Louis Esson

Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson (10 August 1878 – 27 November 1943) was an Australian poet, journalist, critic and playwright.

Louis Esson in 1900

Esson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland but moved to Melbourne, Australia when he was three. He attended the University of Melbourne and began working as a journalist and playwright after.[1]

In the 1920s he was a co-founder of the Pioneer Players, a theatre company dedicated to the performance of Australian plays and the development of a national theatre. The Pioneer Players produced 18 new Australian plays in their four years of existence. The Pioneer Players have been called "a mismanaged collection of fly-by-night amateurs, but somehow he has come to be called 'The Father of Australian drama'".[2]

Select plays

  • Dead Timber (1911)
  • The Time is Not Yet Ripe (1912)
  • The Woman Tamer
  • The Sacred Place
  • The Drovers (1922)
  • Mother and Son (1923)
  • The Bride of Gospel Place (1926)

References

  1. "LOUIS ESSON". The Sydney Morning Herald. National Library of Australia. 18 June 1938. p. 21. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
  2. John McCallum, "Century of Theatre", Weekend Australian, 3–4 July 1999, Review, p. 20



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