'Charlotte Gibson is a lawyer on the up. She won a landmark Native Title case, she’s making her parents proud, she could have her own TV show tomorrow. As her father Ray says, she could be the next feminist Indigenous Waleed Aly. But she has other ideas. First of all, it’s Christmas. Second of all, she’s in love.
'Charlotte's fiancé, Francis Smith, is not what her family expected. He's an unemployed experimental classical composer… and he's white! Bringing him and his conservative parents to meet her family on their ancestral land is a bold move. Will he stand up to the scrutiny? Or will this romance descend into farce?
'Love is never just black and white. It’s complicated by class, politics, ambition, and too much wine over dinner. But for Charlotte and Francis, it's mostly complicated by family. Secrets are revealed, prejudices outed and old rivalries get sorted through. What can’t be solved through diplomacy can surely be solved by a good old-fashioned dance-off. They’re just that kind of family.'
(Production summary: Sydney Theatre Company: https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2017/black-is-the-new-white )
Teachers' notes via Melbourne Theatre Company.
Presented by Sydney Theatre Company. World premiere at Wharf I Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney : 5 May - 17 June 2017.
Director: Paige Rattray
Designer: Renée Mulder
Lighting Designer: Ben Hughes
Composer & Sound Designer: Steve Toulmin
Cast: Tony Briggs, Luke Carroll, Vanessa Downing, Geoff Morrell, Shari Sebbens, Anthony Taufa.
Performed at the Playhouse, QPAC 1-17 February 201.8
Repeated in the 2018 Sydney Theatre Company season, 28 February to 10 March 2018, Roslyn Packer Theatre.
Premiered in Western Australia at the Black Swan Theatre Company (presenting a Sydney Theatre Company production), 11-22 September 2019, Heath Ledger Theatre.
Director: Paige Rattray.
Designer: Renée Mulder.
Lighting Designer: Ben Hughes.
Composer & Sound Designer: Steve Toulmin.
Cast: Kylie Bracknell [Kaarljilba Kaardn], Tony Briggs, Luke Carroll, Vanessa Downing, Melodie Reynolds-Diarra, Tom Stokes, and Anthony Taufa.
Same production repeated at Melbourne Theatre Company, 2 October - 6 November 2019 (The Sumner, Southbank Theatre) and at the State Theatre Company of South Australia (Dunstan Playhouse, 13 November - 1 December 2019).
'Indigenous actress Miranda Tapsell says the issue of deaths in custody is one that impacts everyone, following the alleged shooting of Kumanjayi Walker.' (Summary)
'Nakkiah Lui is one of the country’s funniest, smartest and most deliciously outrageous playwrights. To call her a force of nature is less accurate than saying she is a one-woman cyclone. Her work – including her scripts for TV and her podcast Pretty for an Aboriginal – rips through this country’s cultural landscape, tearing down deadwood structures, pitching sacred cows into the air and laying bare a landscape that is scarred by its colonial history and strewn with the bones of massacre. And still, she makes you laugh. Even her 2018 play Blackie Blackie Brown, whose Aboriginal anthropologist protagonist literally digs up some of those bones, is as hilarious as it is provocative.' (Introduction)
Charlotte Gibson is a lawyer with a brilliant career ahead of her. As her father Ray said, she could be the next female Indigenous Waleed Aly.'
Charlotte Gibson is a lawyer with a brilliant career ahead of her. As her father Ray said, she could be the next female Indigenous Waleed Aly.'
'Nakkiah Lui is one of the country’s funniest, smartest and most deliciously outrageous playwrights. To call her a force of nature is less accurate than saying she is a one-woman cyclone. Her work – including her scripts for TV and her podcast Pretty for an Aboriginal – rips through this country’s cultural landscape, tearing down deadwood structures, pitching sacred cows into the air and laying bare a landscape that is scarred by its colonial history and strewn with the bones of massacre. And still, she makes you laugh. Even her 2018 play Blackie Blackie Brown, whose Aboriginal anthropologist protagonist literally digs up some of those bones, is as hilarious as it is provocative.' (Introduction)
