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

Premiered. 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.

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.

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

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).

The 7 Stages of Grieving was not the first Aboriginal Australian play, but it was the breakthrough into the mainstream institutional repertoire. After it, Jane Harrison's Stolen (1998) became the other touchstone of late-1990s Indigenous Australian theatre. Together the two plays established a tradition that Nakkiah Lui, Leah Purcell, Andrea James, Andrea Briggs and others have continued.

Section I excerpts from The 7 Stages of Grieving typically present one scene and ask candidates to analyse Enoch and Mailman's dramatic choices. Strong answers identify the section, name the dramatic technique, and link to the play's wider structure.

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.