A bursary to assist up to three eligible postgraduates to attend the annual ADSA conference; one of these bursaries will support an Indigenous postgraduate to participate in the conference.
Established in 2011, the Geoffrey Milne Bursary honours the late Geoffey Milne's outstanding commitment to the professional development of postgraduate members of ADSA in particular.
The Bursary is designed to assist students in the first half of their PhD or comparable program at a University in Australia, New Zealand or the Pacific with the costs of attending the annual ADSA Conference. Valued at approximately $400, the Bursary provides funding for a year's ADSA Membership, the Conference Registration, and for attendance at the Conference Dinner.
The Bursary is awarded based on a nomination submitted by the student's Supervisor.
The Association will award three Geoffrey Milne Bursaries for each annual ADSA Conference, and, in years where there is a high quality field of competitive applicants reserves the right to award additional bursaries if rankings of Top 3 cannot be split. Nominations for the Geoffrey Milne Bursary are assessed by a panel of three, including the current ADSA Postgraduate Representative, members of the current ADSA Executive. In 2019, the panel will include Sarah Courtis (ADSA Postgraduate Representative), Glen McGillivray (ADSA President), and Rea Dennis (ADSA Vice President).
Geoffrey Milne was a highly visible and much loved member of ADSA for more than thirty years. A long-time Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, former President of the Association, and editor of Australasian Drama Studies until his death in 2013, Milne was renowned for his commitment to developing the Association, the field of Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies in Australasia, and each and every individual working in this field. Geoffrey was also a prolific writer on Australian theatre history, a long-standing theatre critic, notably for ABC radio, and a generous and passionate teacher. As a critic, teacher, historian and one-time lighting designer, as someone engaged with every facet of theatre's operation, Geoffrey was loved by all those he taught, worked with and inspired. Open and enthusiastic, his humour, shrewdness and warmth of manner infected the industry he loved so much and became an integral part of its character.
Geoffrey was a Brecht scholar of passion and distinction. His lectures on Brechtian sceneography and his readings of Brecht's poems were renowned. In the end, however, it was Australian drama that was his chief pursuit. It was not only the scope of his knowledge but the emotional intelligence that informed his approach. He cultivated particular interests in puppetry, regional theatre and youth theatre. In a life spent immersed in the industry, there was little that he missed. His scholarly contribution is reflected in a formidable series of ADSA conference papers on the Australian repertoire, and in his crowning achievement, the books Australian Theatre (Un)limited (2004), the best panoptic account of contemporary Australian theatre available, and The Space Between (2004), written with Peter Wilson, on Australian puppetry.