The Visitors by Muruwari writer Jane Harrison premiered at the 2020 Sydney Festival. Sydney Theatre Company and Moogahlin Performing Arts are now presenting a new production of the award-winning play, directed by Wesley Enoch, with a slightly revised script that features two women among the previously all-male cast and the inclusion of Dharug Dhalang language at the start of the play.

Luke Carroll and Elaine Crombie in The Visitors, Sydney Theatre Company and Moogahlin Performing Arts, 2023. Photo © Daniel Boud

The Visitors is a powerful play, offering a very different, thought-provoking perspective to the arrival of the First Fleet, seen from the point of view of a group of Indigenous elders.

It is a hot summer’s day in January 1788. Six clan leaders and one young man sent as a representative gather on a sandstone escarpment overlooking the harbour. A fleet of giant nawi (ships) is slowly arriving. Who are these strangers? Why are they here? Should they be welcomed or sent packing?

Initially, the leaders all want to send them away, except for the quiet, contemplative Wallace (Dalara Williams) who argues that protocols demand they should welcome them, give...