Kevin Gilbert

It seems a world away since 1968 when Kevin Gilbert and Brian Syron got together a group of untutored Aboriginal actors in the back garden of Judge Frank McGrath’s house in Centennial Park, Sydney, to read the first draft of The Cherry Pickers. Amy and Frank McGrath, dedicated theatre-lovers, had turned their stables into the Mews Playhouse and, in that time of extraordinary theatrical nationalism, were, for a short space, one of its most innovatory influences.