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The Torrents
''The Torrents'' is a 1955 Australian play by Oriel Gray, set in the late 19th century, about the arrival of a female journalist in an all-male newspaper office, and an attempt to develop irrigation-based agriculture in a former gold mining town. In 1955 it was voted best play that year by the Playwrights' Advisory Board, alongside Ray Lawler's ''Summer of the Seventeenth Doll'', winning a prize of £100 for its author. This has been called "one of the great “compare and contrast” moments in the history of female Australian playwriting." Theme The play is set in the second half of the 19th century, in the newspaper office of a country town built around gold-mining. The gold is running out, and a young engineer suggests developing agriculture, supported by irrigation, as an alternative. A new recruit to the newspaper, one J.G. Milthorpe, arrives – and turns out to be a woman named Jenny. The play explores tensions between the all-male workforce of the newspaper and the new f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oriel Gray
Oriel Holland Bennett (26 March 1920 – 30 June 2003) known by pen name Oriel Gray, was an Australian dramatist, playwright and screenwriter who wrote from the 1940s to 1990s. The major themes of her work were gender equality and "social and political issues such as the environment, Aborigines, assimilation and bush life". Early life Gray was born ''Oriel Holland Bennett'' in Sydney, New South Wales. Her father and grandfather owned a newspaper in Young, New South Wales. With the death of her mother in 1926, her older sister Grayce became the guiding female presence of her formative years. Gray came from a politically active family, her father briefly held the seat of Werriwa for the Australian Labour Party Gray was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1942 to 1950. She remained active in the peace movement until the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975. Personal life She married John Gray in 1940, an actor whom she met while at the Sydney New Theatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beverley Dunn
Beverley Ruth Dunn (24 April 1933 – 27 November 2021) was an Australian veteran radio, stage, television and film actress based in Melbourne, Australia. Dunn had roles in films including ''Ground Zero'', ''Gross Misconduct'', '' Shine'' (1996), ''The Craic'' (1999), ''The Dish'' (2000) and '' Charlie and Boots'' (2009). She appeared in numerous television series for which she was best known including '' Bellbird'' and ''The Flying Doctors'' as Claire Byrant. Other TV credits : Productions for both ''Crawford Productions'' and ''Grundy Television'' including ''Homicide'', ''Matlock Police'', ''Division 4'', ''Prisoner'' (4 different character roles), ''Carson's Law'', '' Neighbours'' (as Tina Bentley), ''A Country Practice'' and '' All Saints''. She appeared in ''Roundabout'', the first live play produced for Melbourne television (broadcast on 4 January 1957). Dunn featured in hundreds of radio plays and book readings for both the ABC and the BBC in England. Her lengt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Plays
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the performing arts in Australia, or produced by Australians. There are theatrical and dramatic aspects to a number of Indigenous Australian ceremonies such as the corroboree. During its colonial period, Australian theatrical arts were generally linked to the broader traditions of English literature and to British and Irish theatre. Australian literature and theatrical artists (including Aboriginal as well as Anglo-Celtic and multicultural migrant Australians) have over the last two centuries introduced the culture of Australia and the character of a new continent to the world stage. Individuals who have contributed to theatre in Australia and internationally include Sir Robert Helpmann, Dame Joan Sutherland, Barry Humphries, David Williamson, Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, Jim Sharman, Tim Minchin and Baz Luhrmann. Notable theatrical institutions include the Sydney Opera House, and the National Institute of Drama ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AustLit
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (also known as AustLit: Australian Literature Gateway; and AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature), usually referred to simply as AustLit, is an internet-based, non-profit collaboration between researchers and librarians from Australian universities, led by the University of Queensland (UQ), designed to comprehensively record the history of Australian literary and story-making cultures. AustLit is an encyclopaedia of Australian writers and writing. BlackWords is a landmark research project by and within AustLit that details the lives and work of Indigenous Australian authors, which includes Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers. History AustLit was founded in 2000, when several independent databases on a variety of themes related to literary studies was created from work done by research groups at eight universities. The first dataset comprised about 300,000 fairly simple biographic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Currency Press
Currency Press is a leading performing arts publisher and its oldest independent publisher still active. Their list includes plays and screenplays, professional handbooks, biographies, cultural histories, critical studies and reference works. History Currency Press was founded by Katharine Brisbane, then national theatre critic for ''The Australian'' newspaper, and her husband Philip Parsons, a lecturer in Drama at the University of New South Wales. After Philip's death in 1993, Katharine remained at the helm of the company until she retired as Publisher in December 2001 to devote her energies to Currency House, a non-profit association dedicated to the Australian performing arts. Currency press is currently run by her son Nicholas Parsons Description Currency Press is a leading Australian specialist performing arts publisher, and its oldest independent publisher still active. It is located in the Sydney suburb of Redfern. Awards In 2011, Currency Press received the Dorothy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dale Spender
Dale Spender (born 22 September 1943)''The Bibliography of Australian Literature: P–Z'' edited by John Arnold, John Hay (page 409). is an Australian feminist scholar, teacher, writer and consultant. In 1983, Dale Spender was co-founder of and editorial advisor to Pandora Press, the first of the feminist imprints devoted solely to non-fiction, committed, according to the New York Times, to showing that "women were the mothers of the novel and that any other version of its origin is but a myth of male creation". She was the series editor of Penguin's Australian Women's Library from 1987. Spender's work is "a major contribution to the recovery of women writers and theorists and to the documentation of the continuity of feminist activism and thought". In the 1996 Australia Day honours, Spender was awarded Member of the Order of Australia "for service to the community as a writer and researcher in the field of equality of opportunity and equal status for women". Early life Spend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year."About Penguin – company history" , Penguin Books. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through and other stores for sixpence, bringing high-quality fictio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Torrents (film)
"The Torrents" is a 1969 Australian TV play based on the stage play by Oriel Gray. It was filmed as part of the ABC anthology drama series ''Australian Plays''. It was the second Gray play adapted by the ABC, after ''Burst of Summer''. It aired on 10 December 1969 in Sydney and Melbourne. Australian TV drama was relatively rare at the time. Cast * Barbara Stephens *Ken Shorter *Alan Hopgood *Mark Albiston * Harold Hopkins* *Lyndell Rowe Lyndel Rowe is an Australian actress of stage, television and film, who is best known for her work with the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Sydney Theatre Company and the State Theatre Company of South Australia, and for her role as Karen Fox/H .... Production It was shot in Melbourne and at Maldon, a small town outside Bendigo. It was designed by Alan Clarke. Railway carriages were hired from the Society of Railway Enthusiasts. The budget could not cover the hiring of an old locomotive so a modern one was used, but this was obscured by a fog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodney Hall (writer)
Rodney Hall AM (born 18 November 1935) is an Australian writer. Biography Born in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, Hall came to Australia as a child after World War II and studied at the University of Queensland (1971). In the 1960s Hall began working as a freelance writer, and a book and film reviewer. He also worked as an actor, and was often engaged by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Brisbane. Between 1967 and 1978 he was the Poetry Editor of ''The Australian''. He began publishing poetry in the 1970s and has since published thirteen novels, including ''Just Relations'' and ''The Island in the Mind''. He lived in Shanghai for a period in the late 1980s. From 1991 to 1994, he served as chair of the Australia Council. Hall lives in Victoria. In addition to a number of literary awards such as twice winning the Miles Franklin Award, he was appointed a Member of Order of Australia for "service to the Arts, particularly in the field of literature" in 1990. Hall's memoi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Buckley (actor)
Keith Buckley (7 April 1941 – 1 December 2020) was an English actor who mostly appeared on television and films from 1958. Career Keith Buckley was born in April 1941 in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire and performed in school plays at Huddersfield College. He had many appearances in film and television, including '' The Avengers'' and '' Randall and Hopkirk'' in the 1960s and '' The New Avengers'' in the 1970s. Personal life Between the years 1959 and 1967, Keith Buckley was married to Bella Buckley, with whom he had two daughters. Then, he was in a partnership for nineteen years with the casting director Mary Selway, with whom he also had two daughters. In later years, he lived in the USA with author Beverly Lowry before returning home to live in UK. He died in December 2020 at the age of 79. Selected filmography * '' Shadow of the Boomerang'' (1960) – Stockman * '' King & Country'' (1964) – Corporal of Guard * '' Attack on the Iron Coast'' (1968) – Commando No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Gabriel
Ben Gabriel (25 February 1918 – 25 April 2012) was an Australian actor, director, voice artist and theatre founder. Gabriel had numerous appearances in stage and radio roles and in film and television. Biography He was born as James Vernon Gabriel in England. His mother was Ethel Florence McConnell, (31 October 1888 – 23 May 1967, (aged 78) born in Kent, England came to Australia 1919, died Sydney) and known professionally as Ethel Gabriel was an actress with the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, featuring in such productions as Ray Lawler's ''Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.'' Gabriel grew up in Sydney and Wollongong and saw war service as a lance-sergeant for six years with the 9th division during World War II. He officially changed his stage name to Ben Gabriel, a name he had always used on a personal basis. His career began in theatre in the late 1930s and television career spanned from the early 1960s until the late 80s. One of his early roles was as the alien leader, the Sosh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kevin Brennan (actor)
Kevin Martin Brennan (12 September 1920 – 17 December 1998) was an Australian-born British-based film and television actor. He appeared in the children's ITV series '' A Bunch of Fives'' in the 1970s and as Doris Luke's love interest Tom Logan in the British soap opera Crossroads in 1982. Filmography References External links * Profile at ww2roll.gov.au 1920 births 1998 deaths British male film actors British male television actors Male actors from Sydney Australian emigrants to the United Kingdom Australian Army personnel of World War II 20th-century British male actors Australian Army soldiers {{UK-film-actor-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
