Plays of the 50s: Shipwreck, Sky without Birds, Night of the Ding Dong, The Day Before Tomorrow

The authors in this volume are the precursors of an Australian theatre beginning to be heard in the post-war period, at a time when material prosperity was overshadowed by the threat of the Cold War, and Australians were increasingly daunted by the challenges of mass immigration, the Korean War and what came to be known as 'the cultural cringe'. These playwrights of the 1940s and 1950s made their own theatre.