Ep 24 – Art is a weapon: the New Theatre in Australia

In contemporary Australian mass culture, it’s hard if not impossible to find any representation of life as it’s lived by the majority of the population. Few movies, plays, TV shows or documentaries reflect what it’s like spending most of your waking life working to make a boss rich, struggling to keep up with bills, or dealing with sexism, homophobia, racism, and other oppressions – and practically none depict things like going on strike or opposing fascism. With all major media and cultural production owned either by the government or huge corporations, this situation has prevailed throughout virtually the entire post-invasion history of Australia. In the 1930s, though, a massive experiment was launched to create culture by and for ordinary working people – the New Theatre. Under the slogan ‘Art is a weapon’, the New Theatre put on thousands upon thousands of performances about and for ordinary working-class people, aiming to reflect and validate their lives and struggles, and encourage political activism. Its plays were about workers’ strikes, about protest movements, about fighting the far right, and about taking on racism, sexism and other oppressions. Rather than confining themselves to the halls of physical theatre buildings, New Theatre performers – who operated on a miniscule budget and were almost all unpaid – put on plays in factories, in parks, in people’s homes, inside coal mines, and on street corners. They used avant-garde theatrical techniques, pioneered egalitarian gender relations within their productions, and put on some of the most well-attended plays in Australian history. And yet despite this, the New Theatre has virtually vanished from Australian history. In this episode, we chat with Lisa Milner, an academic and researcher of working-class cultural production, on her new book on the New Theatre. We discuss the extraordinary popularity and success of their productions, the efforts by the state to repress the New Theatre, and the ways that culture can help build and sustain radicalism and movements for change. You can buy Lisa’s book on the New Theatre here. Sign up to our Patreon now to have the chance to get a free copy of Lisa’s book and support our podcast!  Opening and closing music courtesy of Glitter Rats. People’s History of Australia logo design courtesy of Nissenbaum Design design.