Australian Women's Book Review Volume 14.1 - School of English ...

method subsequently adopted by Brecht. The three main characters, on the other hand, are not only
given personal names that have a signifying dimension, but also have personal histories and hence, the
depth, of human beings rather than being mere instruments of social control. Due to the duality of
dramaturgical devices and to memory flashbacks, as well as the meta-theatrical devices and the
intrusions of public figures into protagonists' private lives, the sense of discontinuity and
representational instability characteristic of the avant-garde lingers on, but the individual scenes are
much longer than during Hewett's infatuation with Kinostil in the 1970s. The playwright has moved
closer to the modernist aesthetic described by Murphy that 'updates realism's technical virtuosity', while
still seeking to deconstruct dominant social discourses and, with them, the implicit epistemology,
reality-principle and social value system.
The events and emotions that make up Nowhere's protagonists are built of a picturesque series of
encounters, with Josh as a central figure 'wandering amongst reflections of his own persona on the path
towards redemption' and rebirth. The pivotal signifier in the play, its setting, can be largely construed
according to spatial considerations and the symbolic meaning of the showground. Its location on the
edge of the country town suggests a symbolic reference to Australia and its geographical position on
the map of the world. It is the promised country, Alice's Wonderland/Wormland; it is also the 'nowhere'
in which initial settlers ended up - the 'place to disappear' to and live a peaceful life at long last, says
Hewett the poet. When Snow arrived to the showground on the edge of Dry Torrent, Josh was its only
occupant. From that it can be inferred that he ended up nowhere. Vonnie repeats several times in the
play that she is going nowhere, and two of her songs or, rather, two parts of the same song delivered at
the beginning and towards the end of the play, first as a solo and then in a duet with Snow, bear the title
'Going Nowhere.' Consequently, when the couple decides to leave the showground, they again choose
Nowhere as their destination. But when finally Snow turns the signpost pointing towards Nowhere in
the opposite direction, all expectations of a definite solution in the play are dispersed. One feeling
remains, though. When first sung, 'Nowhere' eerily resonated of death; when continued at the point of
the couple's departure it bore the promise of peace, of 'belong[ing] somewhere again'. So, the turning of
the signpost could signify that the land of peace stretches all around us. This is also what Josh's
determination to stay put seems to suggest. For he both refuses social integration and stands his ground
to the very end. 'I'm not disappearin', he says. The 'coming down' of rain that he alone can anticipate,
the rain which is 'goin' to be a real bobby-dazzler' is Hewett's last and most important symbol, her
discourse with Christian heritage and its Holy Scripture - the Bible. For, unlike Noah, Josh climbs on
top of the roof of his shack, closer to heaven and the universe, to await the Flood and watch from above
the purification and renewal of the land that will bring physical and moral ablution as well. The prophet
in him rejoices at seeing once more the torrent that is going 'to sweeten the waters and green the land
again.' The play folds with the soft sound of 'The Rite of Spring' accompanied by church bells tolling
faintly, 'as if under water.' Thus, what stays after the book is shut is the promise of an overarching
revolution of social habit, with marginal people figuring as the heroes with whom our hope should rest.
Or is it, rather, a warning?
Refusal of a closure corresponds with the polysemous nature of Hewett's writings in general and points
once again to what Richard Murphy calls, 'a historical sense of the danger which lies in wait for those
who do not practice some form of epistemological skepticism with regard to what are, in effect,
discursive fictions.' Brecht's argument brings us even closer to Hewett: 'And when the fallacies are all
worn out? The last one keeping us company/sitting right across from us/is nothingness.' But it is in Carl
Gustav Jung's legacy the most significant link to this chain of intertextuality is found: 'In an era which
has concentrated exclusively upon extension of living space and increase of rational knowledge at all
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