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How did the New Wave of Australian theatre in the 1970s transform Australian playwriting and performance?
The New Wave of Australian theatre, including the Australian Performing Group, the Nimrod Street Theatre, the political and vernacular character of the work, and the playwrights who emerged from this period
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on the New Wave. The Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory and the Nimrod Street Theatre, David Williamson, Jack Hibberd, Alex Buzo, Dorothy Hewett, and the vernacular, political theatre that followed the Doll.
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What this dot point is asking
NESA expects you to know the New Wave of the 1970s as a substantive movement: who, where, what kind of work, and why it mattered. Strong answers move past name-dropping into the politics, the form, and the institutional context.
The answer
The starting points
Two institutions matter most.
The Australian Performing Group (APG), based at the Pram Factory in Drummond Street, Carlton (Melbourne), 1968 to 1981. The Pram Factory was an industrial building turned theatre by Betty Burstall and the group around La Mama (founded 1967 in Carlton as a small experimental space). APG operated as a co-operative: members shared duties, shared profits, and made collective decisions about programming. The work was politically left, often pacifist, anti-Vietnam, and committed to original Australian writing.
The Nimrod Street Theatre, in Nimrod Street, Surry Hills (Sydney), 1970 to 1988. Founded by Ken Horler, John Bell and Richard Wherrett. The Nimrod was less politically uniform than APG but equally committed to new Australian work. The company moved to a larger Belvoir Street site in 1984 (the building now occupied by Belvoir).
A third institution, the Old Tote Theatre Company in Sydney (1963 to 1978), produced some of the New Wave work too, including Alex Buzo's Norm and Ahmed (1968).
The playwrights and the plays
- David Williamson
- Born 1942. Trained as a mechanical engineer. His first major plays at the APG were The Removalists (1971) and Don's Party (1971). The Removalists shows two policemen forcibly removing a woman's belongings from her marital home and beating her husband to death. Don's Party is a dinner-party play set on election night 1969. Williamson went on to become the most-produced playwright in Australian theatre history (Travelling North, 1979; Emerald City, 1987; Brilliant Lies, 1993; The Club, 1977 about Carlton Football Club; Influence, 2005).
- Jack Hibberd
- Born 1940, died 2024. The most formally experimental of the New Wave playwrights. Dimboola (1969) is a participatory play structured as a country-town wedding reception with the audience as guests. A Stretch of the Imagination (1972) is a monodrama for an old man (Monk O'Neill) in a hut in the Snowy Mountains.
- Alex Buzo
- Born 1944, died 2006. Norm and Ahmed (Old Tote, 1968) shows a casual late-night conversation between Norm, a white Australian, and Ahmed, a Pakistani student, that ends in racist violence. Coralie Lansdowne Says No (1974) and Macquarie (1971) followed.
- Dorothy Hewett
- Born 1923, died 2002. The Chapel Perilous (Stables Theatre, 1971; the first full Stables production at the Hayes) is a feminist epic following a young woman's sexual and political coming-of-age. The Man from Mukinupin (1979) is a verse drama for the bicentenary built on Western Australian small-town life.
- Louis Nowra
- Born 1950. Inner Voices (Nimrod, 1977) and Visions (Nimrod, 1978) showed a colder, more European-influenced Australian voice than the Pram Factory's vernacular comedy. Nowra was the bridge from New Wave to the 1980s institutional era. Cosi (1992) is now a HSC English staple.
- Other figures
- Steve J. Spears (The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin, 1976), Barry Oakley (A Lesson in English, 1968), John Romeril (The Floating World, 1974). Patrick White wrote Big Toys (1977) and Signal Driver (1982) in this period, though White was older and never of the movement.
Common features
- Vernacular speech
- The New Wave plays put Australian English on stage without apology. Williamson's Carlton suburban talk in Don's Party, Hibberd's country-town speech in Dimboola, Buzo's Sydney casual racism in Norm and Ahmed.
- Political content
- Vietnam, police violence, the 1969 and 1972 elections, casual racism, gender politics. The New Wave wrote into the political moment.
- A range of forms
- Naturalistic realism (Williamson), participatory comedy (Hibberd's Dimboola), monodrama (A Stretch of the Imagination), feminist epic (Hewett), darker chamber pieces (Nowra).
- Working-class and middle-class settings
- Williamson's families are middle-class Melbourne; Hibberd's Dimboola is country-town working class. The range matters.
- Locally specific settings
- Carlton, Surry Hills, the Snowy Mountains, the wheatbelt. The plays insist on the specific Australian place.
Politics and the times
The late 1960s and 1970s were politically convulsive in Australia. Vietnam (Australia's involvement from 1962, conscription from 1964, moratorium marches from 1970), the Gough Whitlam Labor government (1972 to 1975) and its dismissal (the Constitutional crisis of 11 November 1975), second-wave feminism, the Aboriginal land rights movement (Tent Embassy 1972, Mabo decision much later in 1992).
The New Wave was a theatre of this political moment. Williamson's plays sit inside the Labor middle class of the Whitlam era. Buzo's Norm and Ahmed examines casual racism. Hewett's Chapel Perilous is a feminist epic. The plays do not preach, but they place their characters inside the political weather.
The end of the movement
The Pram Factory closed in 1981 after a Melbourne City Council dispute and internal conflicts. The Nimrod moved to Belvoir Street in 1984 and then dissolved in 1988, with Belvoir continuing as a separate company. By the mid-1980s the institutional centre of Australian theatre had shifted to the state-funded companies (STC, MTC, QT, Belvoir, STCSA), which absorbed many of the New Wave playwrights.
The New Wave did not end Australian playwriting; it set the platform for the institutional era that followed. Williamson, Hewett, Nowra and others continued to produce major work for the state companies into the 1990s and 2000s.
Why the New Wave matters for HSC
If Australian Drama and Theatre is your prescribed pairing, the New Wave is often one of the two studied movements. The pairing of the Doll Trilogy (mid-century realism) with the 1970s New Wave shows two distinct moments in Australian theatre: a polite naturalism becoming a vernacular, political, formally experimental movement. Strong essays explain the shift.
Past exam questions, worked
Real questions from past NESA papers on this dot point, with our answer explainer.
Practice (NESA)8 marksHow did the Australian Performing Group and Nimrod Street Theatre change Australian playwriting in the 1970s?Show worked answer →
An 8-mark "how" needs three or four substantive changes with named works.
- They built infrastructure for original Australian work
- APG (1968 to 1981) at the Pram Factory, Carlton, ran as a co-operative committed to producing new Australian plays. Nimrod Street Theatre (1970 to 1988), in Surry Hills then King Street, did the same in Sydney. Before 1968, the institutional space for new Australian writing was small; by 1981 it was substantial.
- They launched a generation of playwrights
- David Williamson's The Removalists (Pram Factory, 1971) and Don's Party (Pram Factory, 1971). Jack Hibberd's Dimboola (Pram Factory, 1969) and A Stretch of the Imagination (Pram Factory, 1972). Alex Buzo's Norm and Ahmed (Old Tote, 1968, but firmly part of the New Wave). Louis Nowra's Inner Voices (Nimrod, 1977). Dorothy Hewett's The Chapel Perilous (1971).
- They normalised vernacular Australian speech
- The New Wave plays used Australian English without apology. Williamson's dialogue in particular catches the cadence of suburban Melbourne. Hibberd's Dimboola is built around country-town wedding talk.
- They were politically engaged
- The Removalists examines police violence and class. Don's Party is set on the 1969 election night, with Labor's defeat as the backdrop to a Melbourne dinner party. The plays did not avoid politics; they made political conflict their material.
- They challenged form
- Hibberd's Dimboola breaks the fourth wall; A Stretch of the Imagination is a monodrama. The plays were not all naturalistic; they experimented with form alongside their political content.
Markers reward named companies, named plays, named playwrights, and dated productions.
Related dot points
- The historical and cultural context of Australian theatre, including the development from colonial entertainment through to a distinctive national tradition from the 1950s onwards
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on Australian theatre history. The colonial heritage, the postwar Australian Performing Group and New Wave, the rise of state theatre companies (Belvoir, STC, MTC, QT), the prominence of Indigenous theatre from the 1990s, and how this history informs HSC prescriptions.
- David Williamson and the tradition of Australian political comedy, including The Removalists (1971), Don's Party (1971), The Club (1977) and later works
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on David Williamson. His vernacular comic tradition, the political content of The Removalists and Don's Party, the institutional setting of The Club, and Williamson's enduring position as the most-produced Australian playwright.
- Louis Nowra and the development of Australian theatre beyond the New Wave, including Inner Voices (1977), Visions (1978), Cosi (1992), Radiance (1993) and the wider 1980s and 1990s playwriting
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on Louis Nowra. His early European-influenced plays (Inner Voices, Visions), the breakthrough mid-career works (Cosi, Radiance), the institutional shift from Nimrod to state-funded companies, and Nowra's contribution to a darker, more politically complex strand of Australian theatre.
- Ray Lawler and the Doll Trilogy as a foundational movement of Australian dramatic realism, including the form, style, dramatic conventions and Australian cultural context
A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on Ray Lawler. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955), Kid Stakes (1975), Other Times (1976), the conventions of mid-century Australian realism, the symbolism of the doll, and Lawler's place in the history of Australian theatre.