THE Sunshine Club will hit the Jetty Theatre stage on Thursday 7 September from 7:30pm.

First performed in 1999, The Sunshine Club is back in 2023 with a new cast telling the same important story of exclusion and prejudice in our recent history, and of the community resistance that would go on to create change in the 1967 referendum.

The award-winning musical centres around Frank Doyle, an Aboriginal serviceman who has come home from World War II to find that although the wider world may have changed, attitudes back home in Brisbane are just the same.

Filled with defiant energy and ambition for a better life, Frank starts The Sunshine Club, a place where black and white can meet and, most importantly dance.

Here he dreams of a future where he can dance in step with Rose, the girl next door, the girl of his dreams.

The Sunshine Club was written and directed by proud Noonuccal Nuugi man Wesley Enoch AM, an acclaimed creative force in Australian theatre.

His purpose in creating this energetic and entertaining musical was “to make sure that the stories (Indigenous people) are hearing are as much about the joy and as much about our sense of how we’ve changed the world. And that change is possible.”

Wesley definitely achieves his aim; The Sunshine Club is a thought-provoking, vibrant and above all joyful night of theatre and music, featuring a talented cast of eleven (a real treat for Coffs’ lovely but little Jetty Theatre stage), including emerging and established First Nations artists, and a five-piece band playing a variety of music styles, with 28 songs composed by the esteemed John Rodgers.

It is perfect for audiences seeking entertaining, socially relevant work, at a time of heightened social discourse on Indigenous affairs, as Australia looks towards ‘incorporating’ the Indigenous Voice to Parliament by 2024.