Australian and European History Re-Enacted. The Argument of Michael Gow’s Historical Dialogue

Abstract

In the introduction to her anthology of Australian dramas of the eighties, the editor, Katharine Brisbane, sums up Gow's dramatic work. "All of Gow’s plays", she writes, "are an attempt to make sense of a country burdened with an im­ ported culture, and of how to express the authenticity of Australia's materialist, anti-intellectual character in the context of a lingua franca of literary reference."1 The former actor and theatre director Michael Gow (b. 1955) ranks as one of the most noteworthy new playwrights of the eighties2 and explicitly commits himself to a creative internationalism. Here, the crucial reference is made to the literature, music and history of Europe as well as America.* 23 Though with a new emphasis, Gow thus resumes a development which began in the late seventies with the work of Louis Nowra (b. 1950) and Stephen Sewell (b. 1953) and which has since been referred to as the "new interna­ tionalism". What once primarily meant thematic universality now in Gow's concept turns into a highly effective stagepresentation of a both lively and dynamic mulinational dis­ course. This involves intercultural dialogue between Europe and Australia, which can best be analysed in the light of an operational intertextual theory whose practical applica­ bility Broich, Pfister and others have convincingly demon­ strated.4 Gow plainly seeks confrontation with European