Australia in the 1970’s
An Introduction to the social context of
Cosi
What do we know about
Australia in the 1970s?
 Class brainstorm
The decade in context:
• The political and social unrest of the 1960’s carried over into
the 1970’s. This mirrored social movement throughout other
Western countries.
• Widespread protest against Australia’s involvement in the
Vietnam war led to the removal of troops in 1972. (Show
clips)
• Prime Minister Gough Whitlam instituted a range of
Government reform in his three year tenure. In 1975 he was
controversially dismissed.
• The women’s rights, indigenous rights and environmental
movements all made progress in the 1970’s.
American and British influences
• The Australian identity has continually evolved from over the decade,
from that of a white British colony, to a diverse global culture.
• In 1973, American dominance of the Australian music industry prompted
the introduction of local content quotas on radio.
• Government assistance led to a resurgence of the Australian film
industry in the 1970s
• Australian television was saturated with American programs in the
1970s, but local content steadily improved in quality and quantity.
• Australian sport held fast to its British roots for many years, but has
recently adopted the glitzy presentation and TV-friendly conventions of
American sport.
An introduction to the play
within a play- Mozart's Cosi
Fan Tutte
 Throughout the play the characters are engaged in putting on
a performance of Mozart’s opera Cosi Fan Tutte.
 The title of this play roughly translates into “Women are like
that”
 It is incredibly important that Nowra elected to include this
opera as his play within a play.
 It reveals the hidden motives of Cosi’s characters and the
underlying concerns of the play.
 So it is important to understand what the opera is about to
give some context to our text.
 http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/syno
psis.aspx?id=119
The Music of the Spheres
 Cosi clip.
An introduction to the play Cosi
 Louis Nowra wrote the play Cosi
 It was first performed in 1992
 It is set in 1971 Melbourne
 The play is semi-autobiographical (Nowra based the play
on some of his own experiences working in a mental
asylum)
 As a class read through The Age Cosi sheet.
 http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=136
&intversion=251
In Nowra’s own words (from
the introduction of the play)
 “Madness both frightened and attracted me” (p.xvi)
 “This (looking at the time the play is set in) was 1971 and the
era of R.D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist whose view of
madness was oddly reassuring in a decade going crazy. One
of his ideas was that labelling people mad was to stigmatise
them, and that many mentally ill people should be allowed to
go totally mad- once at rock bottom they would find
themselves again” (p.xvi)
 “This was also the era when chemicals began to control
many of the wilder excesses of madmen” (p.xvi)