"Picnic at Hanging Rock" is a story deeply rooted in Australian culture, recounting the disappearance of three female students and a teacher from a prestigious college in the bush in 1900. Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, Peter Weir's 1975 film, and Tom Wright's 2016 play have all told this famous story, captivating the nation's imagination for decades. The enduring mystery continues to fuel speculation and artistic interpretation.
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03-10, 2025Iain Sinclair previously worked in the box office at the Malthouse Theatre, responsible for selling tickets. In 2016, Wright's adaptation, directed by Matthew Lutton, premiered there. Nine years later, as a Wiradjuri actor and director, Sinclair is bringing the story to a new audience with a Sydney Theatre Company (STC) production. He hopes to offer a fresh perspective on this well-known narrative.
What attracted Sinclair to creating a work that has already been staged numerous times? "Every time I direct anything, I ask myself, 'Why this play? Why this story now?'" Sinclair said in an interview with ABC's "The Stage Show." In this case, it was an opportunity to apply an Indigenous perspective to a widely popular post-colonial classic. This unique approach allows for a re-examination of the themes and underlying tensions.
Sinclair explained, "Theatre allows us to tell stories, but also to reinterpret them, to breathe new life into familiar narratives." His career began with performing in plays for children at a local festival in the coastal town of Bunbury, Western Australia. Performing offered him an escape from a sometimes traumatic childhood. At school, he joined the choir, played the clarinet and piano, and appeared in local theatre productions, nurturing his creative talents.
Playing new characters and exploring their worlds "took me somewhere else," Sinclair said. "That feeling has never really gone away." His grandmother fostered his love of storytelling from a young age. They would watch movies together, and she would take him to the library when he stayed with her during school holidays. "She would give me free rein to choose whatever books I wanted," he said. His grandmother, who came to Australia alone from Scotland when she was 17, encouraged young Sinclair to pursue his dreams. "(She taught me) that imagination can take you anywhere," he said, instilling a lifelong belief in the power of creativity.
After completing high school in the mining town of Collie, Sinclair moved to Perth to study journalism. There, a chance conversation with his aunt, Lynette Narkle – a respected actor and director who worked as an Indigenous education officer at the university – set him on a different path. He told her he was feeling uneasy about journalism, and she asked him why he didn't choose acting. This was a revelatory moment for Sinclair, who had always felt that a career in the performing arts was out of reach, and he told her he would consider it. "Within a week, I'd dropped out of that course," he said, embracing a new direction.
The following year, he enrolled in the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts' (WAAPA) 12-month Aboriginal Theatre course, whose alumni include "Mystery Road" star Shari Sebbens and Meyne Wyatt. "For me, that place was like Disneyland," Sinclair said. "You're there every day, nine hours a day, learning the deep fundamentals of being a performer and a creator." He later joined Yirra Yaakin, a Noongar theatre company based in Perth, and then Ilbijerri Theatre Company in Melbourne, further honing his skills and experience.
He made a living as an actor but hadn't yet landed roles on major stages such as the Melbourne Theatre Company or the Malthouse Theatre. "Those were the places I wanted to be (but) unfortunately at that time I wasn't seeing people like me on those stages," he said. In 2014, Sinclair had a conversation with a friend about the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in foster care. This was an issue that enraged Sinclair. "Those statistics were just shocking to me. In those moments you feel so helpless and I thought, 'What can I do?... How do we make sure that people don't forget the Stolen Generations?'" he said. "Because it's not a past thing, it's a very important thing for us now, and it's still continuing."
His response "as an actor, as a creator (and) as an Aboriginal man" was to turn to theatre. He collaborated with theatre-makers Penny Harpham and Seanna van Helten from She Said Theatre to create HART, a one-man show based on the testimonies of members of the Stolen Generations. The play premiered in 20 living rooms as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2015 and was an instant hit. "We sold out every night," Sinclair said. HART won three Melbourne Fringe awards – Best Emerging Indigenous Artist and two touring-ready awards – which enabled Sinclair to take the show on a sold-out tour of Australia and New Zealand, amplifying the stories of those affected.
Performing HART came with a huge responsibility to the Stolen Generations survivors, and Sinclair would often meet with them in the foyer after performances. "I can't tell you how many times (people) would come up to me afterwards and tell me that I was the first person they'd ever told they were stolen to, which was just incredible," he said. "I always felt that the work was bigger than me." While creating the script for HART, Sinclair discovered that his own father was also a member of the Stolen Generations. "I was 25 years old and it was the first time my father had ever told me that he and his siblings were taken from their father," he said. "That was a turning point in my life."
Sinclair was still touring HART when Clare Watson (then artistic director at Perth's Black Swan State Theatre Company) invited him to take on his first main stage role in the vampire romance "Let the Right One In." He spent the next four years as an artist-in-residence at Black Swan. "That was an amazing time because I learned so much, so quickly," he said. "I spent a lot of time in the room watching directors work, and I think I caught the directing bug." This experience provided invaluable insight into the craft of directing and fueled his ambition to explore this avenue further.
Sinclair made his STC directorial debut in 2023 with British playwright Nick Payne's "Constellations." Prior to that, he had been assistant director on Kip Williams' critically acclaimed productions of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." With "Picnic at Hanging Rock," Sinclair wants to explore the impact of a group of young white women entering a space they shouldn't be in, examining themes of intrusion and disruption.
Hanging Rock, located 70km north of Melbourne, is a former volcano and a sacred site for the Dja Dja Wurrung, Woi Wurrung and Taungurung people. "It's a space of initiation and... transformation. People would be sent up to the rock as children and come back as adults, especially young men," Sinclair said. "The first thing I said to (the creative team) was, 'I think the rock ate them.' "The land has taken (these young girls) because they have disrupted it," highlighting the spiritual significance of the location.
In the STC production, Olivia DeJonge, Kirsty Marillier, Lorinda May Merrypor, Masego Pitso and Contessa Treffone play five modern-day schoolgirls who take turns narrating the story. As the plot unfolds, they begin to inhabit the characters and physically enact the narrative. In Sinclair's telling, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is a story about colonisation. "I knew immediately that I couldn't tell this story with five white bodies on stage," he said, emphasizing the importance of diverse representation.
Sinclair highlights the tensions inherent in a colonial narrative on unceded land, primarily through the character of Mrs Appleyard, the school's headmistress. "Mrs Appleyard is the force of colonialism. She's suppressing those girls. She wants to tame them. She wants to control them," Sinclair said. "It's the same thing that happened to the land and all the blackfullas and traditional owners at the time; the land... is being suppressed and it's not being respected," drawing parallels between the treatment of the land and its people.
Lorinda May Merrypor, a Kaanju and South Sea Islander actor, said a line that resonates with Sinclair every time he hears it: "Everything was colonial in 1900." "For me, that sentence says so much about this work. 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' will play at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House from February 17 to April 5, 2025," promising a thought-provoking and visually stunning production.
