Sunday Arts Magazine

On the play’s 50^th anniversary, Kenny considers its ongoing impact on Australian culture today, and asks why the great cultural renaissance of women’s liberation has been largely forgotten.

In January 1972, five women took to the stage of Carlton’s Pram Factory to preview their women’s play Betty Can Jump. Claire Dobbin, Helen Garner, Evelyn Krape, Jude Kuring and Yvonne Marini mocked the ocker character beloved by Pram Factory playwrights, and performed monologues about men, sex, and how they felt “as a woman”.

Directed by Kerry Dwyer and produced by the Carlton Women’s Liberation group, the play’s frank revelations stunned audiences and shocked the Pram Factory world.

Set against a backdrop of moratorium marches, inner-city cafes and share houses, and the rising tide of sexual liberation and countercultural movements, Kath Kenny uses interviews and archival material to tell the story of Betty Can Jump. We hear from members of the Betty Can Jump collective, as well as others who were part of the Pram Factory world, including Carmen Lawrence, Max Gillies and Bill Garner.

She sets out her stake in this story, as a theatre reviewer today and as a child born into the revolutionary early 1970s. And she asks why feminism keeps getting stuck in mother-daughter battles, rethinking her own experience as a young feminist who clashed with Garner over the publication of The First Stone.

On the book, Kath Kenny says: “I first came across this story when I was researching early consciousness-raising groups and the origins of the phrase ‘The personal is political’.

While I was learning about how these women made revolutionary changes to the world for my generation, I also saw many parallels to the battles feminists are still fighting today. It made me think about how the word ‘revolution’ also means a movement around a circle. While there are many differences between the 1970s and today, there is so much we can learn from this story.”