The Australian Performing Group (APG) was a

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

-based experimental theatre repertory ensemble formed in an official capacity in 1970 from the La Mama theatre group. Created to address a dissatisfaction with Australia's theatrical climate, the APG focused primarily on producing new works by then-emerging Australian writers such as

Barry Oakley Barry Kingham Oakley (born 24 February 1931)''Who's Who in Australia'' (2010) is an Australian writer.Luke Slattery"10 questions: Barry Oakley, author, 81"''The Australian'', 15 December 2012. Retrieved 30 March 2016.- Graeme Blundell"Wittily i ...

, Jack Hibberd,

Kris Hemensley Kris Alan Hemensley (born 26 April 1946) is an English-Australian poet who has published around 20 collections of poetry. Through the late 1960s and '70s he was involved in poetry workshops at La Mama, and edited the literary magazines '' Our ...

, Bill Garner, John Romeril, Steve J. Spears and

David Williamson David Keith Williamson (born 1942) is an Australian playwright, who has also written screenplays and teleplays. He became known in the early 1970s with his political comic drama '' Don's Party'', and other well-known plays include '' The Clu ...

. The then unnamed Australian Performing Group from Melbourne started out in 1967 as a group of writers and actors working together at La Mama theatre in Carlton. In 1970 the APG was officially formed and then set up a theatre in a former pram factory in Drummond Street, Carlton. Here, and in other venues throughout Melbourne and other parts of Australia, the ensemble presented alternative, experimental, avant-garde and radical plays, musical comedies, vaudeville, stage shows, street theatre and circus acts, using comedy, drama, music and dance to entertain and, in some cases, to turn the spotlight on its concerns about social, political and feminist issues. The ensemble also produced a record album (''The Great Stumble Forward: Matchbox and the APG at the Pram'') and a feature length film ('' Dimboola''). Quite a few of the hundred-plus works performed by the APG between 1970 and 1979 received critical and popular acclaim. APG actors, writers and performers had a major impact on the nature and content of live theatre in Australia. Their government-subsidized organisation provided acting, designing, and play-writing opportunities to many people who might not otherwise have had the chance to create. Like most of its productions, management at the APG was also radically different. Instead of a conventional, hierarchical structure, the APG was run as a self-managed collective. (Officially it was a cooperative society.) But by 1981 the group had disintegrated. The only surviving part is/was Circus Oz, an APG off-shoot formed in 1978 when the APG’s Soapbox Circus and The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band joined with the New Ensemble Circus of Adelaide."Introducing the Australian Performing Group of the 70s"
16 July 2013, thekeenans.id.au

References

Theatre in Melbourne Theatre companies in Australia {{theater-stub

See also

References