This article uses historical-ecological insights for a re-reading of two little-known mid-twentieth-century Australian plays, Oriel Gray’s The Torrents and Eunice Hanger’s Flood, which highlight developments relevant to the environmental disasters of today. In particular, the article focuses on the significance of key cultural assumptions embedded in the texts – and a revival of The Torrents in 2019 – including those to do with land use in a period of accelerating development. This approach offers new insights into the dominance of mining, irrigation, and dam-building activities within the Australian ethos, landscape, and economy. One of these insights is the framing of development as progressive. The article thus also examines how development projected as progressive takes place amid the continuing denial of prior occupation of the land by First Nations peoples and of knowledge systems developed over thousands of years. The intersectional settler-colonialist-ecocritical approach here seeks to capture the compounding ecosystem that is modern Australian theatre and its critique. The intention is not to apply revisionist critiques of 1950s plays but to explore the historical relationship between humans, colonialism, and the physical environment over time. Denise Varney is Professor of Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research is in modern and contemporary theatre and performance, with published work in the areas of ecocriticism, feminism, and Australian theatre. Her most recent book is Patrick White’s Theatre: Australian Modernism on Stage 1960–2018 (Sydney University Press, 2021).

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“干旱和洪水”：1950 年代的生态学和澳大利亚戏剧

这篇文章使用历史生态学的见解来重新阅读两部鲜为人知的 20 世纪中叶澳大利亚戏剧，奥里尔·格雷 (Oriel Gray) 的洪流和 Eunice Hanger 的洪水，其中突出了与当今环境灾难相关的发展。尤其是，这篇文章着重于文本中嵌入的关键文化假设的重要性 - 以及复兴洪流2019 年——包括那些与加速发展时期的土地利用有关的问题。这种方法为采矿、灌溉和水坝建设活动在澳大利亚精神、景观和经济中的主导地位提供了新的见解。这些见解之一是将发展框架化为渐进的。因此，本文还研究了在原住​​民继续否认先前占领土地以及数千年来发展起来的知识体系的情况下，被预测为进步的发展是如何发生的。在这里，定居者-殖民主义者-生态批评的交叉方法试图捕捉现代澳大利亚戏剧及其批评的复合生态系统。目的不是对 1950 年代的戏剧进行修正主义批评，而是探索人类、殖民主义、和物理环境随着时间的推移。丹尼斯·瓦尼 (Denise Varney) 是墨尔本大学文化与传播学院戏剧研究教授。她的研究领域是现当代戏剧和表演，并在生态批评、女权主义和澳大利亚戏剧领域发表过作品。她最近的一本书是帕特里克·怀特的剧院：舞台上的澳大利亚现代主义 1960–2018（悉尼大学出版社，2021 年）。