For Jack Hibberd, writing plays came from an “geographical accident”. As a young medical intern in the 1960s, he “fell in with the bohemian” Carlton Melbourne milieu that saw something in his poetry that suggested “monologues of a theatrical quality”.
These “bohemian” friends would later to go on to coalesce around La Mama and the Pram Factory with the Australian Performing Group, key incubators of Australian playwriting and a reminder that artists flourish in a supportive community.
In a self-effacing manner, Hibberd recounted his playwriting began from “theatrical ignorance”. He saw this approach as having “virtue”: he had “no preconceptions and leapt straight in”.
