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CAROL-LEE AQUILINE he Deaf Way is an exciting opportunity for Deaf theater in Australia to come up from "down under" and share with a large number of Deaf colleagues from around the world what is happening with us. I am sure that only a very small number of people realize that this year-1989-the professional Theatre of the Deaf in Australia celebrates its tenth anniversary. We have been very much the hidden company of the Deaf theater world-mainly because of the distance and expense for anyone from Australia to contact the "outside world." The Deaf Way has provided that first all-out contact. Although the main focus of my paper will be the Australian Theatre of the Deaf, I would also like to take the opportunity to throw in a few snippets here and there about the amateur companies across Australia. I think it is important to give a little background on the development of Deaf theater in Australia. I have seen old photographs and films of what were called concerts. Unlike concerts in America, a concert in Australia is not necessarily musical, but can be comprised of skits, poetry, dance and music-what in America is usually called a variety show. These records of Deaf concerts from the 1930s and 1940s show pretty young ladies in filmy white dresses mostly performing dance, with some poetry and songs. Many of the songs had a religious theme. Although I am sure that their work and that of performers in the 1950s and 1960s was quite lovely to watch, it was not until the early 1970s that serious thought was given to the formation of a Deaf theater group. Australia's one professional Deaf theater company had its beginnings under the guidance of what was then called the Adult Deaf Society of New South Wales. This group provided an opportunity for local members of the Deaf community to perform in and view theatrical productions. Similar groups were started in the cities of Adelaide, Melbourne, and Brisbane, and, although the Melbourne group has now folded, the other two amateur companies remain active. Following a tour of Australia by the National Theatre of the Deaf i" 1974, the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust began a long-term commitment to develop a professional theater of the Deaf in Australia and hired a hearing director to work with the New South Wales (NSW) group. The early years were spent taking classes in mime, acting, dance, and mask, followed by performances in major Sydney theaters of King Lear, Of Rogues and Clowns, and Five Flights to Freedom. In 1979, with backing from the Australia Council's Theatre Board and the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, the Australian Theatre of the Deaf was launched as a fully professional theater company. By 1986, the company had developed sixteen original productions for school children , with performances in Tasmania, Melbourne, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, plus regional centers and towns throughout NSW. Recently, the company expanded this touring record to include Victoria and Queensland, with the goal of eventually touring all the Australian states. The company has also appeared on local Theater of the Deaf in Australia and national television and before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. Founding member Nola Colefax has been awarded the Order of Australia medal. More recent productions of the company include The Winter's Tale, The Threepenny Opera, Man Equals Man, Waiting for Godot, Sganarelle, and The Lady of Larkspur Lotion. Since 1979, the company has undergone many changes. I am the fifth artistic director , and of course, with each new artistic director come new ideas and vision for the company. It is interesting to note that we seem to have come full circle, in the sense that the first artistic director aimed for as visual a style as possible, with minimal reliance on the spoken word. This philosophy evolved under the second and third artistic directors to mean more sign language, backed up by spoken dialogue. The company's current aim is to find as visual a style as possible that can be understood by everyone in the audience with minimal aid from either sign language or voice. There are many companies and individual performers in Australia today who claim to present visual theater. For some, this means mime, as it often did for our company in its early stages of development. For some, it is abstract images presented with concrete sounds or words to provide meaning. For others, visual theater...

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