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6. Kilkenny, Melbourne, New York: George Tallis and the Irish Theatrical Diaspora
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7 8 6 Kilkenny, Melbourne, New York George Tallis and the Irish Theatrical Diaspora p e t e r k u c h On the 30th of September 1886, when the seventeen-year-old George Tallis from Callan, Co. Kilkenny, accompanied by his sister Charlotte, stepped off the steamship Orizba at Port Melbourne, he would hardly have been aware that he was taking his first steps into theatrical history. Yet, within half a century of arriving in Australia, he would control one of the largest theatrical organizations in the world and be honored with a knighthood that acknowledged him “as head of the theatrical profession” in his adopted country. First, what was the theatrical culture that George Tallis encountered when he began working in the theater in Australia? By theatrical culture I mean the actors and artistes he would have remarked, watched, or met; the theatrical bill-of-fare he would have experienced—whether light opera, comic opera, opera, Shakespeare, melodrama, pantomime, musical, or serious play; the material culture he would have encountered—the state of the theaters, lighting and sound, costumes, scenery, and special effects—all the so-called furniture of the stage; and finally the management practices that would have engaged his attention—negotiating contracts, advertising, methods of booking and selling tickets, accounting practices, insurance, and staff management. Second, what impact did George Tallis have on the theater in Australia up to and including his first two visits to America—the first in 1902 and the second in 1918? By then, Tallis had been working in the Australian theater for over a quarter of a century. What impact did he make? How did his American visits contribute to that impact? And what conclusions might be drawn about George Tallis’s role for the Irish theatrical diaspora? Kilkenny, Melbourne, New York | 79 His background and his reasons for coming to Australia were little different from those that had brought thousands of his fellow Irishmen to the other side of the world—concern for family and the search for work. George Tallis was born on 28 October 1869, the youngest of ten children, to John and Sarah Tallis of 18 Bridge Street, Callan, a small town approximately half-way between Clonmel and Kilkenny. 18 Bridge Street was part grocery store and part off-license and had been purchased by John Tallis eight years before George’s birth in 1861 with the proceeds from the sale of a thirtyacre farm he had inherited. The Tallises were Church of Ireland; their family church, St. Mary’s, was on the same street as their business. George and his four brothers and five sisters would only enjoy their father’s company for a comparatively short time, for John Tallis died at the age of seventy, just as his youngest son was turning seven. Sarah managed to keep the family together for a further seven years, until 1883, at which time she took her youngest daughter, Charlotte, to Dublin, where she set up a couturier’s business . George, now fourteen, went to live with three of his sisters in Kilkenny where they set up a similar business. In June of that year two of his brothers, John and Henry, lured by accounts of Australia from Sarah’s brother, Richard (Dick) Nicholson, decided to emigrate, partly for reasons of health and partly to seek their fortune. The following year, the fifteen-year-old George secured a job as a cadet reporter on the Kilkenny Moderator. But if things were going well for the Tallis women, they were not going equally well for the Tallis men. Some time in either 1884 or 1885 George Tallis lost the sight of one eye when he was pushed on the stairs of St. Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny and fell against an ornamental iron barb. Meanwhile, his brothers, Henry and John, who had arrived in Sydney in 1883 and settled in an area known as the Rocks, were finding Australia was far from the land of promise they had crossed the oceans to find. John became seriously ill and died in Sydney Hospital in mid-1884 or 1885. He is buried at Rookwood. Henry, who was a jeweler, found it difficult to obtain work, moving first to Silverton near the great mining city of Broken Hill and then to the long-established Irish settlement of Maldon, about 60 miles north of Melbourne. But when accounts of the parlous state of his health began filtering back to Dublin, Sarah Tallis...