Waltzing the Wilarra

Friday 15 August 2025 to Saturday 16 August 2025

Overview

Charlie, Elsa, and Fay take you back to 1940s post-war Perth. Against a backdrop of curfews, and the fear of arrest for consorting, white and black manage to form their own club. For a night they can…

Charlie, Elsa, and Fay take you back to 1940s post-war Perth. Against a backdrop of curfews, and the fear of arrest for consorting, white and black manage to form their own club. For a night they can forget their worries and experience rare happy times singing, dancing, listening to music, and with a little luck… romance.

Forty years on, as the club faces demolition, our three characters meet once again to stage a musical reunion and protest in an attempt to save their old stomping ground. Dark secrets and ghosts that have lingered for more than half a century are revealed, and we discover that reconciliation is more than saying sorry.

Interspersed with edgy ‘black’ vaudeville humour and political satire with bite, Waltzing the Wilarra is a multi-award winning Aboriginal music theatre work, written and composed by playwright David Milroy (Windmill Baby), one of Australia’s most exciting and successful Indigenous writers.