Redfern Renaissance

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In January 2025, Sydney Festival’s Blak Out program will once again return to Belvoir St Theatre.

Alongside Jacky in the upstairs theatre, Belvoir’s Community Liaison Coordinator and well-known Wiradjuri Yuin actor and Redfern resident Angeline Penrith will spearhead this project as creative director. Angeline will curate a series of workshops, discussion panels and performances celebrating the history of The National Black Theatre Redfern.

The program will particularly reference the two productions of National Black Theatre which operated in Redfern from 1972-1977: The Cake Man by Robert Merritt and Here Comes the N****r by Gerry Bostock – a work that has never been published in full and to this day can only be found in excerpts.

Taking a deep dive into the productions and the writers of these two plays, acknowledging that they never found a home/keeping place following its first performances but left a long legacy of activism, self-determination, and radical re-thinking of Blak futures through the arts.

Redfern Renaissance

Creative Director Angeline Penrith

Co-presented with

Indigenous theatre at Belvoir is supported by