White China

Playlab Theatre’s latest mainstage production, White China by Therese Collie, premieres at the Underground Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, from June 7-17.

The experience of Brisbane’s flooding rivers has been etched into memories of high tidelines, their numbers shorthand for scars: 2022, 2011, 1974.

White China invites generations of Queenslanders to reflect on what binds us, and question where we come from. The family at this play’s core is typical - a grandmother scolds her daughter, who as a mother herself, scolds her rebellious teenage daughter.

But this family also carries scars hidden from white Australia’s eyes: the heritage and traditions they’ve been forced to shun and the identity they’ve denied in order to survive.

White China centres around Daisy, a devout do-gooder of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland, her daughter Jas the defiant hippie, and grandmother Lily who has disappeared from her retirement home.

In a tin dinghy, Daisy and Jas frantically search for their grandmother Lily, but what they don’t know is that Lily is also searching. Having rediscovered her half-sister Joy, Lily seeks her mother’s grave, desperate to find it before Ancestor’s Day.

Playlab Theatre is a valued partner of Must Do Brisbane.com