Quick questions on Indigenous Australian theatre: HSC Drama core

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytelling traditions are tens of thousands of years old. Theatre as the dominant Western performance form is a more recent point of contact. Indigenous Australian theatre as an institutional presence in the mainstream repertoire dates from the early 1990s. Earlier work existed (Jack Davis's plays from the 1970s and 1980s, including No Sugar, 1985), but the breakthrough into the major state companies came in the mid-1990s.

Ilbijerri Theatre Company. Founded 1991 in Melbourne. The name means "coming together for ceremony" in Woiwurrung. Ilbijerri is the longest-running Aboriginal-led theatre company in Australia, and has been a development pipeline for Indigenous playwrights including Jane Harrison, Andrea James, John Harding, and Glenn Shea. Now based at Arts House in North Melbourne.

Andrea James. Yorta Yorta and Kurnai playwright. Yanagai! Yanagai! (Ilbijerri, 2003) and Sunshine Super Girl (2018, on tennis champion Evonne Goolagong Cawley) brought Indigenous biographical theatre into the mainstream.

Indigenous Australian theatre has been more formally experimental than the older mainstream tradition. Recurring features:

If your Australian Drama and Theatre prescribed pairing includes Indigenous Australian theatre, you are likely to be examined on either The 7 Stages of Grieving, Stolen, or another major Indigenous-authored play. Section III essays on Australian theatre often invite candidates to consider how Indigenous theatre has changed the repertoire. Strong essays place the work alongside, not under, the older Anglo-Australian tradition.

Founded 1991 in Melbourne. The name means "coming together for ceremony" in Woiwurrung. Ilbijerri is the longest-running Aboriginal-led theatre company in Australia, and has been a development pipeline for Indigenous playwrights including Jane Harrison, Andrea James, John Harding, and Glenn Shea.

Founded 1993 in Perth. Yirra Yaakin means "stand tall" in Noongar. The company has staged premieres for Noongar writers including David Milroy (Windmill Baby, 2005, which won the Patrick White Playwrights' Award) and Mitch Torres.

Born 1969 on Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah), Queensland. Director and playwright. Co-wrote The 7 Stages of Grieving with Deborah Mailman (Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts, Brisbane, 1995, then Belvoir, 1996).

Born 1972, Mount Isa. Co-wrote and originally performed The 7 Stages of Grieving. Subsequently a major film and television actor (Radiance, 1998; The Sapphires, 2012; Total Control, 2019).

Born 1960. Stolen (Ilbijerri and Playbox, 1998) is one of the most-performed Australian plays of the late twentieth century. The play follows five characters across decades whose experiences depict the Stolen Generations policies of forced child removal.

Earlier work in the 1980s laid groundwork for the breakthrough decade. Jack Davis's The Dreamers (1982) and No Sugar (1985) are the foundational mid-twentieth-century Indigenous Australian plays.

Yorta Yorta and Kurnai playwright. Yanagai! Yanagai!

Yorta Yorta playwright. The Sapphires (Belvoir, 2004) tells the story of four Indigenous women who form a 1960s soul group and tour to Vietnam. Adapted into the 2012 film.

Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri writer, performer and director. Box the Pony (1997) was an autobiographical solo show. The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (Belvoir, 2016) reframes Henry Lawson's 1892 short story through a Snowy Mountains Aboriginal woman's perspective.

Gamilaroi-Torres Strait Islander writer. Black is the New White (Belvoir and STC, 2017) is a comic political play about an Aboriginal couple's interracial marriage. How to Rule the World (STC, 2019) followed.