Black Diggers

Queensland Theatre Company and Sydney Festival present Black Diggers at the Sydney Opera House.

When Australia went to war in 1914, some of the people who might be expected to have no cause whatever to fight for the empire that displaced their own sovereignty nevertheless joined up, and went away to fight in Australia’s uniform, in countries their great-grandparents didn’t even know existed. The remarkable story of Australia’s black diggers has waited too long to be told. Now this neglected history has been unearthed with care and passion, to create a new play that Sydney theatre-goers will be the first to see.

For Director Wesley Enoch the project is a very special one, arising from years of commitment to telling this history. “We’ve been working on this for a few years and now it’s coming to fruition”, Enoch says. “The story is a fragmented set of narratives that tell typical situations Indigenous servicemen of WW1 found themselves in. Everything is based in research but we are trying not to be locked down to telling one story.”

Enoch has valued the difference in the process from his previous collaborations: the experience of working so closely with other men, to tell a story about masculinity, and one of the more traditional varieties of heroism. “One of the most amazing things is working with a room full of Black men. I have never done this before. I naturally gravitate to working with a balanced or predominately female cast and story (Cookie’s Table, The Sapphires, Stolen, Black Medea, The 7 Stages of Grieving etc.). To feel the energy of men and see the mateship form is very exciting.”

Black Diggers is the only full-scale play being presented as part of this year’s festival, and this is its world premiere after years of background research and workshop development. So if you are a theatre lover, this is the event you won’t want to miss.

For some fascinating background reading, Indigenous Histories has many stories of individual soldiers, and communities where many men enlisted.

Alfred Cameron of the 3rd Light Horse Reg. Photo via South Australian Aboriginal Soldiers of the First WW

Directed by Wesley Enoch, written by Tom Wright, with Luke Carroll, David Page, Eliah Watego, Guy Simons, Meyne Wyatt, Tibian Wiles, George Bostock, Colin Smith and Hunter Page Lochard.

What: Black Diggers

When: 18 – 26 January

Where: Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre

Tickets: Sydney Opera House or Sydney Festival