AQA (A): Paper 2 Modern times
The first European inhabitants of Australia were mostly sent there in chains. In the eighteenth century, Britain sent many of its convicts into exile in its far-flung colonies. Our Country’s Good shows what happened when the governor of the first Australian penal colony decided that the best thing to do with his charges was to enlist them to put on a play. The playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker wrote this dramatisation of Thomas Kenneally’s novel The Playmaker in time for the Australian Bicentenary celebrations in 1988. The original production toured there, having won awards in London and New York. It stands out as a high point of English theatre in a decade when public support for the arts was being cut by the British government.
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