The Australian Stage represents an interesting intersection between the academic world and the creative arts, between the long perspective of the historian, and the ephemerality of theatre performances. Its methodology is academic; it proceeds from an examination of documents, of written records of an art form only one aspect of which we think of as being written, the actual texts of plays. However, these are not the documents in question (although some bibliographical information about the plays is also included); rather it is the responses to performances, particularly reviews, written reminiscences, playbills, newspaper reports, which provide, collectively, the material for a historical survey of theatre in Australia.

Thus the accompanying analysis is historical rather than literary; it is about the society which produces theatrical performances, rather than about the aesthetic judgments that might be made from an examination of what was performed. These documents have a cultural significance partly because from them we can read a sequential story, adding to our knowledge of a developing national consciousness. How a nation entertains itself is indeed revealing, even if you exclude sport, and it is hardly surprising to find charted here a classic tale of decolonialization. That an indigenous cultural identity has been successfully established can hardly be doubted now that governments subsidise both writers and performers. Useful as such a history as this is in understanding - the processes by which we reach today’s status quo, there are still a number of questions left in abeyance, some of them pot really elucidated by history; nor amenable to an academic approach.