What happens to a child when you remove her from home to be raised elsewhere? It’s a question answered too often by tragedy in our national history and with which we’re still grappling, two years after Prime Minister stood in Parliament and said ‘sorry’ to the stolen generations.

Photo by Jeff Busby

In 2008, the year of Rudd’s apology, two significant works focused on an archetypal example of Australia’s early ‘civilising’ experiment – the story of Matthina, an Indigenous girl and daughter of the Tasmanian Lowreene tribe’s chief, who was chosen in 1835 by the Governor Sir John Franklin and his wife to live with them as a charitable project. At age eight she was sent to the Queen’s orphanage when they returned to England; a tragic outsider from both Indigenous and colonial society to be immortalised in a red dress in an enigmatic childhood portrait by convict painter Thomas Bock. Richard Flanagan’s novel Wanting examined Matthina’s life in terms of the painful conflict between repressive Victorian narratives and the human impulses of the society suffering under them, while artistic director Stephen Page’s take on the story for the Bangarra Dance Theatre was emerging to explosive acclaim and several Helpmann Awards. Back for an encore performance, the latter will be playing at the Parramatta Riverside Theatre on Friday and Saturday nights. Lauded for its theatrical mastery and the emotional strength of its images, this breathtaker from the choreographer behind Bran Nue Dae should be briefly held and treasured before consigned to the history from which it borrows.

Feb 19-20, Riverside Theatres, cnr of Church & Market Streets, Parramatta, $35-52, 8839 3399 or riversideparramatta.com.au