Archived

Conversations
with the Dead

By Richard J. Frankland
Directed by Wesley Enoch

  • Venue Upstairs Theatre
  • Dates 31 Jul – 31 Aug 2003

    Between 1988 and 1991, Richard Frankland, filmmaker, poet, musician and activist was an investigator with the Royal Commission in to Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The experience changed his life. He made the film No Way to Forget, a triumph in Cannes in 1996, as a way of trying to understand what he had been through. In Conversations with the Dead, he had created the tragedy of Jack, a young, ambitious Koori, well-connected in the worlds of the black and white politics, whose mission requires him to straddle the contradictions of both worlds. But how can he be true to his brothers, his past, when the white world for which he works doesn’t understand the subtleties, the strengths, the pain, the rage of the people whose deaths he is investigating?

    Wesley Enoch returned to Belvoir to direct a new production of Conversations with the Dead in the wake of his luminous productions at Belvoir St of The Seven Stages of Grieving, Stolen and Jack Davis’ The Dreamers.

    Team

    By Richard J. Frankland
    Directed by Wesley Enoch
    Set Design Ralph Myers
    Lighting Design Mark Howett
    Costume Design Stephanie Blake
    Music Director Wayne Freer
    Original music and songs by Richard J. Frankland & Andy Baylor
    Cultural Consultant Kevin Smith

    Cast

    Wayne Blair
    Luke Carroll
    Elaine Crombie
    Lillian Crombie
    Rachael Maza
    Kirk Page
    Vic Simms

    Production images by Heidrun Lohn

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