Description
Invited workshop for scholars working on the history of the ABC or related media history co-convened by Prof. Bridget Griffen-Foley and Dr Kylie Andrews.Virginia Madsen presented 'Lend me your ears: Creating new publics for drama and performance in ABC radio?' Abstract: This presentation dives into the archives of ABC radio drama, reflecting on this vast but undervalued cultural corpus, asking why and for whom this ‘invisible theatre’ was created. I will focus on two periods where the imperatives of the cultural mission embodied in the public broadcaster delivered new forms at the ABC and helped to sustain a wider theatrical and creative ecology, with benefits not only for Australian artists, performers and writers, but also for the audiences or publics they aimed to create. The early ‘Arnoldian’ period of the drama department (1930s-1950s) concentrates on the ABC’s creation of an expanded ‘theatre going’ audience through offering adaptations of the ‘classics’ to new literary-poetic works and original Australian plays. In the 1970s ‘new wave’, the ABC opened the ‘listening space’ to cultural and political revolutions in form and approach. Here new homegrown provocations met the world radio stage and the audiovisionaries remaking it, enlarging the public’s perceptions of drama and performance. This presentation draws on detailed research undertaken in the NAA and ABC archives, contributing to a history and portrait of the ideas and cultural broadcasting embodied in the ABC’s national radio outlets since their inception, primarily Radio National.
| Period | 10 Jul 2025 → 11 Oct 2025 |
|---|---|
| Held at | School of Communication, Society and Culture |
| Degree of Recognition | National |