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Kill the Messenger is based on a true story about a man in the author’s home suburb of Mount Druitt. One day, in unbearable pain due to undiagnosed stomach cancer, he went to the local hospital, where he was refused care. Then he went to a nearby park and hung himself. Then in 2012 Nakkiah’s grandmother fell through the unmended floor of her public housing home and died. Nakkiah found herself at the centre of a story about… institutionalised racism. The resulting play lays it all out–her dodgy sex life, a dead man’s second chance, and a granddaughter’s sense of duty.
"In Kill the Messenger, playwright Nakkiah Lui tells two troubling stories about people dying: victims of “institutionalised racismâ€."
"An Australian playwright is asking why audiences are constantly drawn to stories of black suffering, if it rarely translates into change in the community."
"In a challenge to the spectacle of Indigenous disadvantage, and the theatre's many attempts to engage a paying and predominantly white audience with it, she poses thorny questions: What are we, the audience, doing here? What do we think we are looking at? What do we expect, and why should she deliver?"
"With no answers to be found, all Lui can do is tell their stories and hope we listen. “All I have is the truth and this is the most I can give you,†she says. “Now please, take it.â€"
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