Reading Transhistorical Performances: No Sugar (1984), Holy Day (2001) and Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin] (2012)

Abstract

The distinction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian performance rests in part on the acknowledgement by performers, spectators and critics that there is much at stake in terms of genre, representation, identification and cultural politics. This paper discusses a non-Indigenous authored drama, Holy Day (2001) by Andrew Bovell, which is set on the frontier of the 19th-century colony, and Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin], a multi-modal theatrical performance set in the present and featuring the Chooky Dancers, a group of young Elcho Island dancers. The paper examines how Bovell makes a notable contribution to the subgenre of Australian settler drama by radically interrogating the ..