Ray Lawler

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Raymond Evenor Lawler (23 May 1921 - ), born Footscray, Victoria, Australia was an influential Australian actor, dramatist and producer. His most notable play was Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1953), which had its premiere in Melbourne. The story of The Doll is preceded by Kid Stakes, set in 1937, when the characters of The Doll are children, and then Other Times, which is set in 1945 and includes the same characters.

Lawler played the role of Barney at the premiere of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1954.^[1] It was his tenth play. The play changed the direction of Australian drama.^[2]

[edit] Notes from The Shifting Heart

Ray Lawler was born in Footscray, Melbourne, in 1921, second of eight children of a council worker. He left school at thirteen to work in a factory and attended evening acting classes. He wrote his first play at the age of nineteen; Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was his tenth play. Several of his early works saw amateur productions.

He first attracted attention as a writer in 1952 when his play Cradle of Thunder was presented by the National Theatre Competition. In 1955, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll drew first prize in the Playwright Advisory Board Competition with Oriel Gray’s The Torrents and was subsequently presented by the Union Theatre with Lawler in the role of Barney Ibbot. The play was taken up by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust and presented in all Australian states as well as London and New York. It won the Evening Standard Award for the best new play on the London stage in 1957. Since then it has been translated into many languages and performed in many countries.

Lawler went to London with the cast and lived in Denmark, England and then in Ireland. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll was followed by The Piccadilly Bushman (1959), presented in Australia by J.C. Williamson’s and published by Angus and Robertson (1961); The Unshaven Cheek, presented at the 1963 Edinburgh International Festival; and A Breach in the Wall, about St Thomas Becket (televised in 1967[2], produced at Canterbury in 1970).

In 1972 he visited Australia for the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of The Man Who Shot the Albatross, a version of the Governor Bligh story; and then in 1975 returned to settle in Australia as associate director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, with an agreement to complete a trilogy based on Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

The first play, Kid Stakes, opened in December 1975 and the second, Other Times, in December 1976. The Doll Trilogy had its first full performance at the Russell Street Theatre, Melbourne, on 12th February 1977.

Ray Lawler is married to Jacqueline Kelleher, a former Brisbane actress. They have three children and three grandchildren.

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