With the launch of a new history of our national drama, Australia in 50 Plays, author Julian Meyrick shares how he explored Australia’s story and our sense of nationhood as revealed in 50 landmark plays since Federation. Here is an edited extract.

Julian Meyrick. Photo supplied

The beginnings of Australian drama were as impromptu as the political arrangements around it. No bold statements of new artistic purpose are observable, as in Ireland’s Abbey Theatre or France’s Théâtre Libre, no declarations of unique history or language. Rather, Australian drama was calved from the profit-making monster of British imperial theatre in the shadow of which local dramatists had to live and work for the next 60 years.

Sometimes this relationship served them well, providing career paths, resources and audiences. More often, it imposed, dictating formats and values, and aggressively insisting on the ‘standards’ that ‘professional’ theatre required. National dramas do not spring up like mushrooms in the field. They are the result of repeated acts of cultural exchange. The history of the development of Australian drama may look fragile, partial and hesitant compared with other countries. But it could not be stopped, any more than Federation...