Harper makes theatre history!

[Denis Salter]

Harper returns archival document to Australia
Last Updated: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 | 9:55 AM ET 
CBC News 
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has presented a 200-year old playbill - the oldest surviving document ever printed in Australia - to his Australian counterpart.

Harper turned over the document, a playbill that includes details from a Sydney performance on July 30, 1796, to Australian Prime Minister John Howard at an official lunch Tuesday afternoon.

"Researchers are still trying to find out how this precious artifact ended up in our library of Parliament, but it is now here where it belongs," Harper said.

"I'm proud to return it to its rightful owners on this auspicious historic day when we're renewing bonds of friendship, celebrating our mutual accomplishments and vowing to work together for a better world."

The playbill, which advertises a performance of Nicholas Rowe's The Tragedy of Jane Shore, was created on Australia's first press by its first government printer.

Archive officials point to the document's importance as an indicator of Australia's growing cultural community and as a milestone of the former British colony's capability to print.

The document was recently discovered in the files of Library in Archives Canada. The agency found the document in a scrapbook from its collection a few months ago.
Prior to Tuesday's return, the oldest Australian-printed documents in the country's national archives had dated to November 1796.

The gift highlights the strong bond, warmth and friendship between the two countries, Warwick Cathro of the Australian National Library told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"It also demonstrates the commitment we have to preserving the often fragile documents that mark the milestones in our cultural development."

 ________________________________________________________________________
"Those who have an orphan's sense of history love history."--Anna in Ondaatje's Divisadero
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"La Pocha Nostra is a virtual maquiladora [. . . ] that produces brand-new metaphors, symbols, images, and words to explain the complexities of our times. The Spanglish neologism Pocha Nostra translates as either 'our impurities' or 'the cartel of cultural bastards.' We love this poetic ambiguity. It reveals an attitude toward art and society: 'Crossracial, poly-gendered, experi-mental, ¿y qué?' " --Guilllermo Gómez-Peña.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Denis Salter
Professor of Theatre
McGill University
________
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/candrama/attachments/20070911/5869e953/attachment.html>