Australian literature: Drama

How to find Australian drama

Start with the Library Catalogue

choose subject from the drop-down list
Type your keywords [for example 'drama'] in the search bar

Selected works

The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920-1955 (1993) Jack Bedson and Julian Croft (eds.)
After The Doll : Australian Drama Since 1955 (1979) by Peter Fitzpatrick
Playing with Ideas : Australian Women Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the Sixties (1999) by Susan Pfisterer and Carolyn Pickett
Australian Contemporary Drama (1995) by Dennis Carroll
Modern Australian Plays (1993) by Elizabeth Webby

Aitken, A., photographer, On the set of the film Two minutes silence, New South Wales, 12 May 1932, nla.obj-162472775

How can you find drama in our online databases?

AustLit: the resource for Australian literature is a key resource for information about Australian writers and writing covering the 1780s to the present. With an author search, you can find lists of publications, collections of plays, criticisms, links to online access for reviews of plays, awards lists and biographies of major playwrights.

Select the Research tab at the top of the page
Scroll down and under 'More projects' find Drama

This opens the Australian Drama subset. Select 'Using the data' in the left menu for information about how to search the collection.

You can find AustLit by visiting our eResources portal and searching for this database under the Browse eResources tab. If you are a registered member of the National Library you can access AustLit from home.

Case study: Biographical information about a playwright

I am the literary manager of a theatre company which will soon be mounting a production of The Sum of Us by Australian playwright, David Stevens. Do you have any current biographical information on the playwright to include in our newsletter?

Starting with the National Library Catalogue, we can find a file of newspaper cuttings about David Stevens, however these are taken from newspapers in the 1990s. Stevens left Australia to live in the United States in 1987.
A biography of Stevens' early life, as well as a list of his works and awards, is at AustLit, but again there is little recent detail. In the US he has worked as a director and producer; lists of his work can be found online.
We can also download a 1994 interview from a Brisbane radio station website. This includes a reference to The Sum of Us but little recent information.

Featured resource

Finding australian literature kookaburra

Edith Allingham, The kookaburra : a children's play, 1938 Royal edition ; no. 204, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-170433039

The Kookaburra: A Children's Play by Edith Allingham. This edition was published in 1938 and included instructions for making costumes and ;a stencil design for a kookaburra-shaped fan, which could be made from cardboard.

The play was performed by pupils of St John's Sunday School in October 1929, as reported in the Cairns Post

In this guide

Two men, one on a ladder, looking at books on large bookshelf at the State Library of Victoria

Mark Strizic, Searching for books at the State Library of Victoria, January 1967, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-140508667

Australian literature research guide

A guide to finding Australian literature resources

Research guide

black and white photo of two men shaking hands while two schoolboys look on

Fairfax Corporation, Two men shaking hands in front of a schoolboy holding two trophies and another with three books at Sydney Boys' High School, Sydney, 28 December 1931, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-161791200

Australian literature: Awards

How to find information about Australian literature awards.

Research guide

Finding australian literature The Burning

Williamson, Geordie, The burning library : our great novelists lost and found. Melbourne : Text Publishing, 2012

Australian literature: Book reviews

Book reviews appear in newspapers and scholarly journals. To locate these you can use a title search of a particular periodical, such as Australian Book Review.

Research guide