“There is a gap in Australian theatre history, which often leaps from the huge one-off success of Ray Lawler’s classic, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1957 to the emergence, at the end of the 1960s, of the ‘New Wave” in Australian theatre, a period when Australian writing and a distinctive Australia style dominated local stages for the first time. Few commentators have paid any attention to the immediately preceding period, however: it is though artists of the New Wave swelled up from nowhere.”

So write Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters, two commentators who give rightful and detailed attention to the decade that produced the architects of the New Wave, undergraduates and recent graduates of Sydney University who were transforming drama on campus and the wider community.

Their book, THE RIPPLES BEFORE THE NEW WAVE, is an informed and fascinating read, a sweeping saga of a massive swell of ambition, audacity and talent that powered the surge of creativity and cultural transformation we benefit from today.

The authors argue that this group had a bigger influence on Australian cultural life than any single group before or since, and when you see the roll call, there seems little doubt. Among their number are Clive James, Germaine Greer, Bruce Beresford, Robert Hughes, Mungo MacCallum, Madeleine St John, Les Murray, Bob Ellis, Eva Cox, Richard Brennan, Jill Kitson and Leo Schofield.

Many continue to make a major contribution to Australian theatre – John Bell, John Gaden, Lyn Collingwood, Maggie Blinco, Ron Blair, Arthur Dignam.

THE RIPPLES BEFORE THE NEW WAVE gives voice to that particular generation of students, pays tribute to them, and celebrates their stories.

This period was awash with productions, both classical and cutting edge contemporary – Australian premieres of Brecht, Becket and Pinter – as well as the ubiquitous University Revues, and created a playpen for players that kick started and sustained a tsunami of cultural change.

The activity was immense and the legacy eminent. As John Gaden notes, these students worked with urgency and application to make a contribution that stretched well beyond the university gates and set the scene for the work of their maturity as theatre artists.

The theatrical landscape at the time had no Belvoir, no Griffin, no Bell Shakespeare, unimaginable now, but back then, thankfully, contained within the imagination, exuberance and application of that generation.

Meticulously researched, THE RIPPLES BEFORE THE NEW WAVE is a thrilling and often uproariously funny read, peppered with anecdotes from the people who were part of it and reviews from the press that covered these landmark productions.

Surprising, entertaining and enlightening, THE RIPPLES BEFORE THE NEW WAVE is surely one of the great theatrical biographies of the year, a story that concentrically still pulses through the body of Australian stage and screen.

THE RIPPLES BEFORE THE NEW WAVE by Robyn Dalton and Laura Ginters is published by Currency Press.