The Visitors will be at Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), making its international debut in New York City

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By Perelman Performing Arts Center – PAC NYC

January 05, 2026

From January 21 to February 1, The Visitors will be at Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), making its international debut in New York City. Written by Jane Harrison and directed by Wesley Enoch, this award-winning play is a Moogahlin Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company Production, produced by Performing Lines, and presented in partnership with Under the Radar Festival©.

Visitors leave. Right?

Sydney Harbor. January 1788. Seven Aboriginal leaders gather while a mysterious fleet of nawi (giant ships) amasses in the bay. As the vessels creep closer, the leaders face a fateful decision: send the strangers away or welcome them? 
 
Winner of the 2023 Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Mainstage Production and Best Ensemble, PAC NYC is proud to welcome The Visitors for its first international production. From Muruwari playwright Jane Harrison and acclaimed Quandamooka man director Wesley Enoch, this gripping, deeply researched drama captures one of the most pivotal and painful days in Australia’s history—while offering a sharp and funny portrait of how communities respond to change and the unknown. 
 
Playwright Jane Harrison and Director Wesley Enoch share more below about The Visitors, its history, and how it connects with the Native Indigenous community in the US.  
 
What were the origins and inspirations for writing The Visitors? 

Jane Harrison, Playwright: A few things coalesced. There was increased discussion about January 26 being Australia Day where we celebrate being Australian, a bit like 4th of July. But for Aboriginal Australians, January 26 represents the day the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove and the colonisation of our country began. I wanted to write about the event of January 26, but from the First Nations perspective. There is also increased discussion about the ceremony of a Welcome to Country delivered by a traditional owner of country and its validity. My play speaks to both of those themes. 
 
Do you have any anecdotes about what you learned creating, staging, and presenting The Visitors? 

Wesley Enoch, Director: We visited the sites where the play is set and elders took us around showing us where boats landed and water was taken, where shots were fired and where their ancestors watched. The oral histories are as powerful as the written histories. 

There are cast members who have an unbroken connection to this story. Whose relatives were there when the boats arrived. 

If we think of history not as a linear continuum of time but more a layering of time folded on place, you get a sense that the past is constantly with you in the present. We did a reading of the play on a rocky outcrop in a national park area in Sydney Harbour. The stone which would have witnessed the arrival of the ships now plays witness to the view of skyscrapers and aircraft. This sandstone carved by the wind and weather sees time differently to us and invites us to connect to all of time and all of creation. As Oodgeroo Noonuccal writes – Let no one say the past is dead, The past is all about us and within. 

What would you want the NYC audience to learn from seeing The Visitors? 
 
Wesley Enoch, Director: Australia was colonised after 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. In many ways the British learnt from their “mistakes” in the Americas. When it came to settling in Australia in 1788, the British maintained a military control claiming all the land for the Crown, strictly controlling the economy and religious freedoms until the 1820s. Unlike in the Americas, the British did not create treaties with local people, calling the continent Terra Nullius (a land without people) denying the fact that there was up to one million people living on the land mass at the time. Though Australia claims to never have slaves, much of the Indigenous population worked for the colonisers for rations. The British controlled the migration of people to the colony with a majority being convicts and the military to travel here as labour and law enforcement. 

The things that happened to First Nations Australians during the colonial process were a direct result of what was learnt in the Americas. So fixated on not losing another colony and the wealth and investment that represented, the British doubled down on the eradication and disallowing of the Native population. It was not until 1993 that the legal fiction of Terra Nullius was overturned, it was not until 1967 that First Nations Australians could be counted on the national census and came under the governance of the Federal Laws and out from under the state by state Flora and Fauna Acts. 
 
The Visitors asks people to look into their own history and see there are other perspectives and points of view. The saying goes that the victor writes the history but those who remain never really forget. 

How do you want audience members to feel when they leave the theatre? 

Wesley Enoch, Director: Because we know what happens after this moment of contact with the Visitors, there is a sense of foreboding throughout the play. The first time someone sneezes on stage and you realise these characters have never been sick like that. A simple flu that will eventually wipe out large parts of the community. The smallpox epidemic that occurs in the first 15 months of the First Fleet which goes on to wipe out over 2/3 of the local First Nations population. The tasting of alcohol for the first time and trying to explain what it is, pre-empts the devasting effect alcohol will have on them in the coming centuries. The cultural perspective that visitors come and go because the call of your own country, the sense of belonging to the Land of your birth is too powerful to deny, and eventually these people will leave. 

It is a deep cultural protocol to welcome people to country, to protect them and guide them as visitors to your country. It is a sacred duty and responsibility to any stranger (Friend or Foe). 

I want people to leave the theatre understanding that even in the face overwhelming horror that unfolded during the colonial history and even today, we have stayed strong to our cultural protocols. 

Jane Harrison, Playwright: I hope they laugh, as even a story about colonisation can have laughs. I hope they are moved, because it is a very human story about being on the cusp of profound change. I hope audiences witness “voice” in action. And that they see our cultural protocols in action. 

Is there anything you would like to share with the Native Indigenous community in the US about The Visitors? 

Jane Harrison, Playwright: As First Peoples, we have a shared experience of colonisation even if the details are different. I hope you can recognise that sense of bewilderment, loss, anger hope, resilience and steadfastness that we have gone through as a result. I hope our story gladdens your heart. 

Wesley Enoch, Director: We have looked to you and your communities for hundreds of years. We see your resilience and power and respect it greatly. We look to your treaties to help form our own. We see your economic self determination to help shape our ethical, self reliance. We see the grace and power in the warrior spirit in your community and recognise that in us. We see how two spirit people have always been part of your community, regardless of the imported religions and pressure to conform and we gather strength from that deep spiritual connection. Our Land and Culture are important to us, as it is important to you. This storytelling is about respecting our ancestors who helped shape who we are today. Thank you for hosting us on your Country. 
 
For those in the Native and Indigenous community, use code VISITORS30 during checkout to save 30% on tickets. Tickets and more information at link.pacnyc.org/NNO_TheVisitors.
 
PAC NYC stands on the former sea-gardens of the Lenape people, whose past, present, and future generations we honor. We are mindful that this island, in the center of the Lenape homeland Lenapehoking and including what is currently named the World Trade Center, has long been a gathering and trading place for many tribes. We commit to repair and regeneration – through our actions as well as our words – for the entire local Indigenous population, the largest of any city on Turtle Island.