Wesley James EnochAM (born 1969) is an Australian playwright and artistic director. He is especially known for The 7 Stages of Grieving, co-written with Deborah Mailman. He was artistic director of the Queensland Theatre Company from mid-2010 until October 2015, and completed a five-year stint as director of the Sydney Festival in February 2021.
Early and personal life
Wesley James Enoch[1] was born on North Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah in 1969, the eldest son of Doug and Lyn Enoch.[2] and grew up in Brisbane.[3] He has four siblings and is the younger brother of Queensland government minister Leeanne Enoch.[4] His heritage is Nunukul and Ngugi[5] (two of three Quandamooka peoples from Stradbroke Island[6]), but also has a mixture of Irish, English and Scottish blood, and Danish and Spanish blood on his (non-Indigenous) mother's side, and Filipino, Pacific Islander and Kandju heritage on his father's.[1]
As of 2021[update], Enoch is the domestic partner of past artistic director of Australian Ballet, David McAllisterAC,[8][9] since around 2008, although they have lived in different cities for much of the time.[1]
In June 2010, his appointment as the new artistic director of the Queensland Theatre Company was announced, taking over from Michael Gow. He had previously directed several plays at the Company, and been an associate artist. He started in the new role firstly on a part-time basis from July 2010, and then full-time in January 2011.[14][15]
Enoch worked with Tom Wright to develop his play Black Diggers, about Indigenous soldiers in World War I, which under Enoch's direction premiered at the Sydney Opera House in 2014 to great acclaim[2] and was later performed in other states.[16]
He left Queensland Theatre to become director of the Sydney Festival in October 2015,[17] and served as director from February 2017 for a five-year term, with his last festival in 2021.[18][19][20] During his time there, he introduced many works offering a wide range of perspectives by First Nations artists.[21]
In March 2021 Enoch was appointed to the inaugural Indigenous Chair in the Creative Industries at QUT.[22][7]
Enoch is best-known for The 7 Stages of Grieving, a one-actor play co-written with Deborah Mailman in 1995 and first performed at the Metro Arts Theatre in Brisbane[26] by Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts, with Mailman in the solo role and Enoch directing, on 1 September 1995.[27] The play was published in book form in 1996, and has been much studied and written about since.[28]
The title refers to seven phases of Aboriginal history, with the words referencing Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's model commonly known as the five stages of grief. The stages in the play move from the Dreaming to a future of where Aboriginal self-determination and reconciliation with settler Australians has been achieved.[29] The seven stages comprise: Dreaming, Invasion, Genocide, Protection, Assimilation, Self-Determination and Reconciliation.[30] The concept of the seven phases of Aboriginal history were identified and named as such by Michael Williams, director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies at the University of Queensland when Enoch was teaching and Mailman was studying there during the 1990s.[31] The linking of Kübler-Ross's model and Williams' framework that started the examination of "the concept that Indigenous history has been a long and complicated grieving process since colonisation". Using traditional cultural forms of "dance, song, music, visuals and storytelling", they workshopped their ideas for two years before first presenting a 30-minute version, and then developed it further along with dramaturge Hilary Beaton to its full length, presented in 1995.[32] The play was during the early years of a formal reconciliation process in Australia,[26] and not long after Enoch's grandmother had died on Minjerribah and Enoch had participated in some of the ancient Aboriginal rites associated with death and burial.[31]
^"About us". Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts. 2008. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 4 September 2024. The company was incorporated in 1993, the International year of Indigenous People,...
^ abHarwood, Tristen (5 June 2021). "The 7 Stages of Grieving". The Saturday Paper (352). This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Jun 5, 2021 as "Grief works".
Bollig, Barbara. Transcultural Appropriations of the Medea Myth: Jackie Crossland's "Collateral Damage", Wesley Enoch's "Black Medea", Cherrie Moraga's "The Hungry Woman" and Dea Loher's "Manhattan Medea". Thesis for Master's degree, Zentrum für Kanada-Studien Universität Trier 2017, Chair Ralf Hertel
Enoch, Wesley (7 February 2009). "Wesley Enoch". Australian Stage Online (Interview). Interviewed by Wells, Sarah.