Elaine Crombie was a drama student when she first saw Deborah Mailman perform her one-woman play, The 7 Stages of Grieving, in the late 1990s.
She saw a woman who looked just like her, taking up all the space she needed on the stage, telling the stories of her own people.
More than 20 years later, Crombie is taking up her own space in the fourth iteration of the work Mailman wrote with Wesley Enoch and first performed in 1995.
But apart from Crombie taking the lead, the sad truth is that not a lot has changed in the 26 years since.
The play is a non-linear series of vignettes across seven stages of Indigenous history - dreaming, invasion, genocide, protection, assimilation, self-determination and reconciliation - themes that are still depressingly relevant today.
Crombie said that apart from being alone on stage each night for the entire show, performing the show, using different tones and characters, was often exhausting.
"Telling each story in the moment, some nights, I can see people that I'm talking about, they just come to me in my mind's eye," she said.
But she revelled in being able to make audiences laugh while relating harrowing stories - it was both a professional and a life skill.
"That's the way that we also get through all of this stuff, all of this shit that we're put through," she said.
"We are still resilient and still survive with a smile on our face. But, you know, we got cousins in jail, and we are losing our children and children are being taken away ... It's all very relatable, but as long as we can get through any way that we can - for me, for us, it's about telling this story and making people laugh."
Director Shari Sebbens said the experience of putting on 7 Stages was unlike many other theatrical works.
"Usually actors get to have fun, and they get to go to work and get out of their lives. But this play requires the person performing it to go deeper into the traumatic part of the Aboriginal experience," she said.
"Everything on this stage is connected to something in our lives, and aspects of our lives that aren't on stage are still connected to the play."
But she said it was important for the play to leave on a hopeful note, which is why the 2021 version has a new epilogue.
"We don't want the audience, especially blackfellas in the audience, to leave feeling the way that we did by the end of the three-week rehearsal period," she said.
"So the epilogue, the seven actions of healing, is seven things that people can do, very tangible and real things that we hope people go out and do to create bigger change."
- The 7 Stages of Grieving is at The Playhouse until June 26. canberratheatrecentre.com.au
