What is Aboriginal Gothic? Ask The Chosen Vessel playwright Dylan Van Den Berg

Palawa playwright Dylan Van Den Berg and Kalkadoon director Abbie-lee Lewis discuss the emerging theatrical genre, Aboriginal Gothic.
A publicity image for The Street Theatre's production of 'The Chosen Vessel', a new Aboriginal Gothic play by Dylan Van Den Berg. The photo depicts an Aboriginal woman staring at the camera; a white man stands ominously behind her, disappearing into the shadows.

Palawa playwright Dylan Van Den Berg has been working in the idiom of the Aboriginal Gothic for some time now, though it took a design element in a production of his earlier play, Whitefella Yella Tree, to help him realise it.

ā€˜When I was working on Whitefella Yellow Tree, I went to the preview performance and I realised that the way that it had been interpreted by the directors [Declan Greene and Amy Sole], with this spooky lemon tree at the centre of the set, was incredibly Gothic – this piece of nature that was tainted by colonisation and that haunted the characters at the centre of the play,’ Van Den Berg tells ArtsHub.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts