Ray Lawler – March 10 2019

Photo: Sam Mooy

Ray is an actor, dramatist and producer. He left school at 13 to work in a factory and attended evening acting classes. Ray wrote his first play at age 19. His most notable play was his tenth, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, in which he played Barney in the 1955 premiere. His other plays include Hal’s Belles, Cradle of Thunder, The Unshaven Cheek, A Breach in the Wall, The Man Who Shot the Albatross, which has been made into a TV movie, and Godsend. Ray lived abroad from 1957 to 1975 when he returned to become the Literary Adviser to the Melbourne Theatre Company and direct a number of their productions. He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1981 Queen’s New Years Honours List for his services to the performing arts.
The Doll Trilogy
Currency Press, 2015; (Edition 3, illustrated, revised)
ISBN 9780868195049; Full length plays; 4 female, 3 male
Kid Stakes: A joyful portrait of the summer of the first doll, in which a chance encounter brings Olive and Emma, Roo and Barney, into the shabby Carlton terrace to begin a seventeen year journey of seasonal love and argument. Kid Stakes introduces the fun-loving Nancy, who has left the scene by the seventeenth summer, adding a new poignancy to the story.
Other Times: The middle play of Ray Lawler’s Doll Trilogy is set during the Second World War, in late winter, when Barney and Roo are on leave from the army. Other Times is the fulcrum of the three plays in which the characters stop being kids and become adults. Middle age is looming and life is no longer just a game. Things are changed forever by Nancy’s decision, setting the stage for Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll: Ray Lawler’s 2012 revised script of his (and Australia’s) most famous play, in which two larrikin canecutters and their women awaken to middle-age. The impact of The Doll cannot be over-stated. Its success both here and abroad was quickly recognised as a defining moment in Australian theatre history.

The Piccadilly Bushman
Currency Press, 1959; ISBN 086819560X
Full length play; 3 female 5 male
An expatriate actor, Alec Ritchie, hoping to save his marriage, returns to Australia for the making of a British film about his country. Questions of divided loyalty arise that force Alec to confront both his regard for his family and his attitude to the homeland he left ten years before. A major work, even more relevant now than at its premiere in 1959, confirming Lawler’s reputation as the visionary father of modern Australian theatre.