Staging a Revolution: When Betty Rocked the Pram
Set against a backdrop of moratorium marches, inner-city share houses and the rising tide of sexual liberation, the women’s movement and the counterculture, Staging a Revolution is the story of revolutionary times and a ground-breaking play called Betty Can Jump. Using revealing archives and candid interviews with Kerry Dwyer, Helen Garner, Micky Allan, Claire Dobbin, Laurel Frank, Evelyn Krape, Max Gillies, Bill Garner and many more, Kath Kenny weaves a tale that stretches across decades and finds echoes across feminist generations.
On the 50th anniversary of this Pram Factory show, she considers its ongoing impact on Australian culture. She sets out her stake in this story, as a child born into the revolutionary early 1970s, and rethinks her own experience as a young feminist who clashed with Garner over the publication of The First Stone.
Winner, 2023 History Publication Award, Victorian Community History Awards. Longlisted, Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award. The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age ‘Best Reads of 2022’ list.
Order through your local bookstore or direct from the publisher Upswell.
“What a riveting, energising read. Kenny’s meticulous research and extensive interviews with a who’s who of Australian cultural life from the 1960s and ’70s recreates so vividly the heady, hopeful, and often fraught times of Melbourne’s Pram Factory and the APG ... We discover how much we didn’t know about the fight for women’s rights, the politics of revolutionary theatre and the ongoing significance of all the seemingly age-old battles for autonomy and self-representation.
Staging a Revolution is a stunning and stunningly important book.”
— Bernadette Brennan
“Staging a Revolution raises eternal questions about the relationship of politics to art and the possibilities of collaboration over individual achievement. It is a fascinating contribution to current reassessments of 1970s feminism, from Michelle Arrow’s history of The Seventies to TV series — Mrs America or the adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, for example — that recreate the conflicts and debates of the period.”
— Susan Lever (Inside Story)
“Kath Kenny’s lovingly crafted chronicle of the play’s impact and the times – feminism, consciousness-raising groups and bad language, all in the context of the emergence of a truly Australian theatre – rings true.”
— Steven Carroll (The Age, Sydney Morning Herald)
“Kath Kenny's extensive research and sensitive, vivid prose presents the story of this remarkable play for a new generation.”
— Professor Michelle Arrow
“One of the delights of this book, which a review can’t hope to replicate, is its detail.” Staging a Revolution is “a welcome review of place and time and theatre, and an evocation of that moment when as a woman (in my case) you pull clear of your conditioning and gain clarity about the forces that have shaped you. It’s a fine book.”
— Dr Verity Laughton (Australasian Drama Studies)
Staging a Revolution is “a fascinating book, emphasising the personal inherent within the political. It will resonate with the generation who refused to be left holding the baby, and those who grew up to inherit the stage.”
— Nanci Nott (Arts Hub)
“This book has much to commend it: its imaginative, playful and clever structure; its energetic prose; and its wide and varied range of sources. Kenny balances the complex issues and agendas of 1970s feminism against the backdrop of the independent theatre scene with all its own dramas and vulnerabilities.”
— Judges of the History Publication Prize, Victorian Community History Awards