Theatre Links – Ireland and Australia: The Early Years

Abstract

The Irish have made a significant contribution to Theatre in Australia since the beginnings of European settlement in 1788. The first play known to have been staged in the new colony was Farquar’s The Recruiting Officer. The most prolific of the convict playwrights was the Dublin medical student Edward Geoghegan. The first free settler to write a play and have it performed was the Irishman, Evan Henry Thomas. Particularly following the gold rushes in Victoria and New South Wales, the Irish figured as playwrights, actors, actor-managers, theatre managers, and impresarios. Gustavus Vaughan Brooke toured, as did Lola Montez, as did Dionysius Lardner Boucicault. In the event Boucicault’s son, “Dot”, stayed to manage theatres in Melbourne and Sydney and to be the first to offer Oscar Wilde’s plays to Australian audiences. While not all the theatre links between Ireland and Australia throughout the nineteenth century were as symmetrical as a Wilde play, and while not all the characters won through to happy endings, there can be little doubt that the “plot” of Australia’s theatrical history would have been entirely different without the significant contribution made by the Irish.