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Veronica Kelly

Bio: Veronica Kelly is an academic researcher from University of Queensland. The author has contributed to research in topics: Theatre studies & Drama. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 44 publications receiving 158 citations.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Kelly et al. as discussed by the authors studied the use of picture postcards in early 20th century Australian theatre and found that women were major factors in the consumption of the glamour actress card.
Abstract: A hundred years ago the international craze for picture postcards distributed millions of images of popular stage actresses around the world. The cards were bought, sent, and collected by many whose contact with live theatre was sometimes minimal. Veronica Kelly's study of some of these cards sent in Australia indicates the increasing reach of theatrical images and celebrity brought about by the distribution mechanisms of industrial mass modernity. The specific social purposes and contexts of the senders are revealed by cross-reading the images themselves with the private messages on the backs, suggesting that, once outside the industrial framing of theatre or the dramatic one of specific roles, the actress operated as a multiply signifying icon within mass culture – with the desires and consumer power of women major factors in the consumption of the glamour actress card. A study of the typical visual rhetoric of these postcards indicates the authorized modes of femininity being constructed by the major postcard publishers whose products were distributed to theatre fans and non-theatregoers alike through the post. Veronica Kelly is working on a project dealing with commercial managements and stars in early twentieth-century Australian theatre. She teaches in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History at the University of Queensland, is co-editor of Australasian Drama Studies, and author of databases and articles dealing with colonial and contemporary Australian theatre history and dramatic criticism. Her books include The Theatre of Louis Nowra (1998) and the collection Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s (1998).

25 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Kelly et al. as discussed by the authors studied commercial stars and managements in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia, with a focus on the star performer as model of history, gender, and nation.
Abstract: The international circulation of commercial theatre in the early twentieth century was driven not only from the centres of Great Britain and the USA, but by the specific enterprise and habitus of managers in ‘complementary’ production sites such as Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. The activity of this period suggests a de-centred competitive trade in theatrical commodities – whether performers, scripts, or productions – wherein the perceived entertainment preferences and geographies of non-metropolitan centres were formative of international enterprise. The major producers were linked in complex bonds of partnerships, family, or common experience which crossed the globe. The fractures and commonalities displayed in the partnerships of James Cassius Williamson and George Musgrove, which came to dominate and shape the fortunes of the Australian industry for much of the century, indicate the contradictory commercial and artistic pressures bearing upon entrepreneurs seeking to provide high-quality entertainment and form advantageous combinations in competition with other local and international managements. Clarke, Meynell and Gunn mounted just such spirited competition from 1906 to 1911, and their story demonstrates both the opportunities and the centralizing logic bearing upon local managements shopping and dealing in a global market. The author, Veronica Kelly, works at the University of Queensland. She is presently undertaking a study of commercial stars and managements in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australia, with a focus on the star performer as model of history, gender, and nation.

19 citations

Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: The Australian women's writing for the stage is surveyed in this paper, where the authors discuss the role of women in the Australian theatre industry, including boundary riders and claim jumpers.
Abstract: Foreword by the Series Editor Veronica Kelly. Acknowledgements. Contributors. List of Illustrations. Veronica KELLY: Old patterns, new energies. Richard FOTHERINGHAM: Boundary riders and claim jumpers: the Australian theatre industry. Elizabeth PERKINS: Plays about the Vietnam War: the agon of the young. Jacqueline LO: Dis/orientations: contemporary Asian-Australian theatre. Helen GILBERT: Reconciliation? Aboriginality and Australian theatre in the 1990s. Bruce PARR: From gay and lesbian to queer theatre. Helen THOMSON: Recent Australian women's writing for the stage. Joanne TOMPKINS: Inter-referentiality: interrogating multicultural Australian drama. Tony MITCHELL: Maintaining cultural integrity: Teresa Crea, Doppio Teatro, Italo-Australian theatre and critical multiculturalism. Geoffrey MILNE: Theatre in education: dead or alive? Paul MAKEHAM: Community stories: 'Aftershocks' and verbatim theatre. Tom BURVILL: Sidetrack Performance Group and the post-modern turn. Alison RICHARDS: Melbourne Women's Circus: theatre, feminism, community. Peta TAIT: Performing sexed bodies in physical theatre. Works Cited. Index of Proper Names. Illustrations.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Australian career of the young American actor Minnie Tittell Brune exemplifies the complex cultural and economic forces operating on the institution of live theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Australian career of the young American actor Minnie Tittell Brune exemplifies the complex cultural and economic forces operating on the institution of live theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century. Brune focalizes the contemporary processes which reconstituted the international institution of mass entertainment out of the traditional cultural practices of theatre. The theatrical star is seen as both engaging with and resisting the commodification of her labour power; image and talent resulting from her ambiguous industrial role as magnetic 'star' and as managerial commodity. However, the iconic and affective power of the actor evokes strong attachment from significant sections of the newly heterosocial popular audience, in particular from the gallery girls, the young female audience who idolized Brune as a performative personality enacting social self-realization and glamorous transformation. Through reading Brume's repertoire, her social persona as 'star' and her 'emotional' performative style, it is demonstrated how artistic retro-glamour, religious evangelicalism and discourses of sexuality and femininity serve to manage theatre's move into the mass-entertainment age.

5 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored how two sets of creative workers in advertising and magazine publishing handled the ideal of the creative worker and the fun and funky image of these areas of work and found that the subjective investment of these practitioners within particular forms of masculinity and the way, through this, gender was written into the creative cultures of advertising and magazines publish.
Abstract: The “creative industries” and the dispositions of creative workers have acquired a new salience and significance within both sociological and business orientated commentaries in recent years. This has included an attention to the apparently hybrid character of “creative work” and the way this informs the ideal of the self‐expressive creative worker. Our paper takes these claims as its starting point and seeks to render more concrete discussions of these areas of work which have often been treated in an overly synthetic way. Drawing on our earlier research, we explore how two sets of creative workers in advertising and magazine publishing handled the ideal of the creative worker and the fun and funky image of these areas of work. Foregrounding questions of gender and, specifically, masculinity, we detail the subjective investment of these practitioners within particular forms of masculinity and consider the way, through this, gender was written into the creative cultures of advertising and magazine publish...

134 citations

DissertationDOI
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: This article examined the evolution of black musical genres in London and Paris during the late imperial period (1920s-1950s) within the urban music scenes of two imperial metropolises, and how they played an important role on the entertainment circuit.
Abstract: of Thesis This thesis examines black music circulation in the urban spaces of London and Paris. It shows the complexity of the evolutionary processes of black musical genres, which occurred during the late imperial period (1920s-1950s) within the urban music scenes of two imperial metropolises, and how they played an important role on the entertainment circuit. Both cities functioned as sites of crossfertilisation for genres of music that were co-produced in a circulation between empires and Europe. Musicians of various origins met in the urban spaces of the two cities. The convergence and intermingling of musical cultures that musicians had brought with them produced new sounds. This process was influenced by a minority group (blacks), but had a significant and lasting influence on the musical

94 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the theoretical implications of these concepts and look at how ideas associated with governmentality in particular have been operationalised in recent historical writing, including the work of Mary Poovey and Patrick Joyce.
Abstract: In the 1960s and 1970s the emergent domain of social history was marked by a reconceptualisation of the concept of power. The dimensions of power and its operations were no longer understood to be confined to elite institutions such as parliament, but extended to the relations and institutions of everyday life. In the process, social historical writing helped to redefine the notion of the political itself. Since this early phase a number of different conceptions of power have been utilised by social historians, including the Gramscian notion of hegemony and, more recently, the Foucauldian idea of governmentality. This article explores the theoretical implications of these concepts and looks at how ideas associated with governmentality in particular have been operationalised in recent historical writing, including the work of Mary Poovey and Patrick Joyce. In conclusion, the article identifies some of the problems arising from governmentality approaches and sketches briefly an alternative way of thinking about power centred on analysis of the body.

72 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 1997
TL;DR: In this paper, Boldrewood, Praed and the ethics of adventure have been discussed in the context of Australia, Asia and the Pacific, and the boundaries of civility.
Abstract: Introduction 1. The romance of property: Rolf Boldrewood and Walter Scott 2. Outlaws and lawmakers: Boldrewood, Praed and the ethics of adventure 3. Israel in Egypt: the significance of Australian captivity narratives 4. Imperial romance: King Solomon's Mines and Australian romance 5. The new woman and the coming man: gender and genre in the 'lost-race' romance 6. The other world: Rosa Praed's occult novels 7. The boundaries of civility: Australia, Asia and the Pacific 8. Imagined invasions: The Lone Hand and narratives of Asiatic invasion 9. The colonial city: crime fiction and empire 10. Beyond adventure: Louis Becke Conclusion.

69 citations