The story of the Australian theatre began inn 1789 when a group of First Fleet convicts mounted a production of George Farquhar military comedy, The Recruiting Officer. Starting from this bizarre performance, this volume chronicles the history of the Australian stage to the 1980s (some of it hardly less bizarre) told in the vivid language of the performers' contemporaries and supported by ten essays by leading theatre historians. From Shakespeare to vaudeville, from establishment to alternative and from the art of the gold-boom tragedians to the problems of mounting plays in converted warehouses in the 1960s, the book draws on an an exhaustive search through old reviews and memoirs, much of which represents important discoveries about the performers and performances of our past. Illustrated with black and white photographs.