Sunday, April 6, 2014

A 'Bran Nue Dae' - Indigenous Australian Drama in the 1990's




(Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this document/blog may contain images and names of people who have since passed away) 



Image from ‘There’s Nothing I Would Rather Be’ song and dance sequence from ‘Bran Nue Dae’

The ability of modern Australian indigenous dramatists to combine Indigenous motifs, totems and structures with European theatrical styles and techniques represents an emerging modernity and complexity of Australian Indigenous Drama from the late 1980's onwards. During the 1990’s this is embodied in the zen formalism of Women’s Dreaming (1990), the wit, eclecticism and vibrance of Jimmy Chi and Kuckles band's Bran Nue Dae (1990), the earthy exuberance of Maureen Watson's Mairwair (1990), the intellectual complexity of Mudrooroo's futuristic play The Aboriginal Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller (1991) the ritualistic qualities of Eddie Bennell's My Spiritual Dreaming (1992) and the dynamic, sensual and cerebral works presented at Sydney's 1997 Festival of Dreaming including the play Mimi. Many of the plays of the early 1990’s have not been published but a sense of the complexity of modern Indigenous Drama can also be gained from a study of modern Indigenous political dramatic form and context in the films of Tracey Moffatt.

In 1989/1990, Bran Nue Dae hit the stage and indigenous drama became mainstream.

There's nothing I would rather be
Than to be an Aborigine
and watch you take my precious land away.
For nothing gives me greater joy
than to watch you fill each girl and boy
with superficial existential shit.”

From Bran Nue Dae by Jimmy Chi and the Kuckles band

Bran Nue Dae, by Jimmy Chi and the Kuckles band has become the most popular indigenous drama of all time. Chi, a musician/writer of Indigenous, Chinese and Japanese cultural heritage, and his band the Kuckles, started Bran Nue Dae as part of their band stage show. After the 1988 workshop readings at the 2nd National Black Playwright’s Conference, the musical was finally produced in small production in Broome in 1989 before it started to be produced for national tours in 1990 and 1991. The wit, humour and irony evident in this piece, helps to drive its more weighty messages which address significant issues such as identity, race relations, sense of belonging and place. 

The story is as silly as that of any grand opera. What audiences respond to is the way the play invites them to share the joy, the outlook and the resilient humour of being an ‘aborigine’ through the music. The music is a smorgasbord of every style ever heard on a transistor radio in the bungalows of Broome, Chi’s hometown. Today Broome is a prosperous resort town with an international airport, but once, it was the centre of Australia's pearl fishing industry, attracting Asian divers and fishermen and other colourful characters. Its history probably contained a greater ethnic mixture than anywhere else in Australia until the mass immigration of post WWII. Bran Nue Dae, stands as a beacon at the beginning of the 1990’s as a sign of the pride, hope and optimism of indigenous people in Australia in the 1990’s.

As indigenous film maker and director Rachel Perkins once said when interviewed about her film adaptation of the stage musical:

I saw it in my early 20’s when I had just moved back to Sydney from Alice. I went up to the Parramatta Theatre with my boyfriend and we had so much fun and we just laughed and the music was so great. The dancers were all indigenous and sexy and fun and I felt proud that it was sexy and fun to be an aboriginal. I just wanted to be in the show and that wasn’t going to happen since I hadn’t acted since years ago but I wanted to be part of it. I felt so proud to be an aborigine…
(Eckersley 1997: Appendix 4, 236)

In Western Australia in 1991, the Black Swan Theatre Company (later to become known as the Black Swan State Theatre Company) was established as a W.A. State Flagship Theatre Company under the Artistic Directorship of Andrew Ross. Ross had worked extensively with Jack Davis during the 1980’s to foster indigenous drama and their initial productions of Bran Nue Dae and Jimmy Chi’s Corrugation Road were extremely successful and started partnerships between this Western Australian company and companies such as the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne and the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney.

Bran Nue Dae was not the only indigenous drama of note which came out Western Australia during the early 1990’s. In 1990, the Deckchair Theatre Company workshopped and produced Eddie Bennell’s lyrical first play The Silent Years. This play was soon followed up with a 1992 production of Bennell’s lyrical My Spiritual Dreaming. With the continuing work of Jack Davis, Jimmy Chi and Eddie Bennell, people could be forgiven for thinking that Indigenous Australian Theatre in the eastern states consisted primarily of mounting revival productions from Western Australia. 1991 also saw the sad passing of the young Indigenous playwright, director, actor and administrator Vivian Walker. Within two years his mother, the great Indigenous poet, playwright and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal was also dead.

In 1990 and 1991, Brian Syron went on to work on many projects including training actors and to workshop many indigenous scripts. He carried out a two-week workshop, a stage reading plus a production in 1991 at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Redfern in Sydney of a new play by Mudrooroo Narogin (also known as Colin Thomas Johnson). 


Mudrooroo was a novelist and poet who was brought under the wing of the novelist Mary Durack after he had served time in jail. He lived in India and Nepal for many years.  It was around 1990 that Mudrooroo came up with the idea of creating an Australian indigenous drama text to ‘interpenetrate’ the play by the German playwright Heiner Muller entitled Der Auftrag (The Commission). Mudrooroo was put in a house at Sydney University, given access to the library and indigenous actors and after six weeks he created a script for the play The Aboriginal Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller. The play is probably one of the first indigenous plays set in the future (albeit the near future of 2001). Eventually after much rewriting and editing, it was staged in Sydney under Brian Syron’s direction and starred Justine Saunders, Michael Watson, David Kennedy, Pamela Young, Ray Kelly and Graham Cooper. The play and the production are also the subject of Mudrooroo Narogin's book The Mudrooroo/Muller Project - A Theatrical Casebook, with a chapter by Syron and edited by Gerhard Fischer in collaboration with leading indigenous academic Paul Behrendt and Syron. This is a pivotal document in terms of Indigenous dramaturgy and intellectual analysis and documentation of modern Australian Indigenous drama. Eventually, the production was taken overseas to a European festival in Weimar, Germany and was staged movingly in the remains of the concentration camp at Buchenwald where the Romany people were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. This evil place acted as the inspiration for Mudrooroo’s as yet unproduced Indigenous Greek Tragedy verse drama Iphigenia in Buchenwald.

Just as the New Theatre in Melbourne had forged strong links with indigenous drama, the Melbourne Workers’ Theatre started an active program to develop and stage indigenous during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The drive for this came from many forces including playwright John Romeril’s long-standing mission to help develop indigenous drama since his work with Bob Maza and Jack Charles on Bastardy in the 1970’s. In 1990, the Melbourne Workers Theatre helped Northern Territory playwright and poet Roger Bennett developed Up the Ladder, a piece about his father’s life as an indigenous sideshow boxer in the 1950’s.



This play was staged by the Melbourne Workers Theatre and other companies many times during the 1990’s. Through contacts with the playwrights John Romeril and Andrew Bovell, strong connections between Australian indigenous playwrights and performers and the Melbourne Workers Theatre were formed similar to the strong support and connection set up by Socialist like Dorothy Thompson and the New Theatre Melbourne with indigenous performers and writers. The 1990 production of Archie Weller’s Nidjera was a strong piece dealing with notions of identity.

Roger Bennett’s Funerals and Circuses followed soon after in 1992. This episodic musical play included music by Bennett’s good friend and legendary Australian musician and ballad writer Paul Kelly



The play deals with the consequences of a ‘mixed’ marriage in a country town and uses powerful characters to explore violence, domestic abuse and both white and black prejudices. Kelly’s music provided an objective musical commentary on this piece that moves from realism to black comedy. The set design for the original production was done by a number of indigenous artists. Bennett’s unexpected death in 1997 cut short one of the great careers of an Australian playwright.


Indigenous Drama of the 1990's shows that the ideology of an unchanging Indigenous society based entirely on a kind of primordial Indigenous cultural essence totally disregards the contemporary Indigenous contexts. Indigenous Drama has, and always will be, a complex and vibrant dramatic form that is based in the sophisticated Indigenous storytelling traditions. The movements of this time, paved the way for a new generation of Indigenous playwrights and playmakers including Vivienne Cleven, Jane Harrison, Geoffrey Narkle and Wesley Enoch. The change of funding of the Arts Council in Australian theatre meant that more indigenous theatre was produced under the guise of Indigenous theatre companies receiving funding to co-produce works with major theatre companies from a number of states or a number of indigenous companies and indigenous artists getting funding for festivals This period saw the formation of the Victorian-based Ilbijerri Theatre Company, the Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts Company in Queensland and the Aboriginal Arts Festival in Brisbane.

Ilbijerri (pronounced ‘il BIDGE er ree) is a Woiwurrung word meaning Coming Together for Ceremony and they are the longest continuous running indigenous theatre company in Australia and the only long term indigenous company in Victoria. In 1990 a group of Melbourne Indigenous artists and community members came together to form a professional theatre company for the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander people of Victoria. Since then we have been initiating and developing performances in collaboration with our community and artists.

John Harding also wrote the indigenous drama Up the Road originally in 1991 developed for a combined Ilbijerri Theatre (known later as the Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative) Later co-productions were done during the 1990’s with Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre and the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney under the direction of Neil Armfield. Up the Road centres around the story of a middle class indigenous character called Ian Sampson. Sampson is a Canberra bureaucrat who comes back to his hometown for a funeral after a decade away. This realist drama examines modern notions of indigenous identity through the way it deals with notions of change in individuals and in communities. This is indicative of how far indigenous drama had grown during the 1990’s. The diversity of subject matter, form, style and conventions explored by indigenous drama during the 1990’s helps to develop acceptance by mainstream theatre companies to develop and give a greater profile to indigenous drama.

As frustration grew amongst much of the indigenous community at the slow pace of recognition of ingenous rights and issues many strong cultural demonstrations of the desire for true recognition and change was evident. 1988 had marked the bi-centennary of British settlement in Australia, and it was in this year that Prime Minister Bob Hawke attended the Barunga Festival in a small Indigenous community south of Katherine. There, the Chairmen of both the Northern and Central Land Councils, Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja, presented the Prime Minister with the Barunga Statement. The Barunga Statement called on the Australian Government to recognise the rights of Indigenous land owners and to formalise a Treaty with them. It was bordered with Yolu and central Australian designs, and was modelled on the Yirrkala Petition (1963) which the previous generation of Yolngu leaders had sent to the House of Representatives in protest against mining on the Gove Peninsula. Galarrwuy and Mandawuy’s own father was a signatory to this petition. On receiving the Barunga Statement (1988) at the Barunga Festival, Prime Minister Hawke vowed that his government would enter into a Treaty with Indigenous Australians by 1990. However, this promise would never be realised. The Yothu Yindi song ‘Treaty’ was composed by Yothu Yindi in collaboration with Paul Kelly and Midnight Oil to protest the failure of the Australian Government to honour the Prime Minister’s promise to Indigenous Australians at the Barunga Festival. The song ‘Treaty’ used the historic djatpangarri song cycle style and a dance beat and rapidly climbed the Australian charts as did the album on which it was released, Tribal Voice (1992). The song became an inspiration for young and old indigenous people and other Australians that justice and respect would finally be shown. A short play which explored the various promises made and broken to different Indigenous nations, was put on at the Melbourne Fringe Festival at the Organ Factory in 1992. Entitled Treaty, this play used the song as its inspiration and ended with a celebratory dance after an actor wearing a Paul Keating mask made a formal apology to all the Australian Indigenous nations.
In the early 1990’s, we also see the emergence of what has since become more common place as a performance form for Indigenous drama, the one person or monologue drama. This new movement in Indigenous drama was particularily driven by writer-performers such as Ningali Lawford, Deborah Cheetham, Deborah Mailman and Leah Purcell. Seminal indigenous dramas of this type include Ningali Lawford’s (1994) show Ningali, Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch’s The Seven Stages of Grieving  (1994), Deborah Cheetham’s 1997 drama White Baptist ABBA Fan  and Leah Purcell’s Box the Pony (1997).

These semi-autobiographical dramas have many of the hallmarks of indigenous drama such as storytelling, music, song, shifts in time, place and style and use of various indigenous languages. It is interesting to note that the primary movers behind this type of indigenous drama were female indigenous performers. Some of the reason for this can be seen as the nurturing of these performers through the National Black Playwright’s Conference, the emergence of a number of indigenous theatre companies where indigenous performers were nurtured and trained, the training of some indigenous performers through Drama programs at institutes such as Queensland University of Technology and the WAPA, the mentoring of such performers by indigenous performers of the previous generation such as Bob Maza and Justine Saunders and the support and comradery which these indigenous performers and performer/directors like Rhoda Roberts, Rachael Maza and Wesley Enoch provided to and for one another.

Early in 1993, Perth saw the formation of the Yirra Yaakin Theatre by an Aboriginal Steering Committee. The company was initially formed to take part in ongoing youth theatre programs. The initial work developed was centred on group devised pieces and training of young indigenous people in the arts. By 1995, the company had appointed full time Artistic Director David Milroy. Here is a link to a video discussing the early days of Yirra Yaakin. https://www.sutori.com/en/story/aboriginal-theatre--jMZogiGQ4rjBKXHgQ4ebRTC9

Indigenous drama during the 1990’s can be seen as a time when the indigenous mono-drama arose as important form of indigenous drama. This form has been used by a number of Indigenous women as a powerful form of presenting stories and issues which had never before been seen on the Australian stage. In 1994, there was an explosion of drama by and about indigenous women staring with Merril Bray’s Mechanics of the Spirit which was written in 1993 but first produced in 1994 . In the 1990s, there were a number of high profile one woman shows such as Ningali (1994), Seven Stages of Grieving (1994), I Don't Want to Play House (1994) and Box the Pony (1997). Each of these texts created by Indigenous women, often in collaboration with others, explored their personal biographies as a way of revealing the broader social and political framework. Ningali is an autobiographical play that explores ancient claims to land and place within the story of Ningali’s journey of her life from Fitzroy Crossing in northern Western Australia to Perth to Anchorage in Alaska (working on American Field Scholarship) to Sydney (working for the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander dance Company). The staging of the original play captured the abstract but realistic subjectivity of the subject matter and writing style by the stage floor being covered in a floorcloth which depicted an abstract portrait of Lawford herself so her face becomes portrait, backdrop and staging for her story and exploration of notions of identity.  In I Don't Want to Play House, Andersen tells the story of her childhood. She presents a story that includes, abuse, violence and dislocation but at the same time, Anderson infuses the story with the optimism and joy of childhood. The text requires the single storyteller to take on multiple characters offering the reader or audience a splintered view of events from different perspectives. Andersen was raised in an environment bound by secrets and through the text she breaks the silence and bears witness to hidden actions.




Box the Pony by Leah Purcell and Scott Rankin depicts the lives of Aboriginal families and individuals from the 1930s to present time and show the social and personal problems such as poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, displacement and loss of identity.

Of particular note of these indigenous dramas of the 1990’s is Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch’s Seven Stages of Grieving. This play evolved through Mailman’s collaboration with Enoch and the development of Brisbane’s Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts Company.

In 1993, the International Year of Indigenous Peoples, the Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts Company was established in Brisbane. This company committed itself to presenting the stories, traditional and contemporary of Indigenous Australians. Under the guidance of Wesley Enoch (who was trained at the Performing Arts Institute at the Queensland University of Technology), this company thrived, producing many productions of importance such as Murri Love, The Seven Stages Of Grieving, Little White Dress, Changing Time, The Dreamers, Radiance (a co-production with the Queensland Theatre Company), Purple Dreams and Bitin' Back.

The process of the evolution of this play is interesting from the point of view of Indigenous dramaturgy since the play is essentially a one-woman semi-biographical piece that was developed through discussions, workshops and shared writing done between a talented performer and a young talented director/playwright.



The play follows the experiences of an Indigenous ‘everywoman’ and it reveals real events, family histories and personal experiences. The development of this play questions many notions of Indigenous drama. The play was produced through a genuine collaboration between a talented actress and a director/playwright and thus questions our notion of theatre making as primarily the domain of the playwright. The Seven Stages of Grieving is also not a play bound by the constraints of realism, it is both thematically and stylistically complex. The play is in done in a monologue storytelling form and tells separate but thematically linked stories of alienation, dislocation, loss and ultimately grieving mixed with humour. Each of the 24 scenes tells a new story and they combine to form a collage for a solo female actor to disclose the histories and lives of over 200 years of social and political relationships – a history of “grief, misunderstanding and injustice.” (The Seven Stages Of Grieving Program Notes Enoch 1993). The play challenges the notion of Indigenous theatre as being overly reliant on naturalistic drama techniques. A variety of performance styles are evident in the play and the original performance from traditional indigenous storytelling to symbolism, soundscape to physical theatre and stand-up comedy. One scene that is indicative of much indigenous drama of the period (and indigenous drama of the early 21st century) is Scene 12 entitled "Murri Gets a Dress' which is delivered in the style of stand up comedy. This monologue satirizes the discrimination of Blacks receiving racism or "special treatment" in the form of stares and whispers. Being delivered in stand-up style makes it an amusing account of a racism that exists and this enables an audience to laugh and respond to serious issues of racism:

Scene 12 Murri Gets a Dress

(Delivered in the style of stand up comedy)

Have you ever been black? You know when you wake up one morning and you’re black? Happened to me this morning. I was in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, “Hey, nice hair, beautiful black skin, white shiny teeth ... I’m BLACK!”

You get a lot of attention, special treatment when you’re black. I’m in this expensive shop and there’s this guy next to me, nice hair, nice tie, nice suit, waving a nice big pump-you-full-of-holes semi-automatic gun in the air and the shop assistants are all looking at me. “Keep an eye on the black one ... eye on the black one.”

OK, so I went to try on a dress and the shop assistant escorts me to the ‘special’ dressing room, the one equipped with video cameras, warning to shop lifters, a security guard, fucken sniffer dog ... ‘Get out of it’. Just so I don’t put anything I shouldn’t on my nice dress, nice hair, beautiful black skin and white shiny teeth...

(Enoch & Mailman The Seven Stages of Grieving)

The mid and late 1990’s saw a proliferation of indigenous drama of different styles. In 1996, Ray Kelly followed his 1989 Get Up and Dance with a much more solemn piece entitled Somewhere in the Darkness. This play explores the various social and emotional problems facing young indigenous men. Enuff by John Harding, was also finally produced at this time. Enuff is a play originally written and produced as a radio drama for ABC Radio National in 1998 as part of the NAIDOC program. explores the question: 'How far can you push a race of people before they push back?'. (p 4) In the author's introduction, Harding discusses the anger and hate some Indigenous people feel towards non-Indigenous people because of the past and ongoing abusive treatment of Indigenous Australians. Hardy’s play raises the serious and complex questions of the lack of respect for Indigenous cultures and sacred sites and the endless negotiations Indigenous people have to engage in with often hostile and overly bureaucratic authorities. The play is probably the first indigenous drama since Mudrooroo’s The Aboriginal Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller which is set in the future. Hardy’s Enuff presents a possible future where Indigenous Australians are training for armed insurgence and guerrilla warfare. Set in a training camp, the play centres around the lives of five young Indigenous people and their reasons for choosing a violent response. The play took on an extra layer of potency when it was restaged during the early 21st century after 9/11 attacks on the twin towers in New York. In the end, Harding's play contests that violence is not the way for indigenous peoples as the play asserts prophetically that violence only exacerbates the vulnerability of any group to exploitation.

Belonging by Tracey Rigney was another significant indigenous drama of the 1990’s. It tells the story of a young teenage girl who is trying to find her path between racism and exclusion on one side and pressure towards self destructive choices on the other. Casting Doubts by Maryanne Sam extended this type of deliberation in its exploration of the experience of Indigenous actors within an arts industry that marks ‘aboriginality’ solely on the shade of skin colour and only offers token roles. This is an issue that is more thoroughly explored in a platform paper written by Hillary Glow and Katya Johanson in 2009 entitled ‘Your Genre is Black’: Indigenous Performing Arts and Policy.

Another play of this period, Crow Fire by Jadah Milroy, focuses on the challenges confronting Indigenous people in urban environments. The play is complex and combines three stories, one of an Indigenous couple, one of a Euro-Australian couple and a story of an Indigenous man from a desert community. The text parallels the struggle for sense of self and place for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The Indigenous couple in the play struggle for a sense of identity in the face of isolation both physically and emotionally from Indigenous and white communities. Milroy mirrors this struggle for identity and purpose with the Euro-Australian couple. They are living unhappy and sterile lives. These stories are cleverly cross-cut with the story of a man from a desert community who has come to the city to try to secure assistance for his community. The desert man in Milroy’s piece, is reminiscent of Sweet William from Merritt’s 1975 classic The Cake Man -1975. He is a tragic Everyman who comments astutely on aspects of urban and tribal communities but ultimately lacks the skills to negotiate in the city and ends up destroyed by drugs and isolation.

Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland was originally commissioned by LaMama Theatre in Melbourne and co-produced by LaMama and Ilbijerri Theatre Company. The play is an artistic response to Frankland's experiences working as a field investigator for the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody in the late 1980s. The play is a moving journey of discovery and grief. The audience is asked, literally in the first dialogue of the play, to:

Imagine that you're a Koorie, that you are in your mid-twenties, that your job is to look into the lives of the dead and the process, policy and attitude that killed them”.
(Frankland 2002:182)

Frankland’s play is a poetic and savage play that takes a journey through the issue of aboriginal deaths in custody and his writing deals this in confronting but dramatic ways. The play’s material is confronting, painful and ugly without sentimentality.

In the text of his play, Frankland goes on to ask:

What would you do? Where would you put the memories?
What would keep you sane?
Who do you think could understand what you carry inside you?
(Frankland 2002:222)

Late in 1993, non-indigenous playwright Louis Nowra’s Radiance premiered at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney. There has always been much debate in academic and theatre circles about what constitutes an indigenous drama. Some advocates believe that only indigenous people can write about indigenous issues and stories. Others believe that if a person works with and for indigenous people, that their writing constitutes as indigenous drama. As Louis Nowra points out in his preface to the published version of his play Radiance, he had already conceived the play as a three hander for three indigenous females when indigenous actress Lydia Miller, “…Asked me if I would write something for herself and Rhoda Roberts. ‘Something about sisters,’ she said. I told her I had already started.” (Nowra 2000:xiii).



The play is about Cressy, Mae and Nona, three half sisters with little in common but the ghosts of their childhood and their mother whose funeral brings them together again after many years. The house in which they were raised in tropical Queensland becomes the backdrop for their turbulent and humorous reunion, as the sisters try to discover common bonds beyond the pain of their past.

The crux of the play comes when Nona finds out that she is in fact Cressy’s child and that her ‘mother’ was her grandmother. The original production of the play at Belvoir Street Theatre had Mae played by Rachael Maza, Nona played by Rhoda Roberts and Cressy played by Lydia Miller. In an interesting twist to the ending, a Queensland Theatre Company version of the play directed by Wesley Enoch changed the ending so that the play finished with Nona joyously scattering the tin of the ashes. A wonderful film version of the play was made in 1997 directed by indigenous director Rachel Perkins with the screenplay written by Louis Nowra and Nona played by Deborah Mailman, Mae played by Trisha Morton Thomas and Cressy played by Rachael Maza.

In 1994, the black comedy Bindjareb Pinjarra a devised drama about the bloody Nyoongar Massacre of the Nyoongar people near Pinjarra in 1834 premiered in Perth. Bindjareb Pinjarra was devised through improvisation, without a script or director. The ensemble included Phil Thomson, Kelton Pell, Geoff Kelso and Trevor Parfitt. The cast researched the incident from Nyoongar and colonial sources and presented the incident from the indigenous perspective, which sees the "battle" as a premeditated slaughter of anything up to 750 Aboriginal men, women and children.
1997 saw a string of indigenous drama pieces such as King Hit and Cruel Wild Women. However, the highlight in terms of indigenous drama was the Sydney ‘Festival of Dreaming’ which saw a range of Indigenous drama from a revival of the text-based drama Up the Ladder to street theatre and the Koori clowning troupes such Oogadee Boogadees, to the collaborative work of Mimi to an all indigenous performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Mimi as a piece of indigenous drama used an interesting indigenous model of collaborative work involving remote, urban and rural communities, and Stalker's Theatre Company (a non-indigenous company who have developed model for group devised work). Stalker’s Theatre Company created a company called Marrugeku Company which was created specifically to create Mimi.




Under the direction of Rachael Swain, members of this company traveled to remote communities such as the Kunbarllanjnja and worked with custodians of stories, dance and elders and developed a rich piece of cross arts drama. In the piece, the Mimi, represented by stilt walkers are the spirit people. Mimi used songdrama and song cycles of the Kunbarllanjnja to create a rich piece of theatre. The performance centred on a story where the Mimi and the Binnini (the local name for indigenous people) travel together portraying the history of significant events since time began. They reconcile the differences between the human and the spirit worlds and they journey through the night into the world of the Yawk Yawk, the daughters of the Rainbow Serpent responsible for the creation of the earth. The set design for Mimi was done by members of Stalker’s Theatre Company and using many of the ideas and sketches done by elders and members of the Kunbarllanjnja community.

Also as part of the Festival of Dreaming, Rachel House performed in Wimmin’s Business Season, a program which included revivals of Seven Stages of Grieving with Deborah Mailman, Box the Pony with Leah Purcell, Ningali with Ningali Lawford and Deborah Cheetham in White Baptist ABBA Fan. The satire of the improvised drama Bindenjarreb Pinjarra provided a stark contrast to a version of Waiting for Godot entitled Ngundalelah Godotgai performed in the Banjalung language with English subtitles. Julie Janson’s historical drama Black Mary about the indigenous bushranger Mary Anne Ward supported the epic quality of Noel Tovey’s indigenous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which amazing dreaming designs. Wesley Enoch directed a production of Roger Bennett’s Up the Ladder which explores the world of 1950’s sideshow boxing matches. 

The work of the Ilbijerri Theatre became very important during the 1990’s. Under the guidance of Rachael Maza, this company seemed to grow from strength to strength. The plays of the Ilbijerri Theatre explore a range of complex and controversial issues from a uniquely Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander perspective. Jane Harrison’s renowned classic Stolen was the company’s second major success in 1998. This play toured nationally and internationally, finding critical acclaim and resonance with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences.

Stolen by Jane Harrison, was originally commissioned in 1992 by the Ilbijerri Theatre Company (known later as the Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative). After the success of John Harding’s Up the Road, the group was casting their net out for new and challenging ideas so they placed an advertisement in a number of Melbourne newspapers for a writer/researcher to work on a project on the Stolen Generation. Jane Harrison, an indigenous writer who had never written a play before, applied for and was awarded the position.
Writing the play was a big step in my (continuing) journey home, a way of connecting with the Koori community and further understanding my own ‘longing to belong’ ”. (Harrison 2000: xiv)




The play took six years to develop, and in that time Harrison and researcher Antoinette Braybrook interviewed many people for their stories about their stolen generation 
experiences and conducted many workshops under the guidance of indigenous actress Kylie Belling. This became a dramaturgical process which was held up as many as crucial to the success of the authenticity of the play as a truly amazing piece of modern Indigenous drama. By 1993, a draft script entitled The Lost Children was sent to indigenous director Wesley Enoch and a moved reading was organised. The title was changed after indigenous audiences at early readings argued that the children were never lost but were ‘stolen’. It then took another five years to raise the money for a full scale production. Finally, in 1997, Aubrey Mellor (the then Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre) and Sue Natrass (Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Festival at that time) agreed to finance the project as a joint initiative.

Stolen tells the story of five Indigenous children forcibly removed from their families. Each has a past and a journey to share with the audience. Anne is a pale-skinned adopted child who must reconcile herself with her true identity. Sandy is a young man who is on the run from authorities but who remembers the culture and family he was torn from. Shirley is a mother who was not only was stolen from her family, but has grown up seeing her own children stolen from her. Ruby is an abused young girl being trained for domestic service, who eventually becomes overwhelmed by mental illness. The final main character is Jimmy who is a lively young man filled with enthusiasm for life who rebels against the system, is beaten and eventually takes his own life in jail. The stories of these separate characters interweave into a collective narrative of great richness and complexity. Segregated from their communities, these characters struggle with the pain of their lives as they try to forget their families, their culture and their place. The play is a powerful piece which addresses the stories and experiences of the Stolen Generation while addressing other issues of identity and deaths in custody. This is done through humour and the use of different narrative structures synonymous to each character – a song, a letter and the line up.

Under Wesley Enoch’s direction of the first production, the play was transformed into a pivotal moment in indigenous theatre. The original production starred Tammy Anderson as Anne, Stan Yarramunua as Sandy, Pauline Whyman as Shirley, Tony Briggs as Jimmy and the incredible talent of Kylie Belling as the tragic Ruby. A great resource for the play can be found at QPAC:



Bennell, Eddy. My Spiritual Dreaming. Deckchair Production. Perth. 1992.

Bennett, Roger. 1989. Up the Ladder (theatre program and playscript). Darwin Theatre Company.

Bennett, Roger. Funerals and Circuses. 1995. Currency Press. Strawberry Hills, Sydney.

Black Theatre ABC. Messagestick [11/8/02] http://www.abc.net.au/message/tv/ms/s640055.htm

Black Voice: A History of Indigenous Theatre (Radio Program). ‘Awaye’. ABC Radio National Australia. October 28th, 2011.

Brisbane, K. 2001. The Future in Black and White Indigenousity in Recent Australian Drama. Currency Press. Surrey Hills., Sydney.

Casey, M. 2004. Creating Frames. Contemporary Indigenous Theatre in Australia 1967-97. University of Queensland Press. Brisbane.

Chi, J. and the Kuckles. 1990. Bran Nue Dae. Published by Currency Press & Magdabala Books. Broome & Sydney.

Enoch, Wesley. Deborah Mailman. The 7 Stages of Grieving. 1997. Currency Press. Strawberry Hills, Sydney.

Harrison, Jane. Stolen. Currency Press. 1998.

Johnson, E. 'What Do They Call Me?' in Australian Gay and Lesbian Plays ed. Bruce Parr. Sydney: Currency Press.1996.

Narogen, Mudrooroo, Heiner Muller. Aboriginal Demonstrators Confront the Declaration of the Australian Republic on the 26th January 2001 with the Production of Deruftag by Heiner Muller. 1993. Published by University Press. Sydney.

Roberts, R. 1997. ‘A Passion for Ideas: Black Stage’. Third Rex Cramphorn Memorial Lecture. Belvoir Street Theatre. Sydney. 13 November. 1997.

Weller, A. Nidjera (prompt script). 1990. Melbourne Workers Theatre. Melbourne.


1.    Why was the Bran Nue Dae such a success?
2.    There are various theatrical conventions and forms used in Seven Stages of Grieving to tell this woman’s story in the play.  What is the function and effect of the episodic form of the play and the different theatrical conventions and forms used in the piece?
3.    What is the effect on the audience on hearing the stories from each role told separately and episodically?
4.    Discuss with students how the non-linear structure work in The Seven Stages of Grieving? Enoch and Mailman played themselves with the order of the scenes to achieve different effects. Experiment with changing the order of the scenes in the play.
5.    Are drama pieces such as Bran Nue Dae and Mimi which combine different art forms more conducive to indigenous drama than text-based drama? Discuss.
6.    Why do you think that plays like Up the Road find greater acceptance during the late 1990’s compared to the early 1990’s? Are Australian audiences more ready to accept a diversity of indigenous experiences in the 21st Century than they were during the 1970’s to the early 1990’s?
7.    Look at the narrative structure and narrative devices used in Stolen. How does each of these devices suit the development of both the narrative and individual characters?

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