In this case, specifically, it's about a Tasmanian Palawa family, the Duncans. Every year they go to Dog Island, somewhere between mainland Australia and Tasmania, for six weeks during mutton-bird season.

"It's an opportunity to get together ... and spend four or five weeks with family you might not necessarily see for most of the year."

But spending such an intense period together can be a mixed blessing,

The writer, director and cast of the play are all Indigenous and playwright Maynard is a Palawa man and a mutton-birder himself so he knows what he's writing about. But the play is universal as well as specific.

"People will recognise themselves a little bit," says Drandic, who says The Season "is a comedy, it's a lot of fun.

"It's fully accessible, it's not just an Aboriginal story. Anyone who's got a family can access the story."

The Duncan family's patriarch and matriarch, hosting the family mutton-birding season, are Ben (Maitland Schnarrs) and Stella (Della Rae Morrison, who is carrying a secret. Their long-absent daughter Lou (Nazaree Dickerson), also hiding something, arrives from Melbourne with her teenage son Clay (James Slee), who is coming to the island for his first season.

"It celebrates the idea of the continuing of culture," Drandic says.

The Duncans' son Ritchie (Luke Carroll) is also present but has some difficulties with Ben.

"He wants to earn his father's respect."

Then there's Stella's sister Marlene (Lisa Maza), who has a racy personal life, and two characters played by Trevor Jamieson: the "family nemesis", Neil Watson, and Duncan cousin Dickie, a ranger who polices the island and enforces the rules of birding with an emphasis on preservation as a stickler for the rules.

Drandic says, "He acts as an offset and tips the balance in favour of drama."

And family drama as well as comedy are The Season is about - it's the relationships, resentments, revelations and reconcilations among the characters that are the centre of the piece.

Maynard is a descendant of the chief of the Troowolway Clan of North East Tasmania and Drandic says the play is, among other things, "a celebration of Aboriginality and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

"There are a lot of misled thoughts about the history of Tasmanian Aboriginal people - that they were 'wiped out'.

"This play stamps that idea out."

Jamieson, a Pitjantjatjara man with a long list of acting credits, won the Deadly Awards 2008 most outstanding achievement in film, TV or theatre and best leading man at the Sydney Theatre Awards, both for Ngapartji Ngapartji. One of four actors returning from the original 2017 season for the tour, he plays a couple of antagonistic characters in The Season.

Maynard, he says, was a ranger "a long time ago", adding to the authencity of Dick, one of Jamieson's characters. And the other. Neil Watson, is a love interest for Marlene, testing family loyalties.

The Season, he says, is a play for everyone, "whether you're Indigenous or non-Indigenous" with one of its overarching themes being how families come together and deal with each other.

"We took the play to Hobart - all the people in the show are real people," he says.

How did they react to seeing their lives portrayed in a play?

"They loved it - every person mentioned in the show was in the audience."

Jamieson was last in Canberra for Namatjira..

He has many friends among the Ngambari people in Ngannawal and says, "Canberra is like a second home to me."

The Season. By Nathan Maynard. Directed by Isaac Drandic. Tasmania Performs. The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre. September 13 to 15, 2018. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.