‘We didn’t make it for a white audience’: how black theatre took centre stage in Australia

Zindzi Okenyo wants her production of Purpose at the Sydney Theatre Company to showcase ‘the multitude of skill and presence and artistry from black artists’. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

When Zindzi Okenyo takes the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) stage in June for John Patrick Shanley’s Tony award-winning play Doubt – the role played by Viola Davis in the film – it will be a particularly special moment: her fourth main-stage role playing a black woman in a 20-year theatre career. “I’m really excited about it, I haven’t had a black role for so long,” she says.

For the last five years, Okenyo has been working behind the scenes to create more opportunities and safer spaces for black performers, not as an actor but as a director. When we meet in mid-January, she’s in rehearsals for her production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Pulitzer and Tony award-winning dysfunctional family dramedy Purpose, opening at STC next week – with an entirely black cast.