Jacky, a serrated-edge comedy by Arrernte playwright Declan Furber Gillick, premiered at Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023 and had a season at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre in 2025. Now Black Swan and Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company co-present a new production, directed by Kate Champion and Maitland Schnaars. Jacky is a smart, enterprising young Aboriginal man making a life for himself in the city. Skillfully navigating the gig economy, he moves neatly from office internships to cultural performances to sex work. But when his little brother Keith shows up unannounced, Jacky’s carefully compartmentalised lives are thrown into chaos. “You know when a play is really pushing buttons, strumming raw nerves. Audiences get loud. [Jacky] had its Sydney opening night audience yelling in disbelief,” said Limelight in a four-and-a-half-star review in 2025. “Jacky is a scintillating, uncompromising and uncomfortable comedy that lets no one off its hook – especially the audience.”

Limelight Editor’s Choice

Jacky is a smart, enterprising young Aboriginal man making a life for himself in the city.

He’s skilfully navigating the gig economy, skipping neatly from office internships to cultural performances to sex work. But when his little brother Keith shows up unannounced, Jacky’s carefully compartmentalised lives are thrown into chaos.

Sharp, funny and unflinching, Jacky is a biting new play about family, work, culture, and the compromises we make to survive. With wit, grit and a wicked sense of humour, Declan Furber Gillick shines a light on the cost of navigating identity, ambition and connection in contemporary Australia.

This bold new co-production brings two of WA’s leading theatre companies together to deliver one of the most exciting new Australian plays of recent years. A work that is as confronting as it is hilarious, as personal as it is political.