Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long used performance to express and share their culture and stories. In contemporary theatre, traditional Indigenous performance elements have been woven with international performance styles and elements to create a new way to tell Australian Indigenous stories.

The National Black Theatre or Black Theatre (Sydney) was a theatre group formed by Paul Coe, Lester Bostock, Gary Foley and Jenny Sheehan.

The group invited Bob Maza from Melbourne to join them and started to write plays with an Indigenous perspective. In 1974 the National Black Theatre secured government funding and opened an Art and Cultural Centre in a warehouse in Botany Street, Redfern.

In 1977, the Centre closed due to lack of funding but the National Black Theatre continued to influence and inform other Indigenous theatrical initiatives. In 1987 the First National Black Playwrights’ Conference was held under the artistic directorship of Brian Syron, thanks to a push from people like Chicka Dixon, Gary Foley and Rhoda Roberts. Out of this came the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust (ANTT), established in Sydney in 1988.

Comedian Roy Rene was the most famous actors on the Australian vaudeville stage. Well known as an actor and comedian at the Tivoli theatres, he was famous for his timing and stage make-up.

His most famous persona was Mo McCackie, a character he developed in 1916 with Nat Phillips. The pair, known as ‘Stiffy and Mo’, starred together in the popular pantomime The Bunyip.

Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn was an Australian–American actor. Errol was born on 20 June 1909 in Hobart.

He achieved worldwide fame during the golden age of Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the period of classical Hollywood cinema, started with the silent movie era and the first major feature-length silent movie called The Birth of a Nation (1915).

The golden age of Hollywood ended with the demise of the studio system, the emergence of television, rising costs and subsequent losses ,notably Cleopatra (1963).

Costume is an integral part of the production of any performance art, even if the costume is simple. Costume is important, as it helps to establish a character, communicate the context or setting of the play and supports the style of the production.

Costume designer Kristian Fredrikson had a long association with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia. He designed operas, including Lucrezia Borgia starring Dame Joan Sutherland. He also worked on the 2000 Sydney summer Olympics opening ceremony. His costumes were often elaborate and intricate.

In 1957, Danish architect Jørn Utzon (1918–2008) was announced as the winner of an international design competition for a Sydney opera house, to be built at Bennelong Point. Utzon’s design was ahead of its time and he famously is said to have been inspired by peeling an orange and rearranging the segments. From these segments he arranged the now famous sails of the Opera House.

Utzon was the lead architect on the project, however it was not smooth sailing. The project ran over time and over budget. After lengthy disputes with the Government, Utzon resigned from the project in 1966 and left the country. He never returned to Australia, so never saw his vision completed. You can learn more about the Sydney Opera house and Jørn Utzon in the Digital Classroom module “Designing the Sydney Opera House”.