Book Review Transfigured Stages: Major Practitioners and Theatre Aesthetics in Australia, by Margaret Hamilton (Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2011)

Abstract

This book, which is Volume 14 in Rodopi’s Australian Playwrights Series, offers an account of the performative turn in Australia, or to be more precise, Sydney, in the 1980s and 90s. Turning away from playwrights, the book argues that the stage was in that moment ‘transfigured’ by radical new aesthetic practices. With chapters devoted to Open City, The Sydney Front and The Aboriginal Actors Company, whose work at the Performance Space and other venues intrigued, confronted and confused audiences, author Margaret Hamilton makes the case that the performative turn is best articulated through Hans-Thiess Lehmann’s concept of postdramatic theatre, adapted to the circumstances and intentions of l..