Ngarnga Djilbruk

^{Respectful Learning through Contemporary Indigenous Theatre}

Ngarnga Djilbruk (respectful learning) invites students into a powerful creative journey that culminates in performing their own work onstage at Bunjil Place - a rare chance to share learning with peers in a world-class venue and work alongside practising artists who bring cultural insight and creative excellence.

Aligned with the Victorian Curriculum 2.0, the program supports students to explore how Drama—including work created and performed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples—celebrates and challenges diverse perspectives of Australian identity. Using contemporary Indigenous theatre as a key stimulus, students collaborate to explore, develop, create and present contemporary Australian theatre that reflects multiple viewpoints.

Teachers are supported every step of the way through clear guidance, rich resources, and a structure that makes delivering this curriculum area both achievable and deeply rewarding.

Ngarnga Djilbruk empowers teachers to offer dynamic, culturally grounded learning experiences that spark curiosity, build understanding, and stay with students long after the curtain falls.


Play Audio Language Name: Ngarnga Djilbruk Respectful Learning 

Who this is for

Year 9 and 10 Drama students

What students will do

• Explore contemporary Indigenous theatre as a stimulus for inquiry and respectful learning

• Evaluate how drama and theatre celebrate and challenge perspectives of Australian identity

• Collaborate to devise an original performance work and refine it through rehearsal

• Participate in a technical rehearsal and perform onstage at Bunjil Place

• Gain insight into professional theatre-making through a behind-the-scenes experience (production team + back-of-house tour)

• On performance day, learn about local Aboriginal culture and Boonwurrung language from Traditional Custodian Jaeden Williams

What teachers can expect

• A clear, curriculum-aligned structure: explore → develop → create → present

• Introductory teacher session to support planning, curriculum alignment and assessment pathways

• 3 in-school mentorship workshops with First Nations artists (dates to be aligned with schools’ normal timetables)

• Resources and guidance designed for busy teachers, supporting confident delivery and meaningful reflection

Program inclusions

• 1 x teacher introduction session

• 3 x in-school mentorship workshops with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous artists

• Technical rehearsal + performance day at Bunjil Place

• Behind-the-scenes venue access: production team + back-of-house tour

Curriculum links (Victorian Curriculum 2.0)

• How drama including work created and/or performed by First Nations, celebrates and challenges multiple perspectives of Australian identity, VC2ADR10E02

• Creating drama and producing theatre for audiences using narrative and non-narrative forms, elements of drama and style-specific conventions to communicate ideas, meaning and intention, VC2ADR10C01

• How to reflect on, analyse, evaluate and document their own and others’ drama work to inform choices and interpretations made both as artists and as audiences, VC2ADR10D0

• How to plan, rehearse, refine, present and perform improvised, devised and scripted drama in different contexts to a range of audiences in a range of spaces, VC2ADR10P01

Bunjil Place Performance Day

9.30 am Schools arrival  

9.45 am Welcome to Country & Smoking Ceremony  

10.30 am – 12.30 pm Performance run-throughs and theatre tours  

12.30 pm – 1.00 pm Lunch   

1.00 pm - 2.30 pm Performance run-throughs and theatre tours  

2:30 pm - 3.00 pm Closing ceremony  

3:00 pm Student dismissal  

Eligibility

This program is offered to local government schools. A small number of non-government schools can apply.

Subsidies

Subsidies may be available for relief teachers and bus travel.

Partners and Acknowledgement 

This program is a collaboration between Drama Victoria and the Bunjil Place Education team.

Bunjil Place acknowledges the support of the Department of Education, Victoria, through the Strategic Partnerships Program.

 

Theatre Makers 

Jenny Blow

I am the Creative and Performing Arts Leader at Sunshine College and have been teaching drama for over eleven years across a range of educational settings. Having taught both VCE and HSC drama, I am passionate about contemporary Australian theatre and the role arts education can play in engaging young people from diverse backgrounds, which lead me to present a workshop at the Drama Victoria Conference on engaging students from diverse and low-literacy backgrounds in drama. Alongside my classroom teaching, I am a member of the Arts Centre Melbourne Teacher Advisory Group, mark the VCE Drama written examination, and was selected for both the Bell Shakespeare National Teacher Mentorship Program and the Teaching Excellence Program in the Arts Discipline.

A key focus of my work is the authentic and respectful inclusion of First Nations perspectives in drama education. I have volunteered with the National Aboriginal Sporting Chance Academy in Yuelamu, Northern Territory, and with the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), as well as contributing to the development of a Reconciliation Action Plan working group. At my own schools, I have worked to strengthen the inclusion of contemporary Indigenous theatre and storytelling across our drama curriculum and have organised Contemporary Indigenous Theatre workshops for students through partnerships with Drama Victoria and Bunjil Place. I am excited to be involved in Ngarnga Djilbruk and to continue learning from artists, educators and communities through this work.


Jane Carter

Jane Carter is an experienced Drama educator with more than 24 years of teaching experience. She is currently the President of Drama Victoria, having served on the organisation's committee for the past eight years.

Jane's professional expertise centres on embedding First Nations perspectives, histories and knowledges within Drama education. She is a passionate advocate for truth-telling and for addressing the "Great Australian Silence"—the historical omission of First Nations peoples, histories and experiences from dominant narratives of Australian identity.

Her work in this field has been recognised nationally and internationally. In 2025, Jane presented her workshop on teaching First Nations content and concepts at the SDEA Theatre Arts Conference in Singapore. She has also presented at the International Drama/Theatre and Education Association and International Drama in Education Research Institute global conferences in China, Iceland and the United Kingdom, as well as at the Drama New Zealand Conference.

Jane is committed to empowering both students and educators to engage critically and respectfully with First Nations histories, cultures and contemporary lived experiences. This commitment is reflected in her classroom practice and creative work. In 2018 and 2019, her VCE Drama students performed their original ensemble work, Advance Australia Fair, at several drama conferences. She further developed this approach with her 2021 VCE Drama classes through Marvelous Melbourne, an exploration of local First Nations histories that was presented at the 2022 Drama Victoria Conference.

Throughout her career, Jane has sought to create meaningful opportunities for learning, reflection and dialogue, ensuring that First Nations voices and perspectives are recognised as central to Australia's past, present and future.


Mark Eckersley

I am an Australian drama educator, researcher, dramaturg and director with more than 40 years’ experience in theatre and education. In 1987, I was invited by Bob Maza to join First Nations theatre makers participating in the First Aboriginal Playwrights' Conference, an experience that profoundly shaped my understanding of Indigenous theatre and storytelling.

My interest in Indigenous-focused programs such as the Ngarnga Djilbruk project with Drama Victoria and Bunjil Place reflects my long-standing professional and academic focus on First Nations perspectives in drama education, including doctoral research into how non-Indigenous teachers engage with Indigenous drama texts. I have delivered more than 20 workshops, both individually and collaboratively, for Drama Victoria and Drama Australia, centred on teaching Indigenous Australian perspectives in Drama and the Arts. I have also written and delivered resources and professional learning on Australian Indigenous drama and contemporary Indigenous theatre.

I bring extensive experience in devising and ensemble theatre-making through my work as a director, dramaturg, workshop leader and collaborative theatre educator, and I am committed to supporting respectful and meaningful engagement with First Nations stories and perspectives in educational settings.


Danni Hradsky

Danielle is a non-Indigenous Euro-Australian educator, artist and researcher who lives on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. Danielle taught secondary Drama, English and Dance for six years before beginning a PhD researching embodied approaches to reconciliation and decolonising education. She co-authored the widely used resource Teaching First Nations Content and Concepts in the Drama Classroom, and has delivered professional learning across Australia and around the world, as well as teaching the next generation of teachers at Deakin and Melbourne universities. Together with Yamatji/Noongar actor Mark Nannup, Danielle designed and facilitated the first four years of Ngarnga Djilbruk, including developing the published resource Teaching Contemporary Indigenous Theatre. She stepped back from the project to have a baby but is delighted to return as an Expert Teacher for 2026. 


Darcie Kane-Priestley 

Darcie Kane-Priestley is the Director of Drama and Dance at Ruyton Girls’ School and has over 17 years of experience teaching Drama across Years 7-12. A passionate advocate for the transformative power of theatre and the Drama Victoria community, she has presented at the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools Global Forum in Boston, Drama Victoria conferences and Student Workshop Days, collaborated with Children’s Ground on their Truth Telling Workshops, served on VCAA advisory panels, and Assessed both the VCE Drama Written and Solo Performance Examinations.  

Having grown up on Arrernte Country in Central Australia, Darcie is committed to embedding First Nations perspectives in Drama education through extensive leadership, collaboration, and curriculum development, including co-chairing Ruyton’s Reconciliation Action Plan, co-ordinating Immersion Programmes to Arrernte country and the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, and contributing to state-wide First Nations Drama resources. She has taught VCE Ensemble Theatre Making for 15 years and is dedicated to fostering creative, inclusive and socially engaged learning.


Dr. Blayne Welsh

Blayne is a practicing applied theatre maker and scholar who works in the service of his Wailwan mob located in the far northwest of New South Wales. His father and siblings were all Stolen in 1960, and each of their journeys formed a river through some of the darkest institutions in our nation's history. Blayne's academic career provided the means to retrace those steps, begin to heal his own traumas arising from both this past, along with that which comes from a complicated intersectional identity.

In 2019 he received a Fulbright and American Australian Association Scholarship to attend New York University as a visiting scholar, having the privilege of being mentored by Clinical Professor Joe Salvatore, Director of NYU's Verbatim Performance Lab, from which Blayne developed the Indigenised approach to ethnodrama (Winanga-li / Baliya-li) as a culturally safe, and responsive framework for non-Indigenous educators to feel supported and empowered to take students on their own journey engaging directly with regionally relevant First Nations stories, due to enter into a pilot program in 2027.

Blayne bridges the old and the new, with a deep commitment to not only engage his own nieces and nephews, but all young Australians in a meaningful and relevant process of Indigenisation, in which we learn to sit with diverse voices and perspectives, engage in practices of deep listening and respectful discussion, develop the capacity listen to uncomfortable or unfamiliar stories and the importance of respecting peoples without ranking them.

His recently published debut chapter "A little corroboree of their own" is now available in the fourth edition of Cambridge University's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education: An Introduction for the Teaching Profession.