslyn Packer Theatre (formerly Sydney Theatre) and the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. History Sydney Theatre Company was formed in December 1978, following the closure of The Old Tote Theatre Company the month before. The then Premier, Neville Wran, approached Elizabeth Butcher, who had been seconded from the National Institute of Dramatic Art to administer the Old Tote, and asked her to set up a new state theatre company, to perform in the Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House. Butcher established its legal identity and managerial structure, and proposed the name, Sydney Theatre Company. With John Clark (Director of NIDA) as the Artistic Adviser of the first season, five theatre companies were invited to produce six plays to be presented by STC as the 1979 Interim Season ...
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Malthouse Theatre
Malthouse Theatre is the resident theatre company of The Malthouse building in Southbank, part of the Melbourne Arts Precinct. In the 1980s it was known as the Playbox Theatre Company and was housed in the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne's CBD. A multidisciplinary contemporary theatre, Malthouse Theatre produces and/or presents many productions annually, from drama and comedy to contemporary opera, music theatre and cabaret, to contemporary dance and physical theatre. The Company regularly co-produces with local and national performing arts companies and tours nationally and internationally. Malthouse Theatre productions have been performed internationally includingthe ''Solaris'', a new play by David Greig adapted from Stanisław Lem’s novel at The Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, in 2019 and and ''Picnic at Hanging Rock'', in 2018 adapted by Tom Wright and directed by Matthew Lutton at the Barbican Centre in London. Nationally touring works include th production ''W ...
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Belvoir (theatre Company)
Belvoir is an Australian theatre company based at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney, Australia, originally known as Company B. Since 2016 and its artistic director is Eamon Flack. The theatre contains a 330-seat Upstairs Theatre and a 80-seat Downstairs Theatre. The Belvoir company receives government support for its activities from the federal government through the Major Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts and the state government through Create NSW. Many Australian actors who have later found wider success both locally and internationally such as Deborah Mailman, Cate Blanchett, Jacqueline McKenzie, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Toby Schmitz, Judy Davis and Brendan Cowell have appeared in Belvoir productions. History Theatre The theatre, converted from a former tomato sauce factory, opened in 1974 as the Nimrod Theatre for the Nimrod Theatre Company. The first production at the theatre was rock musical ''The Bacchoi''. It was renamed as "'Belvoir ...
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State Theatre Company Of South Australia
The State Theatre Company of South Australia (STCSA), branded State Theatre Company South Australia, formerly the South Australian Theatre Company (SATC), is South Australia's leading professional theatre company, and a statutory corporation. It was established as the official state theatre company by the ''State Theatre Company of South Australia Act 1972'', on the initiative of Premier Don Dunstan. Many of the performances are staged at the Dunstan Playhouse and Space Theatre at the Adelaide Festival Centre. the artistic director is Mitchell Butel. Notable actors, writers and directors working with the company have included Patrick White, Neil Armfield, Ruth Cracknell, Andrew Bovell, Judy Davis, Gale Edwards, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sharman, Hugo Weaving, Elena Carapetis and John Wood. History The South Australian Theatre Company (SATC) was established in 1965 under the artistic direction of John Tasker. Tasker directed 10 plays before clashing with the board and lea ...
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New Theatre (Newtown)
The New Theatre, formerly Workers' Art Club and New Theatre League, is a community theatre company in the Inner West Sydney suburb of Newtown, Australia. Its origins are in the international New Theatre movement of the 1920s, and it is the oldest theatre company in continuous production in New South Wales. Background New Theatre in Australia was inspired by similar movements abroad: the Workers' Theatre Movement in the 1920s in the UK, and the New Theatre League in the United States. They were all affiliated with the Communist Party, and the plays were in the agitprop style of theatre favoured by the Soviet Union. Themes usually related to the class struggle. Referred to as workers' theatre in the early days, groups subsequently formed in other cities around Australia, with Workers' Theatre Groups in Melbourne and Perth and similar groups in Brisbane, Newcastle, and Adelaide. Some disbanded and then got re-established, but only Sydney's New Theatre is still in existence (). ...
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