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Oriel Gray (26 March 1920 – 30 June 2003) is an award winning Australian dramatist and playwright who wrote from the 1940s to 1960's.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher= Austlit )〕 The major themes of her work were "social and political issues such as the environment, Aborigines, assimilation and bush life". Gray was born ''Oriel Bennett'' in Sydney, New South Wales. She came from a politically active family and was herself a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1942 to 1950.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher= Currency Press )〕 She married John Gray in 1940, an actor whom she met while at the Sydney New Theatre and they had a son, Stephen. By 1947 her marriage had broken down and she moved onto a long term relationship with John Hepworth with whom she had two more sons, Peter and Nicholas.〔 Gray died from a heart attack, aged 83 in Heidelberg, Victoria, on 30 June 2003.〔 ==Career== From 1937 to 1949 Gray wrote and acted for the Sydney New Theatre, and it was here that her first play ''Lawson'', a play based on the short stories of Henry Lawson, was performed in 1943. The Sydney New Theatre had the reputation of being left wing and ''avant garde'' and was modeled on the new radical and political theatre movement in the United States. In 1942 Gray was appointed as the first paid Australian playwright-in-residence.〔 She was commissioned to write a weekly radio segment for the New Theatre on 2KY.〔 In reviewing plays, L. L. Woolacott, critic and editor of the Sydney ''Triad'' magazine, described Gray as "one of the most significant and talented Australian playwrights whose work has so far been produced here".〔 The 1955 award by the Playwrights' Advisory Board for best play was given jointly to Gray's play ''The Torrents'' and to Ray Lawler's play ''Summer of the Seventeenth Doll''. Gray's play, with its themes of "feminism and the saving of the environment",〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher= Australian musical.com )〕 did not have popular appeal in a very conservative era, and there was only one amateur performance recorded. It was not published until 1988〔 and did not have a proper release until 1996 at the Adelaide Festival of Arts. In the sixties the play was turned into a light-hearted musical, called ''A Bit O' Petticoat'', with music composed by Peter Pinne.〔 Gray's play ''Burst of Summer'' won the 1959 J. C. Williamson Theatre Guild Competition.〔 The play explores the racial tensions that erupt in a small town when a young Aboriginal girl gains brief notability as a film actress. This story is based on real events when Charles Chauvel's film Jedda made known the Aboriginal actor Ngarla Kunoth, who played the title role.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Oriel Gray」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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