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How has Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theatre transformed the Australian theatrical repertoire from the 1990s onwards?

Indigenous Australian theatre as a major movement in contemporary Australian drama, including Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, Jane Harrison, Andrea James, Nakkiah Lui, Leah Purcell, and the dedicated Indigenous theatre companies

A focused answer to the HSC Drama core dot point on Indigenous Australian theatre. Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman's The 7 Stages of Grieving (1995), Jane Harrison's Stolen (1998), Nakkiah Lui, Leah Purcell, and the companies (Ilbijerri, Yirra Yaakin, Moogahlin) that have built sustained Indigenous theatre infrastructures.

Generated by Claude OpusReviewed by Better Tuition Academy6 min answerUpdated 2026-05-20

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What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to know Indigenous Australian theatre as a contemporary movement: the major playwrights, the breakthrough works, the companies, and the contribution to Australian theatre's repertoire and form. Strong answers can name plays, dates, and companies with confidence and can place Indigenous theatre alongside the older Anglo-Australian playwriting tradition.

The answer

Background

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.

The breakthrough decade, 1991 to 1998

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.
Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company: 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.
Wesley Enoch: 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). Subsequently Artistic Director at Kooemba Jdarra, Ilbijerri, Queensland Theatre Company (2010 to 2015), and Sydney Festival (2017 to 2020).
Deborah Mailman: 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).
Jane Harrison: 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. Stolen has been adapted for radio and continues to be revived.
Eva Johnson and Nathaniel Garrwarli Bidjara writers: 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.

The 2000s and 2010s

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. James is now one of Australia's most active Indigenous playwrights.
Tony Briggs: 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. The Sapphires sits comfortably alongside mainstream Australian musical theatre but with Indigenous women at its centre.
Leah Purcell: 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. Adapted into the 2021 film, directed and written by Purcell.
Nakkiah Lui: 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. Lui has been one of the most prolific Indigenous playwrights of the 2010s and 2020s.
Other figures: Jada Alberts, Hannah Belanszky, Ursula Yovich, Pauline Whyman, Kylie Coolwell, Dylan Van Den Berg. The contemporary Indigenous theatre scene is a continuous tradition, not a one-generation phenomenon.

Dramatic forms

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

Non-linear time: Stolen moves across decades within the same scene. The 7 Stages of Grieving uses the Kubler-Ross grief stages as scaffolding rather than chronological time.
Multiple speakers and direct address: Many Indigenous Australian plays use a chorus-like address to the audience and structures that move between monologue and ensemble. The performance often acknowledges its theatricality openly.
Integration of dance, song and storytelling: The 7 Stages of Grieving uses song, dance, and physical sequences alongside dialogue. Indigenous performance traditions inform the structure of the contemporary play.
Community and place as primary: The plays often begin from a specific country, family or community. The performance is partly an act of public storytelling for that community, not only for an unrelated audience.
Comic and tragic registers together: The plays move between humour and grief without losing either. Nakkiah Lui's Black is the New White uses comic register throughout but lands serious political content; The 7 Stages of Grieving moves through grief and laughter in adjacent scenes.

Companies of note (current)

Ilbijerri Theatre Company (Melbourne), since 1991.
Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company (Perth), since 1993.
Moogahlin Performing Arts (Sydney), since 2007.
Belvoir Street Theatre's regular Indigenous programming, particularly under Eamon Flack's artistic direction.
Bangarra Dance Theatre (Sydney, founded 1989), which sits between dance and theatre and produces some of the most internationally visible Indigenous Australian performance.

Why Indigenous theatre matters for HSC

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.

Common exam traps

Treating Indigenous theatre as a single style. The plays differ widely in form. The 7 Stages of Grieving is choric and song-based; Stolen is monologue-based; The Drover's Wife is a single-character realist play; Black is the New White is a Wildean comedy. The unifying feature is Indigenous authorship and Indigenous-centred storytelling, not a shared dramatic style.

Treating Indigenous theatre as recent and minor. It has been a continuous tradition for over thirty years and a major institutional presence for over two decades.

Confusing Indigenous theatre with non-Indigenous plays about Indigenous experience. Louis Nowra's Radiance is a non-Indigenous play about Indigenous characters. Stolen is an Indigenous-authored play. The distinction matters.

Forgetting the companies. Ilbijerri, Yirra Yaakin and Moogahlin have done as much for the movement as any single playwright.

Past exam questions, worked

Real questions from past NESA papers on this dot point, with our answer explainer.

Practice (NESA)8 marksHow has Indigenous Australian theatre transformed the contemporary Australian theatre repertoire?

Show worked answer →

An 8-mark "how" needs three or four substantive changes with named playwrights, plays and companies.

Mainstream institutional repertoire: Before the mid-1990s, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices in mainstream Australian theatre were rare. The 7 Stages of Grieving (Kooemba Jdarra, Brisbane, 1995, then Belvoir, 1996) was the breakthrough. Stolen (Ilbijerri and Playbox, 1998) followed. By the 2010s, Indigenous-authored work was a regular feature of the major state companies (STC, Belvoir, MTC, Queensland Theatre).
Dedicated Indigenous theatre companies: Ilbijerri (Melbourne, 1991, the longest-running Aboriginal-led company), Yirra Yaakin (Perth, 1993), and Moogahlin Performing Arts (Sydney, 2007) built the institutional infrastructure for Indigenous-authored work.
Stories of dispossession and survival: Stolen (1998) draws on the Stolen Generations. The 7 Stages of Grieving uses the Kubler-Ross stages as scaffolding for Aboriginal Australian collective memory. The work has been a major artistic engagement with these histories.
Expanded dramatic form: The 7 Stages of Grieving combines monologue, song, dance and direct address. Stolen uses non-linear time and multiple speakers. The Drover's Wife (Leah Purcell, 2016) reframes Henry Lawson through a Gundagai Aboriginal woman's perspective.
Sustained tradition across two decades: Nakkiah Lui (Black is the New White, 2017), Andrea James (Sunshine Super Girl, 2018), Leah Purcell, and Tony Briggs (The Sapphires, 2004). Indigenous theatre is a continuous tradition, not a single moment.

Markers reward named companies, named plays, dated productions, and attention to form.