Jack Hibberd
| Jack Hibberd | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Charles Hibberd 12 April 1940 Warracknabeal, Victoria |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Alma mater | University of Melbourne |
| Information | |
| Period | 1967–2012 |
John Charles "Jack" Hibberd (born 12 April 1940 in Warracknabeal, Victoria) is an Australian playwright and doctor.
Hibberd studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, and resided in Newman College. He worked as a registrar in the Department of Social Medicine at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, in 1966/67. He worked as a general practitioner until 1984, then practised as a clinical immunologist. He is married to the actress Evelyn Krape, and a father to Lily (1972) and James (1974) from a first marriage, and to Spike and Molly.
Hibberd co-founded the Australian Performing Group (APG) in 1970. He was a member for ten years, and chairman for two. In 1983 he founded the Melbourne Writers Theatre, which is still active. He served on the Theatre Board of The Australia Council twice, and recently on its Literature Board.
Hibberd has written close to 40 plays, some of them not full length. His first play, White With Wire Wheels, was staged in 1967 at the University of Melbourne, and is a proto-feminist revenge play, which satirizes male herd behaviour and the men's obsession with cars and alcohol-virility over women.
Hibberd's micro-play, Three Old Friends, opened the legendary La Mama theatre in Melbourne (29 July 1967). This work was one of a number of very short works in which Hibberd reconnoitred the styles of Beckett, Pinter and Brecht. These, plus a couple of longer plays (Who and One of Nature's Gentlemen) made up a season called Brain-Rot (1968).
There followed Hibberd's most popular play: Dimboola, a wedding breakfast farce with audience participation. It was a huge commercial success in the early 1970s, and holds the Australian record for the longest continuous run of a play (two and a half years). It still enjoys some 20 productions a year.
His next play, a long monodrama, A Stretch of the Imagination, is regarded by most connoisseurs as his finest work, embodying a radical advance in the character of Australian theatre, embracing and remoulding as it does many of the strong strands in theatrical modernism. The actor who plays Monk O'Neill has to be a virtuoso. Stretch was the first Australian play to be staged in China (in Mandarin) with a famous Chinese actor Wei Zong Wan as Monk. The production packed a large theatre for six weeks. This play has enjoyed productions in the United States, Germany and New Zealand. In 2010 it was performed in London by Mark Little, a winner of the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award.
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