Alex Buzo
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Alex Buzo (23 July 1944 - 16 August 2006) was an Australian playwright and author who wrote 88 works. [1]
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[edit] Early life
Buzo was born in Sydney in 1944 to an Albanian-born father and an Australian mother. He attended The Armidale School in Armidale and The International School in Geneva before graduating from the University of New South Wales.
[edit] Career during 1960s and 1970s
His first play Norm and Ahmed was also his best-known. It explored issues of racism and xenophobia but attracted attention after an actor and the play's director Graeme Blundell were charged with obscenity for use of the word "fucking". The charges were eventually quashed by the Attorney-General. [2]
Buzo along with David Williamson and Jack Hibberd became the leaders of a resurgence in Australian theatre in the 1970s. Other well known plays that he wrote during the period include Rooted from 1969, Macquarie: a Play from 1971 and Coralie Lansdowne Says No from 1974. [3] He had a major contribution to the 1970 film Ned Kelly. He also wrote Batman's Beachhead, Big River, Tom, The Front Room Boys, and The Roy Murphy Show, and spent time as a writer-in-residence at the Melbourne Theatre Company. His plays have been performed extensively in the USA and UK, as well as the Asia-Pacific Region. In 1968 he married Merelyn Johnson, and has three daughters, Emma (b. 1972), Laura (b. 1978) and Genevieve (b. 1989).
[edit] Subsequent career
Buzo later wrote books including Tautology, Oxymorons, Kiwis, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche: Adapted for the Australian Male and A Dictionary Of The Almost Obvious.[4] His novels included The Search for Harry Allway and Prue Flies North.
In 1999, Buzo wrote Normie and Tuan which again tackled issues of Australian identity after the rise and fall of Pauline Hanson. [5]
Buzo died in Sydney in 16 August 2006 after a five year battle with small-cell cancer. One of his last works was Legends of the Baggy Green, a tribute to cricket, one of his life-long passions.
[edit] References
- [1] The Australian "Playwright Alex Buzo dies" 16 August 2006
- [2] ABC Radio PM, "Playwright Alex Buzo dies" 16 August 2006
- [3] Melbourne Age, "Satirical playwright Buzo dies, 62" August 17, 2006
- [4] The Australian, Op. Cit.
- [5] Two plays, one nation: examining two related works by Alex Buzo, separated by more than thirty years, Donald Pulford measures changes to Australian self-identity in the light of the Pauline Hanson phenomenon and the refugee crisis. (Essay). Donald Pulford. Meanjin 61.3 (Sept 2002): p121(8) accessed through Infotrack 16 August 2006.
