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Kill the Messenger
Kill the Messenger is based on a true story about a man in the author’s home suburb of Mount Druitt. One day, in unbearable pain due to undiagnosed stomach cancer, he went to the local hospital, where he was refused care. Then he went to a nearby park and hung himself. Then in 2012 Nakkiah’s grandmother fell through the unmended floor of her public housing home and died. Nakkiah found herself at the centre of a story about institutionalised racism. The resulting play lays it all out—her dodgy sex life, a dead man’s second chance, and a granddaughter’s sense of duty.
- GenresPlaysIndigenous
66 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 16, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 11, 2016
Funny, angry, thoughtful and moving, this would have been a heck of a production to see in the flesh - even on the page it packs a real punch.
August 14, 2022
Bleak, meta and damming of our systems/institutions - medical, welfare and cultural.
June 5, 2017
At the Stella Longlist Prize Announcement event in Sydney on 7 February 2017, Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander playwright Nakkiah Lui took to the stage.
She shared the heartbreaking story of her grandmother's untimely death at the hands of bureaucratic negligence. It was a tale of intense love, terrible grief and anger. She spoke with an eloquence and power that stilled the room. I bought Kill the Messenger on the night, eager to hear more.
I have picked up and put down Kill the Messenger many times in the last four months, never once moving beyond the first scene; afraid the pages would be too confronting, visceral and honest.
The play is all of those things and so much more. There are no easy answers here, there aren't even easy questions. It's beautiful, shocking, funny, painful, angry, bittersweet and relevant.
'It's so easy to point the bad things out, like racism, but it's a whole lot harder to identify ourselves, where we fit.' pg 53
Compulsive reading as a play and as a performance, I imagine it would be incredible.
She shared the heartbreaking story of her grandmother's untimely death at the hands of bureaucratic negligence. It was a tale of intense love, terrible grief and anger. She spoke with an eloquence and power that stilled the room. I bought Kill the Messenger on the night, eager to hear more.
I have picked up and put down Kill the Messenger many times in the last four months, never once moving beyond the first scene; afraid the pages would be too confronting, visceral and honest.
The play is all of those things and so much more. There are no easy answers here, there aren't even easy questions. It's beautiful, shocking, funny, painful, angry, bittersweet and relevant.
'It's so easy to point the bad things out, like racism, but it's a whole lot harder to identify ourselves, where we fit.' pg 53
Compulsive reading as a play and as a performance, I imagine it would be incredible.
August 22, 2016
So powerful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews