Enright on the Record: Evidence from the Television Archives of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Abstract

The television archives of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation contain significant material dealing with the work and career of Nick Enright. This includes footage of some of his plays in performance, interviews with him, and commentary on his work by critics and theatre practitioners. This chapter describes and analyses some of the more important contents of this archival material, under three main headings: representations of masculinity, meta-theatre, and Enright's success as a playwright for actors. It makes special reference to 'The Venetian Twins', 'Mongrels' (which is a significant turning point in Enright's career), 'Blackrock', 'Good Works', 'A Poor Student', 'Cloudstreet', and 'The Boy from Oz'. The chapter argues that the material in the archive illustrates important aspects of Enright's career and his rising profile after 1991, when he began to be accepted as a serious playwright, but that this success and the move to larger-scale productions paradoxically involved a certain loss of artistic control.