Nakkiah Lui – March 5 2017

Nakkiah is a Gamillaroi/Torres Strait Islander woman who grew up in the Dhurag community in Western Sydney. A founding member of the Indigenous Theatre Company `Nangarnr’, she has held residencies with ATYP, Belvoir and Griffin Theatre Company. She has been an associate playwright at Belvoir and was awarded the inaugural Australia Council’s The Dreaming Award and the inaugural Balnaves Foundation’s Indigenous Playwright’s Award. She holds an Arts/Laws degree from the University of New South Wales. Nakkiah is a young leader in the Australian Aboriginal community and has contributed to The Guardian, been a featured panelist during Sydney Writers Festival (2014), and appeared on ABC TV’s The Drum. Her other works include the radio play My Dreaming, Our Awakening, stage plays I should have told you before we made love (that I’m black), Stho Sthexy, and The Traditional Owners of Death. For the screen she has written and directed the documentary From Drag King to Law Queen, the short film BabyGirl and has co-written and appeared in the television series Black Comedy.

Kill the Messenger
Currency Press, 2015; ISBN 9781925005370
Full length play; 3 female, 2 male
Kill the Messenger is based on a true story about a man in the author’s home suburb of Mount Druitt. One day, in unbearable pain due to undiagnosed stomach cancer, he went to the local hospital, where he was refused care. Then he went to a nearby park and hanged himself. Then in 2012 Nakkiah’s grandmother fell through the unrepaired floor of her public housing home and died. Nakkiah found herself at the centre of a story about … institutionalised racism. The resulting play lays it all out – her dodgy sex life, a dead man’s second chance, and a granddaughter’s sense of duty.

This Heaven
Published in Downstairs at Belvoir – Volume 2 Playlab, 2013; ISBN 9781925338201
1.5 hours; 2 female, 3 male
Sometimes you need to push. Sissy Gordon’s father died in custody at Mount Druitt Police Station. The cops got a fine, Sissy’s family got $9,000 and no-one is allowed to speak about it. Sissy is about to become a lawyer but tonight, lawyers and the law are beside the point. Tonight the night is dirty and heavy, and the moon is swollen and bright. Everyone knows that on nights like this, things happen. At the centre of this play about a family at a flash point of oppression, loss, love and anger, is the question: does doing nothing make you as complicit as the perpetrators?