Jane Street History

The Jane Street Season was conceived by Robert Quentin in 1965. Quentin had been the inaugural director of NIDA, but had left NIDA in 1963 to concentrate on his role as Foundation Lecturer (later Professor) in the University of New South Wales (UNSW School of Drama). However, he was still very involved in both NIDA and the Old Tote Theatre Company, which was managed by the NIDA Board of Directors. In response to a discussion on the Old Tote’s lack of support for Australian playwriting generated by the writer Frank Hardy, Quentin suggested that UNSW might secure ‘a small hall near Barker Street which could be used as a little theatre… [for] a company which would present seasons of Australian plays and serve as a workshop theatre for Australian writers.’

A number of ideas coalesced: in early 1966, the UNSW Drama Foundation was formed as a charitable trust from which the funding for NIDA, the Old Tote Theatre, and the Jane Street Season, amongst other ventures, could be funded. This replaced the existing funding stream through the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. As Quentin had requested, UNSW leased a former Mission Hall and church located on the corner of Jane and Middle Streets, Randwick, which NIDA students painted and helped convert into a 100-seat theatre. A grant of $12,000 was secured from the Portugal-based Calouste-Gulbenkian Trust for an inaugural season of Australian playwriting at the Jane Street Theatre, which opened on 1 October 1966. On offer were one newly commissioned play, four premieres, and one revised early colonial text: an all-Australian season at a time when the Australian vernacular was rarely heard on stage.

Funding was not assured for a follow up Jane Street Season, and only one play was performed in 1968. The Old Tote Theatre Company staged its all-Australian Season in that year but unlike the Jane Street Season, it received a mixed reception and was a financial disaster. From 1969 NIDA assumed the administration of the Jane Street Season, funded first by the NSW Government and from 1970, by the Australia Council. The Drama Foundation continued to commission plays for production at Jane Street. The availability of NIDA staff and acting, production and technical production students helped to keep costs down.

As the 1970s saw more theatre companies performing new Australian works and greater support for Australian playwrights through other means, the Jane Street Season changed focus. From 1978 the Season produced reinterpretations of well-known classic plays, particularly 19th century Australian and modern European plays, making them accessible for young audiences. The Season was now primarily a vehicle for the NIDA Advanced Course students rather than a means of providing new opportunities for playwrights.

Funding concerns and the sale of the Jane Street Theatre in 1980 meant the 1982 Jane Street Season at the Parade Theatre and proved to be the last. In all, some 36 productions had been staged over 15 Seasons, including 12 successfully commissioned plays, nine premieres of Australian works, and three major commercial successes.

Since the late 1950s, when two new Australian plays, One Day of the Year (written by Alan Seymour in 1958) and The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (written by Ray Lawler in 1959), had proved both critical and commercial successes, the search was underway for both the next Doll and an authentic Australian national theatre.

Robert Quentin, a keen supporter of developing a professional Australian theatrical voice, first introduced a playwriting short course at NIDA in 1961. In its second year Professor Norman Philbrick from Stanford University led the course but ongoing funding was limited. In 1966, at the helm of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Drama Foundation, Quentin commissioned a number of new plays for production at Jane Street, including Thomas Keneally’s first play, Halloran’s Little Boat (1966) and his third, An Awful Rose (1972).

In 1972 and 1973 the NIDA Playwrights Studio course was resurrected, led by David Whittaker, and in 1974, NIDA commissioned two Playwrights Studio participants, George Hutchinson and Alan Simpson working with composers Mervyn Drake and James Cotter respectively, to provide the Season’s entertainment. Following workshops at the Australian National Playwrights Conference (established 1973, now Playwriting Australia), Alma de Groen’s fourth play The After-life of Arthur Craven and a first work by Ken Ross, Don’t Piddle Against the Wind, were produced at Jane Street.

During the 1970s, however, more opportunities for the development and production of Australian plays emerged as new theatre companies such as Nimrod (established December 1970) and, in Melbourne, La Mama Theatre (1967) and the Australian Performing Group (APG) at the Pram Factory (1970) started to feature new Australian theatre.

In 1978, NIDA, decided to move away from producing new Australian plays in favour of new interpretations of classic plays. However, one of the major hits of the 1979 Season was George Whaley’s On Our Selection, based on the writings of Steele Rudd: an enduring image of Australiana.

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) Drama Foundation had initiated the 1966 Season of plays at Jane Street, and continued to have a role funding commissioned plays, but increasingly the production of the Season fell to the NIDA Administration. Most Jane Street directors were working at NIDA in some capacity, although others were contracted for the purposes of the Season. The roll call of directors includes some of Australia’s best known practitioners: Rex Cramphorn, Alexander Hay, John Clark, Aubrey Mellor, George Whaley, Robin Lovejoy, John Bell, John Tasker, Richard Cottrell, Richard Wherrett, Jim Sharman and John Milson.

Jane Street was able to develop as an experimental theatre venue, not just showcasing new plays, but also new forms of production. While it was expected Randolph Stow would submit a new commissioned work for the follow up 1967 Season, the play was never written and there was no Season that year. Instead, early in 1968, Jim Sharman facilitated the first of what might be called the experimental theatre works: Terror Australis,a devised play between Sharman, the actors, and contributing writers associated with the satirical Oz Magazine. The 1970 Season also saw two quite distinctive productions: the highly influential The Legend of King O’Malley, directed by the new tutor in Acting, John Bell, and a much more underrated critical success, 10,000 Miles Away, directed by NIDA graduate and actor Rex Cramphorn. While performed by the same company of actors, these two directors explored quite different concepts of theatrical development and performance: on the one hand Australian larrikin theatre, and on the other, experimental Grotowskian techniques with an emphasis on process rather than performance.

Following the success of the 1970 Season, Clark wrote seeking suitable scripts:

‘We have a young company of eight and fairly limited resources – which tends to exclude technical extravaganzas and middle aged, middle class, middle of the road conventional pieces. We are far more inclined to outrageous, unconventional and fairly youthful activity.’

Whether the following Seasons lived up to that claim or not, certainly the work of the Performance Syndicate, and that of William Yang (then Willy Young) in later Seasons challenged traditional roles and conventions. In 1975, the two productions, Mariner and Interplay were described as deliberately presenting alternative approaches to new work, for both the director and composer.

From its inception, the Jane Street Season had relied on NIDA students and staff to contribute personnel and resources. The Season was established along the lines of repertory theatre: having a resident company rehearsing and performing in all plays was a traditional way of mitigating risks across a short season. The original NIDA Diploma in Acting was a two-year course and in 1966 NIDA sought funding for an Advanced Course in Acting to provide recent graduates with further training and a regular allowance. While the link between Jane Street and the Advanced Course was not planned, the first intake of students was employed on the 1966 Season, working alongside more seasoned professionals.

The Advanced Course in Acting students became the nucleus of each Season’s company. For young professionals Jane Street presented an opportunity for continuous work for a period of time: the 1970 students received $40 per week for 20 weeks, for example. For NIDA Design and Technical Production students the Jane Street Season was a fixture in the practical coursework. Fiona Reilly, then a design student at NIDA, remembers her involvement as designer of the 1973 production of Bon Bons and Rose for Dolly as a wonderful opportunity.

In 1973, NIDA introduced a three-year accredited Diploma of Dramatic Art. The Advanced Course continued as a fourth-year postgraduate opportunity, offering work to alumni such as Mel Gibson, Robert Menzies and Kerry Walker. Not all performers were graduates: Geoffrey Rush, newly arrived from Brisbane, was cast with Mel Gibson in the 1979 production of Waiting for Godot. While the later Jane Street productions are sometimes overlooked in critical appraisals of the Jane Street oeuvre, the 1979 Season production On Our Selection and the inclusion of Jane Street in the inaugural Sydney Theatre Company season that same year proved successful.  The final Jane Street play Camino Real (1982) was also positively reviewed.

However, by 1983, the changes in funding sources and the sale of the Jane Street Theatre led to the demise of the concept of a semi-professional repertory-based company, at least for a time. During the late 1970s there had been plans to expand the Advanced Course and Jane Street model, but in 1984 the Advanced course was replaced with a Centre for Performance Practice, offering fee-based workshops and seminars, including the third incarnation of the Playwrights Studio.

In 1988, graduates Hilary Bell and Nell Schofield staged a new NIDA/Jane Street Season, a concept that was expanded in 1990 with the launch of the NIDA Company. The NIDA Company performed one or two plays per year until 2006 in much the same spirit as the original Jane Street Theatre.

Robert Walker (1922–2007)

Robert Walker was one of the principal photographers commissioned by NIDA to document plays and activities in the 1960s and 70s. He was also the main photographer of plays at the Jane Street Theatre (1966-1982) and Old Tote Theatre Company (1963-1978). Walker’s photographic archive relating to NIDA, Jane Street and the Old Tote Theatre, was recently donated to NIDA by his widow Louise Walker.

Robert Walker was born in Singleton, NSW but enlisted with the British Royal Air-force (RAF) during WWII. He returned to Australia in 1952 and first became interested in photography when working in advertising. According to Robert McFarlane (Sydney Morning Herald 19 March 2007), he taught himself how to use the office Rolle flex and was ‘immediately entranced’.

Robert honed the art of theatre photography for the modern age, moving beyond staged ‘set-up’ photographs to a fluid, photojournalistic visual approach, often choosing this more difficult technique to photograph during actual performances. In order to do this, Robert Walker mastered the photographic techniques necessary for working under the low, challenging lighting conditions frequently encountered in the theatre. Robert Walker's way of documenting theatre would deeply influence a generation of ‘performance’ photographers who would follow him, such as Robert McFarlane and Branco Gaica. It is a reflection of Robert Walker's invaluable contribution to Australian Theatre that over ninety productions are represented in the NIDA Archives.

Images from the Robert Walker Archive are held at the NIDA Archives and licensed by the Walker family to Viscopy. All images presented as part of the Jane Street online exhibition are courtesy of the Robert Walker Archive.

Branco Gaica (1979 Season, 1982 Season)

Branco Gaica is one of Australia’s foremost photographers of the performing arts. He was taught and inspired by Robert Walker's work in the theatre. As well as the Jane Street Season images taken between 1979 and 1982, Branco has photographed the Sydney Theatre Company, Opera Australia, Sydney Dance Company and The Australian Ballet amongst many other major companies. Branco photographed most of the NIDA productions, events and students between 1993 and 2005.

William Yang (Interplay, 1975)

William Yang was born in North Queensland, Australia. He moved to Sydney in 1969 and worked as a freelance photographer documenting Sydney’s social life which he has described as "including the glamorous, celebrity set and the hedonistic, sub-cultural, gay community".

In 1989 he integrated his skills as a writer and a visual artist. He began to perform monologues with slide projection in the theatre. These slide shows have become the main expression of his work. They tell personal stories and explore issues of identity. He has done eleven full-length works and most of them have toured the world. Tony Ayres made his most successful piece, “Sadness” into an award winning film in 1999.

William’s current work is photo based, doing performances in theatres and exhibitions in galleries, and story telling workshops. He has just converted three of his live performance pieces into films at the University of NSW.

Dennis Del Favero (The Provok’d Wife, 1982)
Dennis Del Favero is a Scientia Professor and research artist at the UNSW Faculties of Art & Design and Engineering.