Quick questions on The 7 Stages of Grieving analysis: HSC Drama core

The play is divided into seven sections. The published edition labels them roughly as follows (different productions vary slightly):

Solo performer. One Aboriginal Australian woman on stage throughout. The convention is theatrically declarative: this is one body carrying many stories.

Productions of The 7 Stages of Grieving have used minimal set: usually a bare stage with the objects of the play placed and moved through the action. Lighting is integral; long pools of light hold the performer in solo address, then open to wider washes for dance and group song sequences (though the cast is one).

Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts, Brisbane, 14 September 1995, directed by Wesley Enoch, performed by Deborah Mailman. Then to Belvoir Street, Sydney, 1996. Then on tour nationally and internationally including the 1997 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, with material developed collaboratively in the rehearsal room. The published text is credited to Enoch and Mailman.

Deborah Mailman, whose performance has come to define the role. The play has subsequently been performed by other actors including Chenoa Deemal in revivals.

Approximately 60 to 75 minutes, played without interval.

One Aboriginal Australian woman on stage throughout. The convention is theatrically declarative: this is one body carrying many stories.

The performer speaks to the audience as themselves, not (mostly) through a character. The fourth wall does not exist for most of the play.

The play moves between spoken word, song (often traditional, sometimes contemporary), and physical sequences including dance. Indigenous performance traditions inform the structural integration.

A block of ice that melts. Photographs of named family members placed on the floor. A suitcase.

Aboriginal language phrases appear alongside English. The play does not translate all of its language for the non-Aboriginal audience; the audience is asked to sit with not understanding everything.

Original and traditional music. The sound design is integral to the experience, not background.

The body on stage stands for an individual and for a community. The play refuses to separate the two.

Stolen Generations, deaths in custody, the colonial frame, dispossession from country. The play does not lecture; it performs grief specific to these histories.