The play employs both Anglo- and Indigenous theatrical conventions by combining direct address monologues with re-enactment, musical interpretation, symbolism, the use of historical source material and tight choreography.
[19] To parallel the portraiture of Albert Namatjira through words and stage action and to underline the centrality of the visual arts metaphor as a frame for this story, a painter creates a portrait in oil of the leading actor while the show is being performed.
[citation needed] The two-act play[20] tells the life story of Albert Namatjira in linked, chronological vignettes with interspersed reflections commenting on contemporary Australian discourses.
Act One speaks of Namatjira's birth in the central Australian desert and his subsequent upbringing on the Lutheran mission of Hermannsburg (NT), his elopement with his wife Rubina and the struggle to feed his family.
This story, however, is counterbalanced with that of racism and exploitation which is presented as endemic to the entire Australian social fabric, be it in the form of taxation without equal rights, his framing as anthropological curiosity in the minds of his admirers or the humbugging by his extended family.
Albert Namatjira is presented as caught between two conflicting systems of value which in the play ultimately lead to his demise – he is jailed for supplying liquor to fellow community members and dies a broken man shortly after his release.