Remembering Barry Humphries, the man who enriched the culture, reimagined the one man show and upended the cultural cringe

By Anne Pender, Kidman Chair in Australian Studies and Director, JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide

Barry Humphries began his career as a Dadaist. His street performances around Melbourne in the early 1950s foreshadowed performance art in Australia. He was the most daring student prankster Melbourne University had ever known.

Years later, academic Peter Conrad accurately described Humphries’ adolescence as a “one man modern movement”.

The young man secured his first paid acting role after a number of complaints from various women about a Dadaist event called Call Me Madman!, staged at the…

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