What is Australian Gothic Theatre?

Answer 1

Hope this helps, Gothic came to signify the imagined barbarism of that time, a "dark age" in history. Most commonly, it referred to the architecture of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Gothic spaces a haunted spot eerie landscapes and sounds night worlds with contrasted light and dark aress ruins, caves, prisons, graveyards impressive built structures bearing significant historical or collective meanings: 'the castle' urban underworlds: sewers, tunnels, dark, polluted, ruined or twisted 'cities' candles, knives, chains storms, moonlight and shadows interiors invaded by threatening exterior forces windows or other permeable spatial boundaries a place which powerfully and malevolently determines the fate of the characters a world which is 'alive' and a participant in the action a plunge into the extreme reality of the dream or fear Gothic characters and themes cross-overs between worlds (living and dead, past and present, normal reality and other potential realities) fluid characterisations: characters who are somehow double or multiple, surreal transformations of character or ambiance a historical absence or silence which becomes all too present all-powerful authority figures, all-pwerful tyrants or relentless fate history erupting into world of the present atmosphere of foreboding or menace the return of the dead (or of the unborn) a feared and dreaded Other a demon lover (whether desired or dreaded) incomplete or grotesque bodies, monsters and mutations cross-species or other hybrid characters mixing animate with inanimate, human with animal, human with supernatural 'shadows' or 'doubled' characters a heroine who confronts the nightmare alone (Australian specials): the lost child in the bush, menacing bushmen, being threatened by the indigenous, the weird and eerie landscape Gothic experiences extreme, perverse or forbidden desires and manifestations of sexuality claustrophobia spatial confinement and imprisonment irony, black humour, campiness, self-reflexivity about the form liberation from a historical world which is dead or dying an underworld journey, a movement from heights to depths, journeys to the centre burial alive, death-in-life attraction towards death dissolution of identity violence or dismemberment stealing or invasion of one's body defeat and annihilation, madness and loss of identity (or fears about this) muteness, physical immobility or powerlessness panic flights towards safety in a hostile or metamorphic world escape from oppression laying to rest the troubled past, healing the monster