Plays Of The 70s
by Katharine Brisbane

This volume covers the period 1973--75 and marks a consolidation of form, and the recognition of a sense of direction.

While public and social issues were the preoccupation of the earlier plays, these plays display a strong move towards the domestic as expressive of community.

The plays in this volume are: A Hard God, Peter Kenna's classic study of youth and age in an Irish-Catholic working class family as it suffers the pangs of love, death and adolescence; How Does Your Garden Grow, Jim McNeil's gentle plea from within the prison system that the need for kindness and affection is not confined to those outside; Coralie Lansdowne Says No, Alex Buzo's famous critique of the new, liberated woman; and The Cake Man by Robert J Merritt, a simple and moving story of life on a mission in Western NSW which was the first Aboriginal play to enter the repertoire of the white theatre.