'Going to the pictures', as we said back in the day, was a memorable childhood adventure because it meant either going to a big, city cinema with our parents or watching a double feature at the local fleapit on a Saturday afternoon. The latter brings back fond memories of rolling Jaffas down the aisles. Admission was only 20 cents and for 10 cents you could buy a drink and a packet of potato chips. But theatres have changed, as has the way movies are presented. Gone are the talented projectionists who dazzled us with real presentation skills. This book is a photographic depiction of how theatres used to be and how some of us think they still should be. Times have changed, but we will always have our silver-screen memories.

Theatre Australia (Un)limited tells a truly national story of the structures of post-war Australian theatre: its artists, companies, financial and policy underpinnings. It gives an inclusive analysis of three ‘waves’ of Australian theatrical activity after 1953, and the types of organisations which grew up to support and maintain them. Subsidy, repertoire patterns, finances and administration, theatre buildings, companies, festivals and notable productions of the commercial, mainstream and alternative Australian theatre are examined state by state, and changes to governmental policy analysed. Theatrical forms comprise not only spoken-word drama, but also music theatre, comedy, theatre-restaurant, circus, puppetry, community theatre in several forms and new mixed-media genres: physical theatre, circus, visual theatre and contemporary performance. Theatre Australia (Un)limited is the first comprehensive overview of the fortunes of Australian theatre as a national enterprise, providing the industrial analysis of the ‘three waves’ essential for the understanding of the New Wave and of contemporary drama.

Through a contemporary Gothic lens, the book explores theatre theories, processes and practices that explore; the impacts of continuing drought and natural disaster, the conflicts concerning resource extraction and mining and current political debates focussed on climate change denial. While these issues can be argued from various political and economic platforms, theatrical investigations as discussed here suggest that scholars and theatre makers are becoming empowered to dramaturgically explore the ecological challenges we face now and may face in the future. In doing so the book proposes that theatre can engage in not only climate change analysis and discussion but can develop climate literacies in a broader socio-cultural context.

A powerful family memoir from the award-winning author of The China Garden Kristina OlssonOCOs mother lost her infant son, Peter, when he was snatched from her arms as she boarded a train in the hot summer of 1950. She was young and frightened, trying to escape a brutal marriage, but despite the violence and cruelty sheOCOd endured, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. Yvonne would not see her son again for nearly 40 years. Kristina was the first child of her motherOCOs subsequent, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her motherOCOs sorrow, though PeterOCOs absence resounded through the family, marking each one. Yvonne dreamt of her son by day and by night, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother. Boy, Lost tells how their lives proceeded from that shattering moment, the grief and shame that stalked them, what they lost and what they salvaged. But it is also the story of a family, the cascade of grief and guilt through generations, and the endurance of memory and faith."

Defiance: political theatre in Brisbane 1930-1962.