'One Day of the Year' has world premiere in Adelaide in 1960 after festival board rejects it as too controversial
John Rosen as Alf and Julie Quick as Dot in Adelaide's Therry Dramatic Society 60th anniversary production of Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year.
The world premiere in 1960 of Alan Seymour’s provocative play The One Day of the Year was presented at the Willard Hall in Wakefield Street, Adelaide city, amid death threats to the director and others linked to the production and a police presence at opening night.
Alan Seymour wrote The One Day of the Year in 1958, inspired by an article he’d seen in the University of Sydney newspaper criticising Anzac Day celebrants. The play raised hard-hitting questions about the significance of honouring an act of war, and held a mirror up to the excessive drunkenness and violence that seemed to accompany the national holiday. To have a conflict drama where a family might split up over the issue was additional sacrilege. Themes including racism, generational differences, the class divide, mental health and substance abuse also were woven into it.
A panel of judges had chosen the play to be performed at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1960 but the festival board rejected it as too controversial and running the risk of insulting the Returned Servicemen’s League.
In July of that year, the Adelaide Theatre Group, under director Jean Marshall, weathered the controversy and mounted the world premiere of the play in Willard Hall, with some funding from the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. The success of the Adelaide season led the way to the first professional Sydney production that had its opening rehearsal evacuated due to a bomb scare and Seymour's life threatened.
The play eventually came to be regarded as a classic Australian piece and was widely studied and performed.
In 2018, Adelaide's Therry Dramatic Theatre presented the play on its 60th anniversary as part of the theatre group’s 75th year. The production at the Arts Theatre in Angas (next to Wakefield) Street, Adelaide city, starred John Rosen as Alf, Julie Quick as Dot, Christopher Leech as Wacka and Jai Pearce as Hughie.
