As The 7 Stages of Grieving is re-staged, Shari Sebbens and Elaine Crombie ask how much has changed in 26 years

When Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman co-wrote The 7 Stages of Grieving in 1994-1995 it held a radical thread of hope. And as Helpmann Award-winning actress Elaine Crombie steps into the role for Sydney Theatre Company's fourth staging of the show, helmed by resident director Shari Sebbens, she's asking: "What's the use of reconciliation if we're all dead?" In April, Sebbens directed a Sydney production of Jasmine Lee-Jones's Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, a show that she says gives its actors "space to hold for themselves and their community". "If they're not listening, and they're not with us by now — especially after 26 years, especially after four productions at STC — then I don't know when they'll ever be with us," says Sebbens. For Sebbens, including these actions is a way of asking audiences to reflect on why they're comfortable enough to experience some of the more "devastating" themes of the play — such as high Indigenous incarceration rates and low life expectancy rates — while "not being appalled and shocked that between each production, in some aspects we've gone backwards".