Hate crime inspires new oratorio

The 50th anniversary of the drowning of Dr Duncan will be commemorated in a new composition at this year’s Adelaide Festival.

‘Poofter-bashing’ was the ugly name given to a dreadful sport practiced across Australia throughout the 1970s, 1980s and beyond.

In the state of NSW alone in that time, baying packs of violent young homophobes murdered up to 88 men, their victims’ deaths now memorialised by the artwork Rise in Tamarama’s Marks Park.

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Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts