Although the beginnings of an identifiably Australian drama can be discerned in plays written during the 1930’s, it was not until about 1960 that plays of lasting or literary merit were frequently printed or performed. For convenience, Ray Lawler ’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (pr. 1955) is often regarded as the precursor of modern Australian drama, yet in 1956, A. D. Hope, in a Current Affairs Bulletin article, “Standards in Australian Literature,” published by the University of Sydney, noted that “there is not much to say about Australian drama,” and Cecil Hadgraft, in Australian Literature: A Critical Account to 1955 (1960), a highly regarded conspectus, wholly omitted any consideration of plays.

The late flowering of Australian drama is not readily explained. Though the national population has always been small, it has consistently been urban and relatively literate and affluent, sustaining almost all the other forms of culture, both popular and high. Paradoxically, both at home and abroad Australians have been keen theatergoers, and until the advent of television Australians were among the world’s most frequent moviegoers, yet few local writers produced film scripts, although Australian-made and -directed films came into their own in the 1970’s and 1980’s.