Presentation — Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art (ADWA 2021)

Citation: Stacy Holman Jones, Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art, Australian Directors and Writers Association (ADWA), 2021. This presentation introduces the Staging Australian Women’s Lives (SAWL) ARC Discovery Project and examines the historical and contemporary conditions shaping womxn’s participation in Australian theatre. Drawing on feminist theatre scholarship, policy analysis, and industry reports, the presentation outlines the project’s aims to document womxn theatre practitioners’ legacies, analyse creative responses to gender-based inequality, and explore theatre as a form of socially engaged research and activism. It also details the project’s methodologies, including interviews, focus groups, digital archiving, and collaborative creative practice, while situating SAWL within broader feminist and intersectional debates about representation, labour, diversity, and cultural memory in Australian performance history.