GEORGEORGE LANDEN DANNGE LANDEN DANN1904-19771904-1977

From humble beginnings, his writing and performing career began at Sandgate where his first scripts were performed - 'Odds' and 'Family Failings'.

In Beauty It Is Finished

• In 1931 George won the Brisbane Repertory Theatre playwriting competition for this play

• It was directed by Barbara Sisley - who was to become a supportive mentor and friend

• It was based on the women from the Moreton Island lighthouse - according to a note on the back of this photograph

In Beauty It Is Finished • A controversy erupted after

word of its content spread - with it being called a 'sordid drama of miscegenation' because a white woman of loose morals goes off with a 'half caste'.

• The play had packed houses at 'His Majesty's but most who attended found the content was well handled

• The scandal had a dramatic impact on George who was 'painfully shy and sensitive' according to Alrene Sykes

• (photo of Edith Rowett as Tom's mother Annie in the original cast)

He became very well known within the Queensland theatre scene (Barbara Sisley on the right)

Entered many play competitions & won prizes in

quite a few• Oh! The Brave Music (BTRS 1932)• Day of Roses (Qld Eisteddfod 1933)• Monday Morning (Laura Bogle Luffman 1934)• A Foreground for Fanny (ABC competition

1938)• No Incense Rising (Dramatist Club) 1937-8)• Funerals for Fieldmice (ABC play competition

1940)• Fountains Beyond (ABC Play competition

1942)• Ha Ha Among the Trumpets (Playwright

Advisory Board 1946)• Resurrection at Matthewtown (General

Motors Play competition 1958)• Rainbows Die at Sunset (Newcastle

playwriting competition 1975)

CarolineChishol

m • 'A Second Moses'

first performed in 1939

• Directed by Barbara Sisley and dedicated to her - performed in her honour after her accidental death in 1945 (hit by a taxi)

• Became the play 'Caroline Chisholm' - also version for radio

Other radio plays

• Funerals for Field Mice

• The Giant

• Day of Roses

• Foreground for Fanny

• The Orange Grove

Enlisted in 1942

• Mobile Concert Party Unit

• Performed in hospitals and convalescent units (in Australia)

• Discharged in 1945

• Draws on this experience for 'Ha ha among the trumpets' which is joint winner of the Playwright Advisory Board Competition'

Fountains Beyond (1942)

• One of his most successful plays

• Produced in Sydney, Brisbane, Wales, transformed into a radio play

• First Indigenous cast with production directed by Wesley Enoch for QTC in 2000

Fountain's Beyond

Sea change

• For most of his working life he was a draughtsman with Brisbane City Council, Water Department

• He travelled extensively within Australia to remote areas and Aboriginal communities

• After his father died in 1948 he sold the house in Sandgate, bought land in Coolum and moved there full time after his retirement from the council in 1954

The top part is the house he built in Coolum

Later Works

• Later work - The Orange Grove (1958), Resurrection at Matthewtown (1958), Ring Out Wild Bells (1964), Rainbows Die at Sunset (1975, though began work in late 50s)

• ‘Ring Out Wild Bells’ comedy was rewritten for television and shown on the ABC in 1964

In 1972 he moved to live in an old house on the shores of Lake Weyba, which he rented for $2 a week

Letter to Deborah Rasmussen 1976 - inviting her to visit and to assist with her thesis

In 1977 not long before he died a performance of 'In Beauty it is Finished' was staged at LaBoite Theatre and George presented a speech dedicating the clock at the Hake St Theatre to the memory of Barbara Sisley.

What have people said about his work?

• "The one playwright of the 1930s who dealt successfully with issues of gender and race was the reclusive Queenslander George Landen Dann. He produced a series of mostly neglected plays that deserve to be part of the repertoire. p.66 ... Within the standards of his time Dann was a radical writer even though he was writing to formula...at his best his eye and ear were good, his dramaturgy sound and his material lively and interesting. Always on the side of the marginalised, he tries to give a voice to people who didn't have one when he was writing... The classic example of the talented playwright who did not have an active theatre to write for, his best plays are extraordinarily vivid" John McCallum, Belonging, p 70

• "One of the national forerunners of our 'new era' in theatre has been the Queensland playwright, George Landen Dann, who is still actively writing. It would be interesting, and valuable to have a selected number of best plays by older playwrights such as Dann, published, or re-published..." David Rowbotham, Courier Mail 1962

• "He was to go on writing plays for many years ...Every work he attempted had a different theme. Though handicapped in statement by a certain prosiness of dialogue and a limited power of plot development, he had the moral passion that Shaw declared was all-important, together with something that perhaps struck deeper-emotional simplicity, warmth, and spiritual oneness with the truest life's round him" Leslie Rees, Australian Drama Vol 1, p.169

He died in 1977 after falling ill while prospecting. His ashes were scattered over third bay at Coolum

Fulfilling his dream!

• "I must confess to you an ambition I've never told anyone before - and it's ... I always humbly hoped my name would live after I died and not die while I lived"

• Letter to Deborah Rasmussen, 1977

The New Vintage Collectionwww.playlab.org.au

• New Vintage is a digital collection of Australian plays stretching back to the mid nineteenth century, including the work of George Landen Dann, Arthur Adams, Marcus Clarke, Henrietta Drake-Brockman, Louis Esson and Steele Rudd

• Launched 20 Feb 2013

The New Vintage Project

Susan Davis, CQUniversity, Noosa s.davis@cqu.edu.au

Ian Lawson, Playlab info@playlab.org.au