University of Adelaide Theatre Guild

The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild is a South Australian not-for-profit amateur theatre company based on the North Terrace campus of the University of Adelaide. Established in 1938, the Guild is formally recognised as a society associated with the University, as well as being recognised as a club within its Clubs Association. It is one of Australia’s longest running amateur theatre companies.

The Theatre Guild formed in 1938 alongside a number of local Australian theatre groups aiming to develop intellectual and experimental theatre, and in particular Australian theatre. In the context of acclaimed international university theatre groups, including the Dramatic Societies at Oxford and Cambridge, its academic founders believed that universities "had a responsibility to support serious drama". In its early days, it interspersed its challenging material with less challenging works, in attempting to both meet its founding mandate and maintain a degree of mainstream currency.

In the 1960s, the Guild hit headlines when it was caught in the midst of a dispute between Patrick White and the Board of Governors of the Adelaide Festival over the premiering of the former's first published play, The Ham Funeral.The Ham Funeral was rejected from inclusion in the Festival, as it was deemed too ‘difficult’ for audiences by the Board of Governors – following this 'controversial' announcement, the Guild’s chairman Dr. Harry Medlin received a copy of the script, and he insisted that it be incorporated into the Theatre Guild’s 1961 season. After a furore of national significance, the performance at the University of Adelaide was well received by critics and audiences alike, perhaps partially owing to an underdog appeal. In David Marr's biography of White, Patrick White: A Life, Australian critic Geoffrey Dutton said of The Ham Funeral that: "[p]erhaps there was among the audience the thought that a reactionary Establishment was being beaten on its own ground, that the evening was going to be a triumph of the imagination over mediocrity. So it was."

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