In 1943, a group of refugee aliens – most of them ‘Dunera Boys’ – created and performed a revue titled Sergeant Snow White at the Union Repertory Theatre at the University of Melbourne.

This year, on its 81st anniversary, the University of Sydney’s Ian Maxwell, chair of Theatre and Performance Studies, has recreated the show with its original script and a cast of student actors for showings in Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre.

“This project investigates, in and through performance practice, this extraordinary work, the circumstances in which it was created, and its complex – and overlooked– legacy,” says Maxwell.

Who were the ‘Dunera Boys’?

The passenger ship Dunera. Photo courtesy of the Australian National Maritime Museum Collection, ANMS0413[060]

On 10 July, 1940, the Hired Military Transport (HMT) Dunera, a British passenger ship, left Liverpool with about 2500 internees, the majority of whom were mostly German and Austrian Jews. The ship docked at Jones St Wharf in Sydney, and the internees were transferred to trains bound for far-off Hay, where they were held in an internment camp.

The ‘Dunera Boys’ included many artists, musicians, and writers. “They were the kinds of people who had fled Hitler’s regime...