Preceding the production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, a short feature by Regina Botros which contains archival interviews with Ray Lawler, Michelle Arrow, senior lecturer in Australian history, John McCallum, theatre critic, lecturer and author, Katharine Brisbane, co-founder and executive director of Currency House and Ralph Myer, artistic director Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney.
PDF Teachers' Notes for Belvoir's production of 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll'.
""It has always been a lucky play,'' a lively Ray Lawler chuckles when asked why the sad, working-class drama he wrote 57 years ago wasn't merely an unprecedented success at the time, but is still so relevant today it can entice such contemporary theatrical talents as Neil Armfield, Robyn Nevin and Susie Porter into a new production."
"There are plenty of jokes but Summer of the Seventheeth Doll is a cynical and bruising work. It exists in a nebulous distance between classes and aspirations, an intersection between past and progress where nostalgic memories combined with cold realities of an imagined future provide prisons for the characters, partly self-made, partly societal, and fully, in some context, shared with audiences."
"THE Doll is a classic in the sense that it has been produced, studied and loved for more than 50 years, but it is also a play of its time.
Neil Armfield's revival is so fresh and alert that the play becomes a classic in the other sense: it has new things to say to each generation."
Transcript of a talk Alison gave at the Wheeler Centre as part of the series Australian Literature 101.
"Lawler's story of itinerant cane cutters who migrate to Melbourne every summer for the lay off is a parable of fantasy coming into brutal collision with reality and, like all tragedies, a meditation on mortality."
Study Guide & Activities from the State Theatre Company of South Australia
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