Glenn Shea – November 7 2021

Remembrance Day – November 11

Glenn is a director, performer, educator and playwright. He was the first Aboriginal person to graduate from NIDA with a degree in Dramatic Art and has appeared in many leading theatre productions, films and TV series. A descendant of the Ngarrindjeri people, Glenn’s lived experience as a Stolen Generations child and his personal experience while a frontline Koorie juvenile justice worker informed his trilogy of plays, Three Magpies Perched in a Tree, Masterpiece, and Some Secrets Should Be Kept Secret. Glenn has been a recipient of the State Library of Victoria R.E. Ross Trust Development Award; Playwriting Australia’s Script Workshop Selection Award; and the 2020 NAIDOC Award for Elder and Respected Person for outstanding cultural/program service to community. He participated in Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2020 Cybec, and has contributed to Screen Australia’s Indigenous Short Works and Playwriting Australia’s Dear Australia, a monologue collection in which 50 Australian playwrights send theatrical ‘postcards’ to Australia giving voice to the hopes and fears of Australians as the country begins to recover from the impact of COVID-19. Glenn’s other work has included being La Mama Theatre’s First Nations Producer, a Guest Lecturer for Melbourne University Masters’ students, History of Blak Theatre Australia, and researching and curating the Powerhouse Museum’s one-year exhibition, History of Blak Theatre 1967–2000. He is also the inventor of The Storyteller Boardgame, an Indigenous cultural education resource which provides knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal people, society and culture from a generic and non-political perspective.

Masterpiece (published in An Indigenous Trilogy)
Australian Script Centre, 2015
75 minutes; 1 female, 3 male (Countryman could be either male or female)
The second play in Glenn’s trilogy, Masterpiece follows an Aboriginal worker from the stolen generation who finds himself living as a recluse in the middle of the desert. The issues from his work as a juvenile justice worker has impacted his life to the point where he has lost everything. He is battling his demons and believes he is of no value and wants to die alone drinking and trying to paint his Masterpiece. Little does he know his life is just about to take a different direction when Hope steps off the train.
“… Masterpiece, while a thriller set in a remote location, is at the same time both lyrical and richly layered. Telling a story of Aboriginal trauma and resilience at a time of potential change, hope emerges with the realisation that the “masterpiece” is not a painting but rather the immediate image as it is reflected in a mirror.” – Vanessa Cartwright, South Sydney Herald

Photo: Scott Webb

MI:WI 3027
Australian Script Centre, 2019
75 minutes; 1 female, 2 male (Non-Indigenous female speaks German/English; Non-Indigenous male speaks English and bits of German; Indigenous male speaks Ngarrindjeri and English)
Mi:Wi 3027 brings to life a most fascinating wartime story inspired by Ngarrindjeri Digger Roland Carter from the Raukkan community in the Coorong, South Australia, and the lifelong friendship he developed with Jewish German ethnologist Leonhard Adam. Roland Carter (Service No. 3027) became the first Ngarrindjeri man to join the Australian Imperial Forces during World War I. Whilst interned in Germany, he met Jewish German ethnologist Leonhard Adam, employed by the German government to collect information on the culture and customs of the ethnic prisoners. During meetings between the two, Roland gave Leonhard valuable insight into the customs, history, language and daily life of the Ngarrindjeri people back home in Australia. It was these meetings that led the two men from very different cultures to form what would become a lifelong friendship.