A beautiful, heartbreaking play of the Indigenous Gothic genre that provides spiritual reprieve through Creation Stories from the difficult realities of the real-world story.
An Aboriginal man from the stolen generation is working in his Aboriginal community as a front-line juvenile justice worker, he comes into contact with many Aboriginal adolescent young people who come into contact with the criminal justice system. This story is about how the issues impact not only the young person but their friends, family, community, the society they live in and ultimately the Aboriginal worker who is trying to support them.
“Gothic archetypes twist their way through this affecting and confronting theatre trilogy wrests lyrical and confronting theatre from the collision of ancient and modern, juxtaposing Dreaming myths with grim testimony from the coalface of our Aboriginal justice and child protection systems.”
– Cameron Woodhead, The Age, Nov 13 2022
“Three Magpies is a personal history that is also a history haunted by the spectre of broken families, broken dreams and broken notions of personal empowerment.”
– Vanessa Francesca, Arts Hub, 28 Nov 2022
Content warnings: The use of words and descriptions that may be culturally sensitive and which might not normally be used in certain public or community contexts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audience members are advised that the following performance contains voices of people who have died. Haze. Loud noises including poppers, fireworks.
Created by Glenn Shea
Image by Darren Gill
Access Information:
Visual rating 50%: Events are partly subtitled or include dialogue, background music and/or sounds, so d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences can have some engagement with the event.
Aural Rating 50%: Has both sound and visual components, but sight isn’t essential to be able to engage with the event.
Three Magpies is on VCE Theatre Studies, Unit 4.