Kevin Cryan
MV Fellow
I love Midnight Voices!
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Clive James & the pre-professional theatre Sydney
« : 14.03.19 at 19:40 » |
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Watch out for The Ripples Before the New Wave by Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters
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This is an edited extract by Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters from The Ripples before the New Wave:
Drama at the University of Sydney 1957 – 63, (Currency Press)
Quote:It was a night of excitement, a little sadness and not a little envy. I boarded the small passenger ship Bretagne berthed in Circular Quay to farewell Anne O’Neill, my friend through childhood and university, who was sailing to London to marry Leo Schofield. I wasn’t envious of the fact Anne was getting married … but I was a little envious that she was heading for London – Mecca for many new graduates from the University of Sydney.
I was surprised to find so many familiar faces from university days swarming over the deck … until I realised who Anne’s fellow travellers were going to be. Clive James was there in full flight. He was surrounded by fellow aesthetes from his Sydney University days, members of the Sydney Push, and his mother. Others milled around Professor Bill Trethowan, with his wife, Pamela, who had directed many shows for Sydney University Dramatic Society (SUDS), and their three children. They were returning to the UK for the professor to take up a new post at Birmingham University. A number of my fellow thespians from university drama productions were also there – well lubricated by the time the ‘all aboard’ whistle sounded.
We sang Auld Lang Syne on the ship’s deck to welcome in the New Year, and kissed our friends goodbye. Then with my good friend (and backstage worker) Julie Caldwell (Davis), we disembarked down the gangplank and made our way home in a cab through the quiet city. The weather was balmy, the harbour sparkled with night lights, but there were no extravagant New Year Celebrations throughout the city of Sydney in 1961, and it would be many years before Bennelong Point was to display its iconic Opera House.
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Kevin Cryan
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