This week Groundling blog produced two posts which compared the annual repertoire of the state theatre company’s inaugural decade and the one just past. This fairly simple bit of quantitative research was inspired/prompted by similar research and a current debate in the US following the publication of a new book Outrageous Fortune. The book claims the US institutional theatre is, by and large, not producing new works by American playwrights.
Queensland Theatre Company celebrates its 40th birthday in 2010, so a stocktake seemed appropriate. Rather than look over the Company’s 40 seasons Groundling took the bookend repertoires and did a breakdown of the historical and geographical origin of the plays selected for the decade of the 1970s and that of the 2000s.
You can read both posts here:
- Hold the slings and arrows: stocktaking Queensland Theatre (Act 1) 1970-1979
- Hold the slings and arrows: stocktaking Queensland Theatre (Act 2) 2000-2009
And the outcome in chart form shows how this company has always had the production of contemporary and brand new plays top of its repertoire.
Groundling has suggested that other Queensland companies might care to do the same stocktake of their work to provide a fuller picture of the kinds of theatre we think we are producing in the state.
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- Outrageous Fortune (donhall.blogspot.com)
