by Oriel Gray
ORIEL GRAY was born in Sydney in 1920. In 1937 she became a member of the Sydney New Theatre and later the Communist Party. During her time with the New Theatre she became their resident writer, organising and writing their radio show as well as writing numerous revues, agit-prop plays, one-act plays and four full length plays, all of which were performed by the New Theatre. These plays were Marx of Time (revue), premiered 7 June1942, Let’s Be Offensive (revue) premiered 11 April 1943, Lawson, premiered 11 April 1943, Western Limit, premiered 21 February 1946, My Life is My Affair (one-act play), premiered 14 March 1947, Had We But World Enough, premiered 7 January 1950, Sky Without Birds, premiered 22 March 1951, all at Sydney New Theatre, Drive A Hard Bargain (one-act play), premiered 1957, Ballarat Civic Hall and The Torrents, 1957, Adelaide New Theatre. Oriel left the New Theatre when she left the Communist Party after becoming disillusioned with the party’s policies. In 1954 The Torrents shared the renowned Playwright’s Advisory Board prize along with Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Her last play, Burst of Summer (produced by Irene Mitchell), won the J.C. Williamson Theatre Guild Competition in 1958. Oriel Gray has also written for radio and television. She has written scripts for Rush and The Sullivans as well as working for twelve years as a script writer on Bellbird. Her autobiography Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman was published in 1985 and she has since written a novel Animal Shop.
INTRODUCTION
Anne-Louise Sarks
Even on a first reading it’s clear that Oriel Gray was a master of her craft. The Torrents is an elegant play. It is vivid and playful and insistent. I devoured it in one sitting. Most of all, I adored her characters—especially the women. I was thrilled by the author’s audacity and courage and grieved for how little we’ve travelled since then.
This admiration nudged me towards the obvious question: why had this brilliant woman’s work been relegated to the sidelines of the Australian theatrical canon? How could I not have heard of her? A political playwright creating complex comic roles for women is right up my theatrical alley.
I also had an immediate, if partial, answer to my own question. It is over six decades since Gray wrote The Torrents, and we women are still fighting for equality in our industry and on our stages. Recent announcements of the theatre seasons across Australia revealed that only 38 per cent of works programmed for 2017 were written by women. These numbers, compiled by Fairfax and Playwriting Australia, expose a real and ongoing imbalance in our theatre programming.
Oriel Gray was a pioneering political playwright—and sometime actor—born in 1920. She first began making theatre at the age of seventeen and through her prolific career wrote at least 36 works including plays, scripts for radio and television, as well as a novel and a memoir. Gray learnt her craft as the nation’s first-ever Australian playwright-in-residence (at the New Theatre).
At the time Gray wrote The Torrents the performing arts in Australia were largely confined to imported international works. Australia was only just beginning to claim its own theatrical voice. Our country was in a period of post-War economic prosperity. A recently re-elected Robert Menzies was set to become our longest-serving Prime Minister. It was a time of material progress and cultural optimism as well as a time of anxiety, with the threat of communism looming large. The gender lines that the Second World War had temporarily blurred were being officially reinstated.
It is in this context that a talented and fiercely political female playwright wrote an Australian comedy set in the 1890s. This comedy centres around Jenny Milford, who comes to the fictional goldfield town of Koolgalla to take up a position at the local newspaper. In order to obscure her gender and secure the coveted position Jenny has used only her initials in the job application. She is well aware of the social barriers to her advancement and yet is determined to forge a life and career for herself. When ‘J.G. Milford’ arrives in Koolgalla and is revealed as a woman, the editor (and staff) demands her resignation. A bold Jenny convinces Rufus Norris to keep her.
JENNY: Oh, I don’t think you’re hard, Mr Torrent! I think you’re rather soft. Well, it is soft to get rid of someone who can be an asset to your business … and you know I can be … because you haven’t the strength to be different. It’s rather sad.
RUFUS: [livid] I do as I see fit!
JENNY: They said that too. ‘There’ll be women working everywhere in Koolgalla soon’, they said—‘now that Rufus Torrent has shown the way.’ Oh, most of them didn’t approve of the idea but they couldn’t help—admiring. None of them would have had the courage to engage a woman to work for them. [Comfortingly] I expect it will be quite a relief to them that you hadn’t, either.
RUFUS looks at her. He appraises her move. He is moved to unwilling admiration.
Alongside this plot runs a narrative about Koolgalla, which has almost completely exploited its gold resources and is on the precipice of a crisis. A young local entrepreneur is importuning the conservative older members of the community to recognise the town’s situation and embrace a new sustainable direction for its future. The Torrents is a screwball comedy that, like all of Oriel’s plays, has a political mission that drives the central narrative. Gray knew the power of language and believed in the potential of theatre as an instrument of change.
The Torrents was not entirely unrecognised at the time. In fact it was awarded the renowned Playwrights Advisory Board (PAB) prize in 1955—one of two plays to win first prize that year. The second was Ray Lawler’s The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
Both these plays mark a significant turning point in Australian theatrical history, but while The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was to become central to our Australian theatrical identity The Torrents remained unpublished until 1988, and without professional production until 1996.
That is even more remarkable when you learn—as I did reading Merrilee Moss’ The Sacrifice of Oriel Gray (1920-2003): Australian Playwright—that The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll ‘only just scraped through to win its PAB prize’. John McCallum, in his encyclopaedic and deeply insightful book Belonging: Australian Playwriting in the 20th Century, explains that according to Leslie Rees, who founded the PAB panel, ‘the panel thought The Torrents the “more complete” play, but they were so impressed by the subject matter of the other play they decided it should share the prize’.
The Elizabethan Theatre Trust was established in 1955 to stage the PAB award-winners. The Trust was born out of the recognition that plays (and playwrights) can only develop and succeed in the context of performance. Both the Doll and The Torrents, as joint winners, were sent to the trust for consideration—and financial backing was offered to a production of Doll. It was at this moment that Doll began its meteoric rise while The Torrents disappeared into obscurity.
The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is an important Australian play and deserving of its role in our mythology, but why didn’t The Torrents also find its place in our theatrical canon?
Perhaps if The Torrents had been performed and developed further through professional production it would have. Certainly plays cannot capture our imaginations solely in their written form. Scripts need to live and breathe with an audience. But Oriel Gray never got that professional opportunity.
Why?
Was it a matter of luck? An accident of circumstance? Was Gray’s work too political? Were her ‘New Woman’ and her bold questioning of society too dangerous for the time? Or were Gray’s involvement in the political left and her previous involvement in the communist party a barrier to her acceptance by the mainstream? And of course we must ask what role Gray’s gender played. In 1950 Gray was a prizewinning woman playwright with a play worthy of production. Today, Gray still has not received the critical and public recognition she deserves and The Torrents remain
s relatively unknown.
There is a convenient history—that I believe has become the dominant narrative—that there was Louis Esson and then there was nothing until there was Lawler. Oriel Gray is—or should be—a challenge to that narrative. And she is not alone. She was not the only award-winning female playwright crafting work in the ’40s and ’50s (many writing for theatres like the New Theatre), but almost all have remained unpublished and unperformed. Other PAB-winning playwrights such as Lynn Foster, whose play And The Moon Will Shine won in 1946, and Dorothy Blewett, who won in 1947 for The First Joanna, have been largely written out of our theatrical history. This is not because men have a unique knack and talent for crafting plays. They do, however, seem to have a knack for crafting the dominant historical narrative.
Men also have a knack for following the money. When money became a part of the Australian theatrical landscape men began to dominate—a pattern that has been observed in industries across the world. As Australian theatre moved towards a professional model—not professional in the sense of higher quality, but in the simple sense that money was involved—the ecology of Australian theatre shifted. Women playwrights who were previously as numerous as—if not more numerous than—men, simply weren’t offered those same professional opportunities. It seems women were welcome to dabble in the theatre for their own amusement, but allowing them to be involved in the serious business of making art was far too risky a prospect. Even more so—one would imagine—if that work also happened to challenge the dominant cultural framework.
The transition to a professional theatre model began around the time that The Torrents was denied the chance of a professional production by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. That transition has undoubtedly shaped the industry we have today, marginalised the work of women and has played a part in writing women playwrights out of Australian theatrical history.
Oriel herself challenged the traditional Australian theatrical narrative in her memoir, Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman.
I believe I did become a playwright in that hard winter of the forties and fifties, before The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. The plays I wrote, Lawson, Western Limit, Had We But World Enough, Sky Without Birds, The Torrents, Burst of Summer, have not proved lasting, were not memorable, but I did try to hold a mirror up to my times, and sometimes I think I caught a reflection that no other writer will get because it will never be that way again. I am not ashamed of them.
It is horrible to hear this talented courageous artist speak of her work in this way. The Torrents is no mere period piece—it speaks to our present moment. Gray’s exploration of a town that has almost exhausted its mining riches and must redefine itself to survive is uncannily relevant to Australia today. It is a play about change and how that change occurs. It’s a play that argues for vision and challenges the status quo. It is an exploration of class; it grapples with questions of equality, environmental sustainability and the role of journalism in society. Gray uses Jenny Milford—her 1950s ‘New Woman’—as an outsider, a figure who can question and transform a conservative community.
Oriel Gray had a talent for capturing the essence of humanity and the crisis of a society. In The Torrents she makes these big, complicated and fraught questions vibrant and fun without compromising the political ambition at its core. There’s a lightness to Gray’s writing, but always, also, an edge. It’s direct and sharp and funny.
But it is Gray’s characters that delight me most. And her terrific character descriptions. There’s a real affection for each of her creations in her introductions:
A heavy step on the stairs and RUFUS TORRENT appears in the doorway. He is a handsome, self-possessed man about forty-eight, with thick hair and a magnificent beard, well dressed, his back flung coat displaying a rich, dark waistcoat, strung across with a heavy gold watch chain. In his deep-set eyes, curling nostril and deep-cut mouth there is pride, autocracy, exhibitionism (and withdrawal) and a big slice of charm.
GWYNNE is twenty-one, very pretty and flowery. She wears a riding habit. Just now she is glancing apprehensively over her shoulder…
JENNY comes through the doorway—neat, cool and pretty. She is aware of the odds against her, but she tries to carry it off—and it’s a good try.
Gray has given us a cast of bold characters to express her comedic flair, though with a complexity and truth that ground them. And she has gifted us two extraordinary and incredibly well-drawn women. They’re smart and fierce and flawed. They’re funny and robust and humble. It’s such a pleasure to read Jenny and Gwynne and to watch them grow, and to delight in them challenging the men around them.
JENNY: That’s a very generous gesture, Ben! Oh, why does every man consider himself such a prize that it becomes the highest pledge of gentlemanly honour to marry the woman … yes, marry her, and patronise and belittle her for the rest of your lives together, complimenting yourselves for your divine condescension.
BEN opens his mouth to speak.
No, don’t deny it! Do you wonder, then, that we—the ones you call in your contempt, the New Women—that we fight for our right to an independent wage, an independent mind, an independent life… [Advancing on BEN] and, one day, my fine friend, we will be condescending if we marry YOU!
Gray places her ‘New Women’ in 1890s country Australia and it is a radical proposition. The Torrents asked its 1950s audience to consider where they were, and where they might hope to be in sixty years.
JENNY: The ‘J’ is for Jenny—but I always use my initials. I do not wish to take any advantage from being a woman.
Now, over sixty years since The Torrents was written, I’m still craving women as vivid and complex and funny as JG Milford. And I’m longing for well-crafted, entertaining plays that speak to us about who we are, and who we hope to be.
BEN: Let me urge you to give this thing a chance. Don’t pass up the future for the sake of the present that is nearly past. Don’t pass up the glorious—impossible—realisable chance.
RUFUS: [wanting to save him] Ben…
BEN: [wearily and emptily] I know, Father. I sound like a fool. Excuse me gentlemen.
At the door he turns back, bitterly.
Oh, damn all you old—cautious—safe men. You make the world unsure!
How I wish I could start work on The Torrents tomorrow and spend weeks realising Gray’s world and picking her brain. I’d love to talk with her about our culture and our struggles for equality, about how far we’ve come and how much further we have to go.
In its conclusion, The Torrents is collectivist. Jenny brings about great change in the local newspaper and potentially Koolgalla, but is not given credit. Nor does she seek it.
Rufus Torrent asks his son Ben in the play’s final moments:
RUFUS: And who cares, in the long breadth of the years who dreamed the dream, so long as the common rest of us made it come true?
JENNY is looking at him and BEN, seeing her look, catches his breath, understanding. But RUFUS is looking far away.
BEN: But Father, Jenny—
RUFUS: Jenny is more of a damned fool than I think if she cares for anything less than the achievement. She understands.
I suspect that Oriel Gray, like Jenny, cared more for the achievement than the credit. She wrote knowing full well what she was up against—as a female playwright who wrote about the challenges women faced. And yet she continued to write, into that challenge, against those obstacles, determined to make a place in the world, not so much for herself but for her work—because she believed in the potential of that work to make an impact on the world around her. Her political passion burns in all of her plays. She believed that change was possible, and that it could begin in our theatres.
What made Oriel Gray sad—and you can feel it in her comments above—was that her work did not find the audience it should have. But I am saddened too by the fact that Gray herself did not receive recognition for her courage or her talent. Instead her story has been left as a footnote to a more alluring m
ythology.
She deserved more.
Perhaps that is Gray’s legacy—that young women are now asking these questions, and demanding their place on Australia’s stages. I’m so grateful to have read her work and I hope with every fibre of my being that our nation comes to celebrate Gray as a playwright of talent and vision, and that in the not-too-distant future we honour her legacy by making her dream of a just and equal society come true.
Anne-Louise Sarks
Sydney, November 2016
Anne-Louise Sarks is a director, actor and theatre maker.
The Torrents intro bibliography
Arrow, Michelle, ‘The Play that Time Forgot’, The Age, 9 December 1995, p.219
Arrow, Michelle 2003, ‘Staging a reversal of fortune’, The Age, accessed 23 February 2017 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/08/1041989995569.html
Arrow, Michelle 2003, ‘“Scarlet woman” put us centre stage’, Sydney Morning Herald, accessed 23 February 2017 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/23/1058853137300.html
Blundell, Graeme 2011, ‘In due season’, The Australian, accessed 23 February 2017 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/in-due-season/news-story/7f81206283173a150d59bb9e41f535fa
Bollen, Jonathan, Kiernander, Adrian & Parr, Bruce 2008, Men At Play: masculinities in Australian theatre since the 1950s, Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York
Bramwell, Murray 1996, ‘Pressing Issues’, murraybramwell.com, accessed 23 February 2017 http://murraybramwell.com/?p=2101
Burton, Bruce 2011, Living Drama, Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest, NSW
Clancy, Laurie 2004, Culture and Customs of Australia, Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn
Croggon, Alison 2012, ‘Olive as tragic hero: Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’, Theatre Notes, accessed 23 February 2017 http://theatrenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/olive-as-tragic-hero-summer-of.html
Eckersley, Mark 2014, ‘Indigenous Drama of the Late 1950’s, 1960’s and Early 1970’s’, Australian Indigenous Drama, accessed 23 February 2017 http://australianindigenousdrama.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/indigenous-drama-of-late-1950s-1960s.html