Cirrus@Austlit

'This thesis argues that in recent years Indigenous theatre in Australia and Canada has become one of the most public and successful Indigenous-controlled platforms of political commentary, representing Indigenous experiences and concerns at a local, national and international level. It has not only contributed to the creation and development of new images and representations of Indigenous peoples as active subjects, but it has also engaged more directly with debates that shape and inform ideas about the nation. – Benefiting from the support and contribution of Indigenous playwrights, directors and actors, this thesis surveys the growth and variety of Indigenous theatre in the last sixteen years, with a particular focus on its development in the last five to ten years. Divided into two parts, this thesis draws attention to Indigenous theatre's radical interventions into competing discourses about history, racial identities and gender, as main thematic concerns, and investigates how Indigenous playwrights and directors appropriate theatre as a public political tool, while at the same time questioning the tradition of theatre itself as a specifically Western artistic form. – Through their appropriation of theatre as a cultural institution and form of knowledge production, which presents and represents the nation back onto itself, Indigenous peoples have strengthened and reasserted their right to self-representation and self-determination. If theatre holds a mirror to society and its values, it has functioned nonetheless as a white mirror, whose ideological assumptions have not reflected and accounted for Indigenous experiences in (post)colonial settings. This thesis contends that it is only by reversing and questioning the mirror and its apparatus of representation, which naturalises particular Eurocentric worldviews, that Indigenous theatre practitioners can create meaningful, empowering self-representations and potentially alter the structures of power and authority that operate outside the theatre.'