Scenes Seen : An Actor's Life in Australia - Jim Daly

Scenes Seen

An Actor's Life in Australia

By: Jim Daly

Paperback | 1 March 2025

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A stage animal, Jim Daly has been throwing on the greasepaint and wiping it off over seven decades in the dog-eat-dog world of Australian performance. With significant credits across both theatre and screen forms, from the daring plays of Jack Hibberd and Barry Dickins to the celebration of the Brecht centenary year (1998), appearing in both the acclaimed The Caucasian Chalk Circle at Belvoir and in Arturo Ui at the Melbourne Theatre Company, he has ploughed on into the Twenty-First Century with seven seasons of the Aboriginal play Coranderrk, the ground-breaking headphone verbatim theatre of Roslyn Oades' Hello, Goodbye, and Happy Birthday, and a raft of independent works in 'dirty spaces', including his own performance-research work on the KatynÌ massacre. In between, in the scenes seen in this memoir, is the need to survive and support a family, a necessity spinning him through rocky teaching and hospitality scenes, and picking up a PhD for good measure. This is not a warm story of luck. In a country where performers need a lot of it, his story here brings alive the spiky Australian performing world from the working-actor's point of view. This memoir is a personal career history coloured with dollops of the recent history of Australian performance, theatre especially.

Daly is an awarded, chameleonic Australian stage, film and television actor and scholar, known for Pirate Islands, the legendary 100 Metres Track episode with John Clark, and many high-energy solo productions. From the pioneering days of Australian live to air television in the 1950s, through teaching, including a foray into a religious teaching Congregation, and to the mainstages of capital and provincial cities, and through the rocky, uncertain terrain of so-called independent theatre, his career spans over 70 years. Where most fall by the wayside, he has survived.

Industry Reviews

Rob Sitch (TV producer: Thank God You're Here, Utopia)

'This is a chronicle of an actor's life; the art, the craft, the people and the challenges. No wonder Jim got so good!' (Rob Sitch, TV producer, director, actor)

Ella Caldwell (Artistic Director, Redstitch Actors Theatre, Melbourne)

'Scenes Seen is a great read. Jim's book paints a loving picture of the persistence and struggle implicit in the life of an actor, while celebrating local artists. Aspiring actors would benefit from reading Scenes Seen, not only to gain a sense of history, but to consider this honest and colourful telling of the sacrifices, risks and rewards of their chosen path.'

Stephen Sewell (playwright of the Australian 'New Wave')

'This wonderful book deserves a place on every theatre lover's bedside table as an antidote to the cynical nihilism of contemporary DC Universe swipe culture numbing minds and spirits across the land. Filled as it is with the vibrant colour, charm and disgrace of Australian theatre over the past fifty years, Jim Daly's boisterous memoir, Scenes Seen , shakes with the excitement of one who was there cracking heads and breaking hearts as he celebrates the high and low-lights of the rambunctious Australian stage, reminding us of the profundity and utter rat-baggery of our great shambolic enterprise, A chronicle of the sacrifice, foolishness and sheer creative exuberance of our stubbornly optimistic theatre community, Scenes Seen buzzes with the excitement of the joyous activity it chronicles and celebrates, and reminds us once again of the mad joyfulness of our filthy art.'

Richard Piper (Actor)

 

Jim Daly calls his book Scenes Seen a memoir, but it is much more than that. Yes, it is a picaresque, moving and often comedic autobiography of a life in the theatre, but it is also an 80 year history of Melbourne and Australia told through the eyes of an actor. Daly's pride, conviction and love for his calling is an inspiration, and should be read by everyone. Yes, a memoir, but also a joyful, gutsy entertainment. One finishes the book exhilirated and full of hope, as his commitment and optimism are infectious.

Jim is a true Australian, but there is an Irish wackiness and artistic anarchy in the way he writes, and he writes extraordinarily well.

I finished the book with a sense of pride, grateful for the journey Daly had taken me on.

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