LEON BRODZKY: Plays The Humour of It (1912) Rebel Smith (1925)

This volume contains the two extant plays of Leon Brodzky (1883-1973): the satiric farce  'The Humour of It' (1912)presented at the Court Theatre London (directed by Maurice Elvey); and apolitical comedy of manners 'Rebel Smith' (1925), intended for production (but abandoned) by Louis Esson's Pioneer Players. The volume also contains an extended biography,  along with a selection of Brodzky writing that forms crucial foundation documents in the history of both the provincial and repertory theatre movements in Australia. This is Volume 1 in the Janus Imprint Australian Heritage Drama Series.

Australian journalist and playwright Leon Herbert Spencer Brodzky (Spencer Brodney)(1883-1973) has been neglected by mainstream theatre historians, and yet his influence on the emerging provincial and repertory theatre movements inAustralia post-Federation is substantial. Much like his father, journalist and founding editor of Table Talk Maurice Brodzky (1847-1919), Leon was an intellectual maverick. He was already actively engaged on his father's weeklymagazine when he enrolled in an Arts Degree at Melbourne University agedseventeen. On graduation in 1903 Leon provided the first great clarion call for 'the local dramatist' in a major article in Adelaide's 'The Critic.' 'He mayfairly lay claim,' wrote the 'Graphic of Australia' in 1917, 'to being the originatorof the Melbourne movement which ultimately produced the Repertory Theatre' in Australia. Meanwhile, Leon relocated to London then, during the War, to NewYork when he continued his career in journalism. He worked for the New YorkTims, ultimately editor of their Current History magazine.  He married Edith Siebel in 1918,  and they had two sons. He died in  1973.

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