Nine Aboriginal actors, playing around 100 different characters between them, are donning the uniform of their forebears to put remembrance of their sacrifice in its proper place.

Director Wesley Enoch told ABC News it was vital the Aboriginal involvement was not forgotten.

“Our myth-making as a country is such that we often like to forget our Aboriginal history,” he said. “So when you tell a story like this, people say: 'What? There were Aboriginal people at Gallipoli?'."

In preparing the production, Enoch and writer Tom Wright had to do some digging of their own.

They met many descendants of these Aboriginal soldiers and trawled through letters and diaries kept at the Australian War Memorial.(Source)


To mark the eve of the centenary of the First World War, Sydney Festival presents a work of significance, scope and monumental ambition, in a world premiere event at Sydney Opera House. Directed by Wesley Enoch and written by Tom Wright, Black Diggers uncovers the contribution of First World War Aboriginal Diggers, following their exceptional stories from their homelands to the battlefields of Gallipoli, Palestine and Flanders. An all-male, all-Indigenous cast will evoke these heroic men, largely unknown to history.