David Williamson
David Keith Williamson is an influential Australian playwright and screenwriter, recognized for his significant contributions to the Australian theater landscape. Born in 1942 in Melbourne, he initially pursued a career in mechanical engineering and later taught psychology while nurturing his passion for writing. Williamson's first notable plays emerged in the early 1970s, with works like *The Removalists* and *Don's Party* gaining acclaim for their incisive commentary on Australian society. His ability to capture the essence of "Australianness" through relatable themes and vernacular language has established him as a pivotal figure in reshaping Australian drama, which had previously leaned heavily on British and American influences.
Williamson's career extends beyond theater; he has written screenplays for notable films such as *Gallipoli* and *The Year of Living Dangerously*, and created television projects like *The Last Bastion*. Despite facing health challenges and announcing his retirement from playwriting in 2005, he has continued to produce new works, maintaining a prolific writing pace into the 2020s. His accolades include multiple Australian Film Institute Awards and being named Senior Australian of the Year in 2012, reflecting his enduring impact on the arts in Australia. Williamson's plays often explore social, cultural, and political themes, resonating deeply with audiences and securing his legacy as one of Australia's foremost dramatists.
David Williamson
Playwright
- Born: February 24, 1942
- Place of Birth: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Biography
David Keith Williamson once described himself as “bourgeois . . . the product of a middle-class environment.” However, the world he now knows as an internationally acclaimed playwright and screenwriter has taken him far afield from his provincial background. Born in 1942, Williamson spent his early years in a Melbourne suburb and adolescence in a country town where his father worked in a bank. Williamson graduated from Monash University, Melbourne, with a degree in mechanical engineering. After a year at the General Motors plant, he started teaching in the engineering department of Melbourne’s Swinburne College of Technology.
Even as he was pursuing a scientific education, he had devoted time and energy to writing and producing college revues. At that point, he found the idea of becoming a writer appealing, but his “bourgeois” side kept him in the safe field of engineering. While lecturing at the technical college, he also studied psychology at the University of Melbourne and eventually began teaching the subject at Swinburne. He continued to write, and in 1968, he saw his first full-length play on stage; this work, The Indecent Exposure of Anthony East, has not been published.
In 1970, The Coming of Stork (1970) was produced in Melbourne. In 1971 two more plays, The Removalists and Don’s Party, were produced in Melbourne and later in London. The Removalists, an absurdist drama concerned with gratuitous violence, remains one of Williamson’s most durable works.
The enthusiastic reception of these plays set Williamson on his way to becoming Australia’s premier dramatist, one who would help change the course of the Australian theater. Long dependent on world (mainly British and American) drama, Australians generally ignored plays by their own writers. Such is no longer the case; Williamson played an essential role in this theatrical revolution.
Williamson and his first wife, Carol Cranby, were divorced in 1972. Two years later, he married Kristin Green, a journalist, and they moved from Melbourne to Sydney, the more sophisticated and internationally oriented of the two cities. Overcoming the temptation of many successful Australian writers to migrate to New York or London, Williamson remained in Australia, where he continues to be active in numerous organizations that fund and promote the arts. A modest, unassuming man, he carries his success lightly and epitomizes the professional writer entirely devoted to his craft. The popularity of his work, both in Australia and abroad, has engendered criticism from some of his fellow playwrights, who have accused him of selling out to mainstream audiences and turning away from the alternative theater that served him so well at the beginning of his career.
Whatever the case, Williamson’s plays speak boldly to Australians, particularly to the urban middle class, which makes up the largest part of Australia’s inhabitants. Each play resonates with “Australianness”the language drawn from the vernacular, the theme focusing on a local concern, and the milieu, exact in its representation. Critics have pointed out that the plays reflect Australia's social, cultural, and political changes during Williamson’s career. Yet a drama like The Club (1977), about behind-the-scenes maneuvering in a Melbourne professional sports team, played successfully in London and on Broadway. A keen observer of the human condition, Williamson writes about the world he knows, primarily that of Sydney, a teeming city perched on the edge of a vast, empty continent. At the same time, however, he has caught an elusive universality in his work. Travelling North (1979), for example, examines the circumstances of aging, hardly an exclusive Australian plight. Both as a play and as a film (the screenplay by Williamson), Travelling North, like all of his work, transcends its locale.
Williamson’s most widely known screenplay, Gallipoli (1981), focuses on the role of Australia in World War I when its soldiers met senseless deaths defending the indefensible. He also collaborated in adapting The Year of Living Dangerously—a novel written by fellow Australian C. J. Koch—for the screen in 1983; the film was directed by another compatriot, Peter Weir. Williamson has also been involved in television projects for both Australian and international networks. One noteworthy series, The Last Bastion (1984), was written with Denis Whitburn. This historical account depicts Australia’s dangerous predicament during World War II when Great Britain deserted its colony. Williamson has won four Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Screenplay.
Williamson announced his retirement from playwriting in 2005 due to health problems but returned to it very shortly afterward. In the 2010s, Williamson withdrew somewhat from screenwriting but has remained an incredibly prolific playwright, writing a play a year or more (in 2011, he wrote four). Some of the more noteworthy plays of his later career are Nothing Personal (2011), a workplace power-struggle drama that received a staged reading starring Cate Blanchett; Rupert (2013), a biographical piece about controversial media magnate Rupert Murdoch that Williamson compared to William Shakespeare's Richard III; and Cruise Control (2014), which Williamson, unusually, also directed. Williamson’s additional plays in the 2010s and into the 2020s include Dream Home (2015), Jack of Hearts (2016), Credentials (2017), Sorting Out Rachel (2018), Nearer the Gods (2018), The Big Time (2019), Family Values (2020), and Crunch Time (2020). Williamson's play, The Great Divide (2024), directed by one of his sons and starring another, premiered in March 2024 at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre and continued to look into socioeconomic inequities in Australian society.
Williamson has earned widespread recognition for his work, including winning the JC Williams Award, a lifetime achievement award for contributions to Australian performing arts, in 2005. He was named Senior Australian of the Year in 2012.
Author Works
Drama:
The Indecent Exposure of Anthony East, pr. 1968
You've Got to Get On Jack, pr. 1970
The Coming of Stork, pr. 1970, pb. 1974
The Removalists, pr. 1971
Don’s Party, pr. 1971
Jugglers Three, pr. 1972
What If You Died Tomorrow, pr. 1973
The Department, pr. 1974
A Handful of Friends, pr., pb. 1976
The Club, pr. 1977 (in U.S. as Players)
Travelling North, pr. 1979
Celluloid Heroes, pr. 1980
The Perfectionist, pr. 1982
Sons of Cain, pr. 1985
Collected Plays, pb. 1986 (includes The Coming of Stork, The Removalists, Don’s Party, Jugglers Three, and What If You Died Tomorrow)
Emerald City, pr., pb. 1987
Top Silk, pr., pb. 1989
Siren, pr. 1990
Money and Friends, pr., pb. 1992
Brilliant Lies, pr., pb. 1993
Sanctuary, pr., pb. 1994
Dead White Males, pr., pb. 1995
Heretic: Based on the Life of Derek Freeman, pr., pb. 1996
After the Ball, pr., pb. 1997
Third World Blues, pr., pb. 1997 (revision of Jugglers Three)
Corporate Vibes, pr., pb. 1999
Face to Face, pr., pb. 1999
The Great Man, pr., pb. 2000
Up for Grabs, pr., pb. 2000
A Conversation, pr. 2001
Charitable Intent, pr. 2001
Soulmates, pr. 2002
Flatfoot, pr. 2003
Birthrights, pr. 2003
Amigos, pr. 2004
Operator, pr. 2005
Influence, pr. 2005
Lotte's Gift, pr. 2007
Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Parrot, pr. 2008
Let the Sunshine, pr. 2009
Don Parties On, pr. 2011
At Any Cost?, pr. 2011
Nothing Personal, pr. 2011
When Dad Married Fury, pr. 2011
Managing Carmen, pr. 2012
Happiness, pr. 2013
Rupert, pr. 2013
Cruise Control, pr. 2014
Dream Home, pr. 2015
Odd Man Out, pr. 2017
Jack of Hearts, pr. 2016
Credentials, pr. 2017
Sorting Out Rachel, pr. 2018
Nearer the Gods, pr. 2018
The Big Time, pr. 2019
Family Values, pr. 2020
Crunch Time, pr. 2020
The Great Divide, pr. 2024
Screenplays:
Stork, 1971 (adaptation of The Coming of Stork)
Petersen, 1974
The Removalists, 1974 (adaptation of his play)
Don’s Party, 1976 (adaptation of his play)
Eliza Frazer, 1976
The Club, 1980 (adaptation of his play)
Gallipoli, 1981
Partners, 1981
The Year of Living Dangerously, 1982 (with C. J. Koch and Peter Weir, adaptation of Koch’s novel)
Pharlap, 1984
Travelling North, 1986 (adaptation of his play)
Emerald City, 1988 (adaptation of his play)
Sanctuary, 1995 (adaptation of his play)
Brilliant Lies, 1997 (adaptation of his play)
Balibo, 2009 (with Robert Connolly)
Face to Face, 2011 (with Michael Rymer, adaptation of his play)
Teleplays:
The Department, 1980
The Last Bastion, 1984 (miniseries with Denis Whitburn)
The Club, 1986
The Four-Minute Mile, 1988 (miniseries)
Princess Kate, 1988 (miniseries)
The Perfectionist, 1995
Dogs Head Bay, 1999
On the Beach, 2000
Nonfiction:
“The Removalists: A Conjunction of Limitations,” 1974 (in Meanjin)
“The Australian Image,” 1981 (in Counterpoint)
“Men, Women, and Human Nature,” 1996 (in Double Take)
Bibliography
Blake, Elissa. “David Williamson: 'Australian Drama has Ignored the Elephant in the Room – We're an Unfair and Unequal Society.'” The Guardian, 18 Mar. 2024, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/16/david-williamson-australian-drama-has-ignored-the-elephant-in-the-room-were-an-unfair-and-unequal-society. Accessed 9 July 2024.
Blake, Elissa. “Stages of Family Life for David and Felix Williamson.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Apr. 2014, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/stages-of-family-life-for-david-and-felix-williamson-20140425-377tn.html. Accessed 9 July 2024.
Carroll, Dennis. “David Williamson.” Australian Contemporary Drama, 1909-1982. New York: Lang, 1985.
Dow, Steve. "David Williamson on Retirement, Politics and Critics: 'For Years I Couldn't Go to an Opening Night.'” The Guardian, 10 Jan. 2020, www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jan/11/david-williamson-on-retirement-politics-and-critics-for-years-i-couldnt-go-to-an-opening-night. Accessed 9 July 2024.
Fitzpatrick, Peter. “Styles of Love: New Directions in David Williamson.” Contemporary Australian Drama. Ed. Peter Holloway. Rev. ed. Sydney: Currency, 1987.
Fitzpatrick, Peter, editor. Williamson. North Ryde: Methuen, Australia, 1987.
Hatherley, Frank. "David Williamson: Addicted to Playwriting." Stage Whispers, Sept.-Oct. 2013.
Kiernan, Brian. David Williamson: A Writer’s Career. Melbourne, Australia: Heinemann, 1990. Rev. ed. Paddington: Currency, 1996.
Kiernan, Brian. “David Williamson: Satiric Comedies.” International Literature in English: Essays on the Major Writers. Edited by Robert Ross. New York: Garland, 1991.
Montesano, A. P. “A Dangerous Life.” American Film, vol. 13, 1988, p. 8.
Neutze, Ben. "David Williamson on Writing, Directing, and Cruising." Daily Review, 10 Apr. 2014.
Zuber-Skerritt, Ortrun, editor. David Williamson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.