THE PUBLICATION of Theatre Quarterly's feature on Australian theatre in its Summer 1977 number seemed at the time one of a number of tokens of the coming of age of ‘the new Australian drama’. It is probably a truer sign of maturity that the present revisiting of the subject offers a form of international recognition which, though still very welcome, seems now a less important and alluring prospect. Australia's cultural cringe – the over-dependence on the models and approval of the parent country which was one of our more notorious legacies of colonialism – is not as noticeable in the theatre these days as it was even in the mood of heady self-conscious nationalism of the early 'seventies.