The 7 Stages of Grieving

Learning about any culture is worth the effort and Ms. Deemal’s performance illuminates much of the text’s quiet admonitions and educating talk.

After learning what I did during this experience, I can highly recommend audiences flocking to watch this timely show unfurl its wisdom to us.

THE 7 STAGES OF GRIEVING is an internal journey carefully engineering by director Jason Klarwein with compassion and clarity.

...This is a production which will appeal to audiences fascinated by cultural issues, both those reflected in other countries and – by analogy – those which occur every day within our own borders. This is a thought-provoking account of events which happened long ago and far away – and yet which seem so timely right here and now.

Exploring their dispossession, like a Down Under Anna Deavere Smith in various vignettes Ms. Deemal brings vividly alive harrowing tales of children being torn away from their parents by a paternalistic white state to be “educated” Western-style. If North America’s First Peoples can related to that harrowing history, African Americans can share outrage and solidarity with Aboriginals confronted by police brutality and the school-to-prison-pipeline. Aboriginal Lives Matter, too, and Ms. Deemal singlehandedly enacts mass demonstrations, marches and protests with some bravura thespianism.

Justin Harrison’s outstanding aural design is a complex cacophony that gives macrocosmic dimension to this impressionistic portrait of a people who have endured for centuries. ...But the text itself remains something of a patchwork, less tightly woven and comprehensive than one might wish it to be

This is a heavy load for a cast, even more so on a single performer. Yet Chenoa Deemal owns the Skylight’s stage, whether creating concentric circles of pebbles, rifling through the contents of a box and a suitcase, or just speaking directly to the audience. This feels like her story, a tribute to her performance and the timelessness of the script by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, written when Deemal was likely a small child...

7 Stages beautifully represents the Aboriginal tradition of storytelling and, in a larger context, First Nation peoples finding their voices. There is grieving, yes, but also healing. As Deemal notes in 7 Stages, “Everything has its time.” Now is the time for this show.