Australian Accents on Stage in the 20th Century: How Attitudes Toward Australian English Influenced the Sounds Heard on Stage

This article examines how Australian accents were represented on stage throughout the 20th century, and how attitudes toward Australian English (AusE) influenced what was heard in performance. Although AusE had been in daily use since the mid-19th century, live theatre continued to privilege Received Pronunciation (RP) well into the 20th century. Drawing on linguistic research into attitudinal response to AusE, the article explores how stage representation of Australian accents responded to or reflected social and cultural movements such as the "cultural cringe," radio broadcasting, post-World War II migration and national language policy. The "so-called New Wave" and First Nations theatre of the 1960s and 1970s, followed by the multicultural boom of the 1980s and 1990s, collectively shifted theatre away from RP toward a broader range of Australian accents. Four phases of representation of AusE on stages are proposed: the British Echo, Cultivated Standard, the Anglo-Centric New Wave and finally the First Nations and Multicultural Voices phase. Strikingly, Shakespeare productions sit outside this trend. To account for this, the article considers sociolinguistic perspectives on how accents acquire meaning in culture and performance. Overall, it highlights tensions between British theatrical standards and calls for inclusive representation of Australia's linguistic identity.