The Corrosion of Racism is Cunning
'As a writer, the most important thing you have is your instinct.' Part I of a personal essay series exploring success, motherhood, and racism in Australia
News & Reviews Magazine
This article is part of our August edition. Read the editor’s letter to see what other fantastic writing has just been published. If you’re annoyed that it’s paywalled, then that means you wanted to read it, which means you value it. These writers get paid for what they do because their work is valuable. If you like that this type of independent media exists, please back it!
The piece you’re reading now is by Nakkiah Lui. Nakkiah is a multi-award-winning First Nations writer, actor, and producer. Her most recent work includes the Audible Australia series First Eat, ‘a confrontational, raw and highly personal exploration of food politics, power and body sovereignty’. She is also the curator of Joan Press, an imprint of Allen & Unwin ‘with the ambition of supporting and amplifying new and different types of storytelling’.
I’m currently doing some rework on Blaque Showgirls, a play I wrote that was first performed at Malthouse Theatre in 2016, when people still called me an ‘emerging playwright’. I prefer the term ‘crowning playwright’ because my work was screaming, new, and wrapped in a metaphorical secretion.
Blaque Showgirls is being staged at Griffin Theatre this September and is loosely inspired by the classic film Showgirls. The idea for it came from a place of spite, which, I’m unashamed to say, is a driver for much of my work.
I’d had maybe three or four shows on by then and was constantly getting asked if I was interested in doing an adaptation of a ‘classic’, which was usually code for a play by a dead White man. The question was more of a direction: that adapting a ‘classic’ would cement my validity as a ‘proper’ playwright… not just an ‘Aboriginal playwright’.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to News & Reviews by Bri Lee to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.