The 7 Stages of Grieving
by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman (1995) - Not on the current VCE text list (former and background texts)
VCE Unit 3/4 analysis of Enoch and Mailman's The 7 Stages of Grieving. Themes, formal reading of the hybrid one-woman dramaturgy and an essay scaffold grounded in reconciliation-era politics.
Examiner focus
Strong responses read the play as a hybrid theatrical form that fuses personal monologue, ceremony and political testimony. Strong essays foreground the staging, the use of direct address and the doubling of personal and collective loss across Aboriginal Australia.
Themes
- Grief and Sorry Business
- Collective and personal loss
- Aboriginal sovereignty and reconciliation
- Memory and witness
- Theatrical form and direct address
- Country, family and belonging
Not on the current VCE text list. The 7 Stages of Grieving is not on the VCAA's VCE English and EAL text list for 2026 or 2027. It was last set for Units 3 and 4 in 2023 (it appears on the VCE English examinations from 2020 to 2023, under the previous study design). Check the current VCE English and EAL text list before choosing a text. This page is kept for students who studied the text in an earlier year, for Units 1 and 2 where a school sets it, and for wider reading.
Why this text rewards close study
The play layers the seven stages of Western grief theory onto the seven phases of Aboriginal history identified in the program note. A strong response treats this layering as the play's central argument, not a structural conceit. Assessors reward students who attend to the stage directions, the use of objects and the choreography of the single performer.
Structure
A solo performer moves through a series of vignettes. Some are intimate family memories. Some are public commemorations. Some are wordless physical sequences. The staging includes a block of ice, suspended objects and projected text.
Form and direct address
The play refuses a single linear narrative. Track how the performer shifts register between storyteller, mourner, witness and political speaker. The audience is repeatedly positioned as listener, congregation and jury.
Politics of the 1990s
The play premiered in 1995, before the Bringing Them Home report and during the early reconciliation movement. A strong essay locates the text in that moment without reducing it to a historical artefact. The grief is ongoing.
Common pitfalls
Avoid treating the play as a memoir of a single character. The performer voices many. Avoid summarising scenes. Analyse staging choices, the use of silence and the function of each object. Do not quote dialogue directly. Refer to scenes and moments in your own words.
Essay scaffold
Introduction. Name the doubled seven stage structure as the play's organising argument.
Body 1. The opening sequences and the establishment of grief as both personal and collective.
Body 2. The political vignettes and the audience as witness.
Body 3. The closing sequence and the open question of what reconciliation might mean.
Conclusion. Return to the dramaturgy as a form of cultural protocol enacted in the theatre.