Memories You Can't Shake

Meet Nakkiah Lui – inaugural recipient of both the Dreaming Award and Balnaves Foundation Indigenous Playwright's Award, 2012 associate playwright in residence at Belvoir, law student, Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman.

This Heaven marks Lui's first full length and main stage production, and the story she has lined up for the Belvoir is as volatile as the imagery that inspired it.

“It wasn't the play that I expected to write, I had an idea about something else,” says Lui, making mention of a play she'd still like to write about a death in a hospital, “And then there was this tribute to a little girl who had passed away in Mt Druitt and someone had come and burnt it down during the night, so that image of the burnt fence in the park and also the fence burning in the night, it stuck in my mind, and that's kind of where the whole play came from.”

Set in an outer Western Sydney community, This Heaven follows the actions of the Gordon family; the father has died in custody at Mt Druitt Police Station and in the wake of the death what little legal help lawyers can offer hardly seems sufficient.

At the centre of the play is Sissy Gordon, daughter of the deceased, and like Lui herself, a law student. As the streets that housed the disaster are taken to by dissatisfied residents Sissy joins the charge of people wanting an explanation, justice, for the voices to be heard, their questions answered. It's a denouement inspired by the image Lui stumbled across in the streets of her own town.

Recently appointed artistic director of Griffin Theatre, Lee Lewis, is directing the production, and Lui has been making most of the opportunity to witness her first full-length script come to life.

“Lee is such an amazing woman and even just being in the rehearsal room with her is such a privilege you just feel like you're learning every single second – she is a brilliant director. There was this moment in the rehearsal room after readings and Lee and Anthea (Williams, literary manager at Belvoir) and I think it was Anthea, the dramaturge, said, 'I'm glad you wrote this play instead of throwing a Molotov cocktail,'” recalls Lui, hints of both pride and mischief present, “And in a way it was so spot on, this play is my Molotov cocktail; to me, theatre is a space where you do have the freedom to say what you feel needs to be said.”

Nowhere is this sentiment more evident than when Lui talks about putting law on the backburner for now.

“I think there are some amazing people doing some amazing things and making some incredible changes to how we are as a society who are lawyers and working in the legal system. For myself, though, I'd rather just do the arts. I think it's good to know the game, but I'd rather try and change it, and I don't want to end up just putting people through a system.”