ALAN SEYMOUR - 1927-2015
ALAN SEYMOUR - 1927-2015
Born in Fremantle on 6 June 1927, Alan Seymour died peacefully in Sydney on March 23. His most famous and enduring work is the play One Day of the Year. First staged in 1958, its swingeing critique of the two-up drunk-fest of Anzac Day was then controversial in the extreme but is now seen as a necessary balance to the jingoism that then prevailed. Its more recent revivals have served the same purpose and its place in school curricula is also significant.
Alan was educated at Perth Modern but left at 15. His first job as an on-air announcer gave him the opportunity to write short radio plays for the station (Radio 6PM) and they were broadcast live: a great education for a playwright. When he was 18 he moved to Sydney and 2UE and further honed his dialogue and plot skills as an advertising copywriter. At the end of WW2 he returned to the West and another educational post: as ABC Radio’s film critic.
The pioneering can-do times meant that by the age of 22 Alan was back in Sydney writing freelance drama for the ABC. At 26 he was director of the Sydney Opera Group and his first play, Swamp Creatures was a finalist in the Observer (London) play competition, when he was 30, its first production was for the Canberra Rep. That success inevitably and naturally took him to London and a long and successful career with credits that include TV drama for the BBC’s The Wednesday Play, the long-running series Frost in May, House of Eliot and Tales of the Unexpected. The TV movie Sara Dane, The Dirtwater Dynasty, a four-part TV adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and for Australian audiences, the telemovie Tudawali and an adaptation of the Bryce Courtenay novel The Potato Factory that vastly improved on the original.
He returned to Australia in 1995 and lived quietly in Sydney where his charm and modesty meant few who met him fully understood his pioneering success and influence - that is until The One Day of the Year was revived in 2003 by Sydney Theatre Company. He was awarded the OAM in 2007 for his services to the arts as a playwright, screen and TV writer and adapter of novels.
Photo by Annabel Moeller/SMH.
