In his new memoir An Eye for Talent: A Life at NIDA, former Director John Clark describes NIDA’s profound impact on Australia’s arts and culture, and the creativity and theatres it seeded – including at an old church hall around the corner from NIDA. In this extract, he discusses the staging of a new Australian play, The Legend of King O’Malley, at the Jane Street Theatre in 1970.
NIDA students convert a disused chapel into the Jane Street Theatre. Photo supplied
On a cold winter evening in 1970 80 brave theatregoers found their way to the tiny Jane Street Theatre, hidden away in a narrow Kensington backstreet surrounded by stables housing the horses that raced at Randwick Racecourse.
They had come to see yet another try-out of a new Australian play. Some had been there before and found the experience less than memorable. This time, they found the tiny foyer crowded with musicians and circus performers, including Pamela Stephenson as a half-man, half-woman. They were handed song sheets and ushered into the auditorium where a Southern American revivalist meeting was in full swing, led by King O’Malley, the First...
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