Mulandjali / Badu actor Kirk Page will appear as one of the leads in The Demon, a hard-hitting play that confronts sinister elements of Australia's past - and present.

Page plays Matthew/Muhummad, an Aboriginal Muslim detective working in present-day Sydney.

He and his partner Jihad (Johnny Nasser) follow street fighter Wei (Yvonne Huang) to Burrangong, the region of the infamous Lambing Flat Riots of 1861, in which white goldminers unleashed horrific violence against Chinese goldminers.

The Demon, by novelist Michael Mohammed Ahmad, director Rachael Swain and choreographer Gavin Webber, sees Matthew/Muhummad and Jihad confront the landscape and its demons.

The play, which has been described as "stylised and dreamlike", will run at the Sydney Opera House mid-October and Adelaide's OzAsia Festival later in the month.

Organisers say the "complex yet compelling" work "combines contemporary Australian crime thriller and magic realism with a Lynchian twist".

Page, a film and theatre actor, choreographer and director, has been widely acclaimed for his physical theatre, aerial and dance work.

He has performed in Ochres for Bangarra Dance Theatre (which toured Australia and internationally), A Midsummer Night's Dream for Opera Australia and performed numerous times for Legs on the Wall, in productions including Eora Crossing and Runners Up.

In musical theatre, Page has appeared in The Sunshine Club for Sydney Theatre Company, Corrugation Road for Black Swan Theatre Company and One Night the Moon for Malthouse Theatre.

On screen, he played the lead in Bloodlines for SBS Films and the Australian Film Commission.

He has also appeared in the ABC television series Redfern Now.

Having worked on the ABC's My Place and on the film Bran Nue Dae, in 2006 he also choreographed the Indigenous section of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games 'My Skin, My Life'.

"My journey as a performer began as a younger boy/teen, I loved musicals and joined a youth group with some friends back home in the suburbs of Brisbane I was in the ensemble in the back line of Grease and Star struck the musical at our local hall," Page told National Indigenous Times.

"I loved to dance but was also terribly shy and lacked confidence. I think my mum saw this and encouraged me a lot.

"My mother had the best collection of vinyl records and we would clear the lounge room floor after we had cleaned the whole house on a Saturday morning and she would make me dance and we used to make up dance routines together, we were infamous for jumping up at any chance we got at family parties or weddings and we would dance all night."

Page said his mother was his initial inspiration, and other "very talented family members" also played an important role in his journey.

"My beautiful cousin brothers David Stephen and Russell Page gave me a lot of support and encouraged me to follow my dreams; put me up and fed me and were absolute inspirations when I first landed in Sydney in 1994," he said.

Page noted that The Demon, a new work, has a diverse cast of actors, dancers and singers.

"Culturally it's touching on a part of our history that's not usually acknowledged," he said.

"It's written from a perspective that's giving a voice to our migrant histories as well as our possible future. The play has some incredible action sequences and I get to sing in Arabic."

Page hopes the audiences will be thrilled at the action and touched by the story which is at the core of The Demon.

"I want our audiences to perhaps think a little deeper about this nation and what it's built on and the incredible communities that live here."