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The Ballad of Lois Ryan, written by Melbourne playwright Andrew Bovell, was originally developed and performed by the Melbourne Workers' Theatre in 1988.
The Brisbane production of The Ballad of Lois Ryan was directed primarily from design ideas. Ruby Red (director) and Lisa Smith (designer) defined these elements concurrently. Four construction workers, using scrap metal gleaned from Rocklea Spinning Mills and Montague bins, interpreted this brief to achieve the final installation. It is the installation which distinguishes the Brisbane production and which produced a unique artistic architecture for framing and containing the drama.
The play is based upon a true story of a textile worker crushed to death while operating a machine alone early one morning. The play unfolds Lois Ryan's personal struggle – the tensions between her marriage, working, domestic and social life. The play finds its origins in the social realism of the seventies. And it is concerned with that aspect of feminism which recovers women's history, telling "her story." This is also more typical of seventies art in Australia, coming out of the women's movement (such as Vivienne Binns' Mothers' Memories, Others ' Memories to cite a well known example). Both traditions are highly personalised and beg a 'realistic' rendition. Often this has the sad effect of creating a television soap-opera feel, which numbs rather than promotes audience participation. More importantly, realism, as an aesthetic, is problematic for feminist discourse. Realism is the dominant and most privileged form of expression in our society and is therefore inadequate for expressing the marginalised and alternative feminist vision. The stage installation, operating as a governing social metaphor, overcomes these stylistic limitations and articulates a new artistic space