So far I have not discussed a further result of the black civil rights movement: the black theme in recent white drama. Aboriginal characters have been common in plays with rural settings from the early colonial period, mostly as comic figures with a native wit and a sharper mind than the new-chum hero. In the realist drama between the 1920s and the 1960s the plight of the Aborigine was examined by many politically active white writers. But most of the work was little more than a well-intentioned attempt to acknowledge injustice. Plays like that are still being written today, of course. But there are some that stand out from the early period, like Brumby Innes by Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969): the first play in our literature to confront the sexuality of the outback. Though written in 1927 it was not until 1972, with the support of Nindethana Theatre, that it was seen in performance. Brisbane author George Landen Dann (1904-1971), a long-time friend of the timber workers on Fraser Island and a student of Aboriginal lore, wrote several plays about Aboriginal life and race relations in Queensland, notably Fountains Beyond and In Beauty it is Finished. The latter, which examines the moral consequences of isolation and emotional deprivation, was attacked as 'a sordid drama of miscegenation' prior to its premiere in 1931. In Melbourne the socialist playwright Oriel Gray (1920-2003) wrote several plays on similar themes, the best-known of which is Burst of Summer (1960), inspired by the dilemma of Ngarla Kunoth, taken from a country town to star in Charles Chauvel's film Jedda.

There were, however, neither the theatres prepared to present these plays professionally nor the black actors trained to play in them. Now that we do have a body of actors, we may find these writers still have something to say in the debate. Meanwhile younger writers are again attempting a dialogue.

With the establishment of the Australian Council for the Arts in 1968 a period of consciousness-raising began in the white community about the good and bad aspects of what it means to be Australian. Spurred on by the 200th anniversary in 1970 of Captain Cook's landing at Sydney Cove, several plays involving Aborigines were presented, notably Bill Reed's tripartite Truganinni (1971), a study of the sole survivor of the Tasmanian massacre of 1830s, and John Romeril's short play, Bastardy (1972), in which an aging white prostitute receives an unexpected visit from an acknowledged black son. Its premiere featured the young Jack Charles in an early role.

A play which provides a radical insight into the spirituality of the land felt by both blacks and whites is Dorothy Hewett's The Man from Mukinupin (1979), a musical play set in a country town in Western Australia at the time of World War I. The seasons, the extremes of heat and drought and the life cycle of the characters are linked by the author to the hidden history of rape and massacre in the creek bed, ghosts in the night and the rituals of marriage and survival within which are recreated both Aboriginal and European folk mysteries. Two young white lovers are played by the same actors as two outcast black lovers.

With the rise of the black theatre groups, which grew up first in Melbourne and Sydney, then in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, there began debates, particularly within the forum of the National Playwrights' Conference, about the right—and the capacity—of a white writer to attempt a black character. In 1987 the First National Black Playwrights' Conference was held in Canberra. Today, though the debate goes on, the annual national playwrights' conference is a black and white affair. Today Aboriginal actors are no longer confined to playing Aboriginal characters; and in most productions blacks and whites work together. Kevin Smith, for example, became a member of Neil Armfield's ensemble at Belvoir Street in 1995 and gave a new dimension to several classical roles.

The most prominent playwright to attempt the task of fully realising Aboriginal characters is Louis Nowra. His early work established him as a writer concerned with alienation, deracination and the violence that boils up when the natural order of the land is violated. Colonialism was his first metaphor. While the tattered remnant of a people discovered in the horizontal forests of Tasmania in the 1930s and fictionalised by Nowra in his notable The Golden Age (1985) is clearly an approach to the subject, the Aborigine first appears fully in his adaptation of Xavier Herbert's massive novel Capricornia, commissioned for the bicentenary in 1988. It was quickly followed by Byzantine Flowers (1989), the story of the slow empowerment of an exploited black woman; Radiance (1993), a tribute to three favourite female actors, Rachel Maza, Lydia Miller and Rhoda Roberts, came next; and more recently Crow (1994). Radiance is the story of three ill-matched half-sisters who gather to scatter their mother's ashes. Their ethnic origin is nowhere mentioned in the text but the theme of exploitation makes this implicit. Crow, on the other hand, returns to Byzantine Flowers territory.

Some of these plays succeed better than others in relating the Aboriginal experience; but, representing the mainstream of theatre as he does, they have helped to bring us into a new, more relaxed, stage in the debate. A successful production of Radiance by Wesley Enoch for the Queensland Theatre Company and Kooemba Jarra aroused a variety of responses, with some audiences recognising with applause aspects of Aboriginal life revealed by actors rather than the text; while others regarded the season as an appropriation of territory. Nowra's interest in Aboriginal life and history has not been political, nor does he regard Aborigines as separate from his own society but rather as part of the post-colonial environment which makes it. As in all his plays, the characters and situations are just a small imaginative leap from his own experience. Radiance has been adapted to film by Rachel Perkins, whose father Charles was a leading figure in the protest movement from the 1960s.

Writers who have sought to deal more directly with the social aspects of Aboriginal living conditions include Ned Manning, whose Close to the Bone (1991) about the forced separation of Aboriginal children from their parents, was developed with students at the Eora Centre in Sydney; and Julie Janson who spent many years researching firstly Gunjies (1993) about a death in custody; and later Black Mary (1996). Black Mary, the story of Maryanne Ward, wife of the bushranger Captain Thunderbolt and his strategist, was first presented by Nibago Productions in Sydney and later developed by Belvoir Street Theatre into an epic production at the Wilson Street Carriage Works for the Festival of the Dreaming. Maryanne was created by another remarkable Aboriginal actor, Margaret Harvey.

Nationally, the most familiar of the plays with this new perspective is Nicholas Parsons' Dead Heart which played at the Festival of Perth and in Sydney in 1993-94 and became a feature film in 1996. As Parsons has stated, it is not an 'Aboriginal play' but one which sets out to examine the clash of cultures in the blacks' heartland, a reserve in the desert region of the Northern Territory, among the Pintupi people. A handful of government officers have made their commitment to the country; but Pintupi govern by their own law. Two Aborigines stand in the centre of the dilemma when a young man is secretly executed under one law and the police seek justice under another. The conflict destroys the community: black and white evacuate and the place returns to the desert.

Dead Heart is the most sophisticated of the plays yet written, in terms of attempting to convey both sides of the cultural dilemma beneath the current political battles over land rights and social services; and in acknowledging the strength of the 'Aboriginal reality' which Mudrooroo defined.

The 1990s is also seeing a number of familiar plays adapted for Aboriginal actors: Michael Gow's Away, for example, in the Kimberleys; Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot into the Bundjalung language; and A Midsummer Night's Dream, both performed at the Festival of the Dreaming. The latter was directed by Noel Tovey, a former dancer who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom but became an activist in the Aboriginal cause upon his return. His most notable production was an adaptation by Mudrooroo and Gerhardt Fischer of Heiner Muller's drama The Commission (about an attempt to free Jamaican slaves in 1789). The work was developed over ten years to become The Aboriginal Protesters Confront the Proclamation of the Australian Republic on January 26, 2001, with a Production of The Commission by Heiner Muller. Tovey's impressive production for the Sydney Festival in 1996 was also presented in Berlin.

The plays continue to be written, and within them the theme of reconciliation strengthens. Not many of the plays yet are major works, not many are yet ready for the world outside. But if the work so far has offered nothing else, I would like to believe that it has made, and will continue to make, some contribution to a greater mutual understanding and respect; and especially a recognition of those two realities; and the values of that world which created them.

3. Bibliography

Plays by Aboriginal writers 

Roger Bennett, Funerals and Circuses. Sydney: Currency Press 1995
Jimmy Chi and the Kuckles, Bran Nue Dae. Sydney and Broome: Currency Press and Magabala Books 1991
Jack Davis, Barungin, Smell the Wind. Sydney: Currency Press 1989
Jack Davis, The Dreamers and Kullark. Sydney: Currency Press 1983
Jack Davis, Honey Spot, a play for children. Sydney: Currency Press 1987
Jack Davis, In Our Town. Sydney: Currency Press 1992
Jack Davis, Moorli and the Leprechaun, a play for children. Sydney: Currency Press 1994
Jack Davis, No Sugar. Sydney: Currency Press 1986
Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, The Seven Stages of Grieving. Brisbane: Playlab Press 1997
Kevin Gilbert, The Cherry Pickers. Canberra: Burrambinga Books 1988
John Harding, Up the Road. Sydney: Currency Press 1997
Jane Harrison, Stolen. Sydney: Currency Press 1998
Andrea James, Yanagai! Yanagai!. Sydney: Currency Press 2003
Eva Johnson, What Do They Call Me? in Australian Gay and Lesbian Plays ed. Bruce Parr. Sydney: Currency Press 1996
Hyllus Maris and Sonia Borg, Women of the Sun, four television dramas. Sydney: Currency Press 1983
Robert J. Merritt, The Cake Man. Sydney: Currency Press 1978
Dallas Winmar, Aliwa!. Sydney: Currency Press 2002

Anthologies

Contemporary Indigenous Plays. Sydney: Currency Press 2006. Contains Vivienne Cleven, Bitin' Back; Wesley Enoch, Black Medea; David Milroy and Geoffrey Narkle, King Hit; Jane Harrison, Rainbow's End; and David Milroy, Windmill Baby.

Blak Inside: 6 indigenous plays from Victoria. Sydney: Currency Press 2002. Contains John Harding, Enuf; Tammy Anderson, I Don't Wanna Play House; Tracey Rigney, Belonging; Maryanne Sam, Casting Doubts; Jadah Milroy, Crow Fire; and Richard J. Frankland, Conversations with the Dead.

Plays from Black Australia. Sydney: Currency Press 1989. Contains Jack Davis, The Dreamers; Eva Johnson, Murras; Bob Maza, The Keepers; and Richard Walley, Coordah.

Selected plays by white writers 

Andrew Bovell, Holy Day. Sydney: Currency Press. 2001
George Landen Dann, Fountains Beyond. Sydney: Australasian Publishing Co. 1944
Eric Earley, The Custodians. Sydney: Currency Press 1993
Barney Foran, Come Hell or High Water. Sydney: Currency Press 1988
Gordon Francis, God's Best Country. Sydney: Currency Press 1987
Trevor Graham, Mabo: Life of an Island Man. Sydney: Currency Press 1999
Rodney Hall, A Return to the Brink. Sydney: Currency Press 1999
Dorothy Hewett, The Man from Mukinupin. Sydney: Currency Press 1979
Thomas Keneally, Bullie's House. Sydney: Currency Press 1981
Ned Manning, Close to the Bone. Sydney: Currency Press 1994
Ned Manning, Luck of the Draw. Sydney: Currency Press 2000
Ray Mooney, Black Rabbit. Sydney: Currency Press 1988
Phil Motherwell, Steal Away Home. Sydney: Currency Press 1987
Louis Nowra, Capricornia. Sydney: Currency Press 1988
Louis Nowra, Crow. Sydney: Currency Press 1994
Louis Nowra, Radiance. Sydney: Currency Press 1993
Christine Olsen, Rabbit-Proof Fence (the screenplay). Sydney: Currency Press 2002
Nicholas Parsons, Dead Heart. Sydney: Currency Press 1994. Film adaptation: Currency Press 1996
Bill Reed, Truganinni. Melbourne: Heinemann 1977
John Romeril, Bastardy. Melbourne: Yackandandah 1982
Katharine Susannah Prichard, Brumby Innes (1927). Sydney: Currency Press 1974.
Betty Roland, Granite Peak (1957). Sydney: Currency Press 1988
Jill Shearer, The Foreman. Sydney: Currency Press 1978
Tony Strachan, State of Shock. Sydney: Currency Press 1986
Katherine Thomson, Wonderlands. Sydney: Currency Press 2004

Reference
Keith Chesson, Jack Davis, A Biography. Melbourne: Dent 1988
Kevin Gilbert, Living Black, Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert. Ringwood, Victoria: Allen Lane, Penguin 1977
Karen Kaine-Jones, 'Contemporary Aboriginal Drama'.  Southerly No. 4, 1988, 'Focus on Aboriginal Literature'. Sydney: English Association
Philip Parsons (ed.), Companion to Theatre in Australia. Sydney: Currency Press 1995
Adam Shoemaker, Black Words White Page. Brisbane: Queensland University Press 1989
Cliff Watego, 'Aboriginal Australian Dramatists' in Community Theatre in Australia, ed. Richard Fotheringham. Sydney: Currency Press 1992

Other Reading
Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1998. "Reconciliation? Aboriginality and Australian Theatre in the 1990s." Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s. Ed. Veronica Kelly. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. 71-88.
"De-scribing Orality: Performance and the Recuperation of Indigenous Voices." Describing Empire: Colonialism and Textuality. Ed. Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson. London: Routledge, 1994. 98-111. *Reprinted in Colin Counsell and Patrick Wolfe, ed. The Performance Studies Reader (Routledge 2001)
'Talking Country: Place and Displacement in Jack Davis's Theatre.' in Jack Davis: A Critical Study. Ed. Gerry Turcotte. Sydney: Collins-Angus & Robertson, 1994. 60-71.
"The Dance as Text in Contemporary Australian Drama: Movement and Resistance Politics." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 23.1 (1992): 133-47. *Reprinted in Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1994.
"Historical Re-presentation: Performance and Counter-Discourse in Jack Davis's Drama." New Literatures Review 19 (1990): 91-101.