(Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this document/blog may contain images and names of people who have since passed away)
Image from ‘There’s Nothing I Would Rather Be’ song and dance sequence from ‘Bran Nue Dae’
The ability of modern Australian indigenous dramatists to combine Indigenous motifs, totems and structures with European theatrical styles and techniques represents an emerging modernity and complexity of Australian Indigenous Drama from the late 1980's onwards. During the 1990’s this is embodied in the zen formalism of Women’s Dreaming (1990), the wit, eclecticism and vibrance of Jimmy Chi and Kuckles band's Bran Nue Dae (1990), the earthy exuberance of Maureen Watson's Mairwair (1990), the intellectual complexity of Mudrooroo's futuristic play The Aboriginal Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller (1991) the ritualistic qualities of Eddie Bennell's My Spiritual Dreaming (1992) and the dynamic, sensual and cerebral works presented at Sydney's 1997 Festival of Dreaming including the play Mimi. Many of the plays of the early 1990’s have not been published but a sense of the complexity of modern Indigenous Drama can also be gained from a study of modern Indigenous political dramatic form and context in the films of Tracey Moffatt.
In
1989/1990, Bran Nue Dae hit the stage
and indigenous drama became mainstream.
“There's nothing I would rather be
Than to be an Aborigine
and watch you take my precious land
away.
For nothing gives me greater joy
than to watch you fill each girl and
boy
with superficial existential shit.”
From Bran Nue Dae by Jimmy Chi and the Kuckles band
Bran Nue Dae, by Jimmy Chi and the Kuckles band
has become the most popular indigenous drama of all time. Chi, a musician/writer of Indigenous, Chinese and Japanese
cultural heritage, and his band the Kuckles, started Bran Nue Dae as part of their band stage show. After the 1988
workshop readings at the 2nd National Black Playwright’s Conference,
the musical was finally produced in small production in Broome in 1989 before it
started to be produced for national tours in 1990 and 1991. The wit, humour and
irony evident in this piece, helps to drive its more weighty messages which
address significant issues such as identity, race relations, sense of belonging and place.
The
story is as silly as that of any grand opera. What audiences respond to is the
way the play invites them to share the joy, the outlook and the resilient
humour of being an ‘aborigine’ through the music. The music is a smorgasbord of
every style ever heard on a transistor radio in the bungalows of Broome, Chi’s hometown. Today Broome is a prosperous resort town with
an international airport, but once, it was the centre of Australia's pearl
fishing industry, attracting Asian divers and fishermen and other colourful
characters. Its history probably contained a greater ethnic mixture than
anywhere else in Australia until the mass immigration of post WWII. Bran Nue Dae, stands as a beacon at
the beginning of the 1990’s as a sign of the pride, hope and optimism of
indigenous people in Australia in the 1990’s.
As
indigenous film maker and director Rachel Perkins once
said when interviewed about her film adaptation of the stage musical:
“I saw it in my early 20’s when I had just
moved back to Sydney from Alice. I went up to the Parramatta Theatre with my boyfriend and
we had so much fun and we just laughed and the music was so great. The dancers
were all indigenous and sexy and fun and I felt proud that it was sexy and fun
to be an aboriginal. I just wanted to be in the show and that wasn’t going to
happen since I hadn’t acted since years ago but I wanted to be part of it. I
felt so proud to be an aborigine…”
(Eckersley
1997: Appendix 4, 236)
In
Western Australia in 1991, the Black Swan Theatre Company (later to become
known as the Black Swan State Theatre Company) was established as a W.A. State Flagship Theatre Company
under the Artistic Directorship of Andrew Ross. Ross had worked extensively with Jack Davis during the 1980’s to
foster indigenous drama and their initial productions of Bran Nue Dae and Jimmy Chi’s Corrugation Road were extremely successful
and started partnerships between this Western Australian company and companies
such as the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne and the
Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney.
Bran Nue Dae was not the only
indigenous drama of note which came out Western Australia during the early
1990’s. In 1990, the Deckchair Theatre Company workshopped and produced Eddie
Bennell’s lyrical first play The Silent
Years. This play was soon followed up with a 1992 production of Bennell’s
lyrical My Spiritual Dreaming. With
the continuing work of Jack Davis, Jimmy Chi and Eddie Bennell, people could be
forgiven for thinking that Indigenous Australian Theatre in the eastern states
consisted primarily of mounting revival productions from Western Australia. 1991 also saw the sad passing of the young Indigenous playwright, director, actor and administrator Vivian Walker. Within two years his mother, the great Indigenous poet, playwright and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal was also dead.
In
1990 and 1991, Brian Syron went on to work on
many projects including training actors and to workshop many indigenous
scripts. He carried out a two-week workshop, a stage reading plus a production
in 1991 at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Redfern in Sydney
of a new play by Mudrooroo Narogin (also known as Colin
Thomas Johnson).
Mudrooroo was a novelist and poet who was brought under the wing of the novelist Mary Durack after he had served time in jail. He lived in India and Nepal for many years. It was around 1990 that Mudrooroo came up with the idea of creating an Australian indigenous drama text to ‘interpenetrate’ the play by the German playwright Heiner Muller entitled Der Auftrag (The Commission). Mudrooroo was put in a house at Sydney University, given access to the library and indigenous actors and after six weeks he created a script for the play The Aboriginal Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller. The play is probably one of the first indigenous plays set in the future (albeit the near future of 2001). Eventually after much rewriting and editing, it was staged in Sydney under Brian Syron’s direction and starred Justine Saunders, Michael Watson, David Kennedy, Pamela Young, Ray Kelly and Graham Cooper. The play and the production are also the subject of Mudrooroo Narogin's book The Mudrooroo/Muller Project - A Theatrical Casebook, with a chapter by Syron and edited by Gerhard Fischer in collaboration with leading indigenous academic Paul Behrendt and Syron. This is a pivotal document in terms of Indigenous dramaturgy and intellectual analysis and documentation of modern Australian Indigenous drama. Eventually, the production was taken overseas to a European festival in Weimar, Germany and was staged movingly in the remains of the concentration camp at Buchenwald where the Romany people were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. This evil place acted as the inspiration for Mudrooroo’s as yet unproduced Indigenous Greek Tragedy verse drama Iphigenia in Buchenwald.
Just
as the New Theatre in Melbourne had
forged strong links with indigenous drama, the Melbourne Workers’ Theatre started an active
program to develop and stage indigenous during the late 1980’s and early
1990’s. The drive for this came from many forces including playwright John
Romeril’s long-standing mission to help develop indigenous drama since his work
with Bob Maza and Jack Charles on Bastardy
in the 1970’s. In 1990, the Melbourne Workers Theatre helped Northern
Territory playwright and poet Roger Bennett developed Up the Ladder, a piece about his
father’s life as an indigenous sideshow boxer in the 1950’s.
This play was staged by the Melbourne Workers Theatre and other companies many times during the 1990’s. Through contacts with the playwrights John Romeril and Andrew Bovell, strong connections between Australian indigenous playwrights and performers and the Melbourne Workers Theatre were formed similar to the strong support and connection set up by Socialist like Dorothy Thompson and the New Theatre Melbourne with indigenous performers and writers. The 1990 production of Archie Weller’s Nidjera was a strong piece dealing with notions of identity.
Roger
Bennett’s Funerals and
Circuses followed soon after in
1992. This episodic musical play included music by Bennett’s good friend and
legendary Australian musician and ballad writer Paul Kelly.
The play deals with the consequences of a ‘mixed’ marriage in a country town and uses powerful characters to explore violence, domestic abuse and both white and black prejudices. Kelly’s music provided an objective musical commentary on this piece that moves from realism to black comedy. The set design for the original production was done by a number of indigenous artists. Bennett’s unexpected death in 1997 cut short one of the great careers of an Australian playwright.
The play deals with the consequences of a ‘mixed’ marriage in a country town and uses powerful characters to explore violence, domestic abuse and both white and black prejudices. Kelly’s music provided an objective musical commentary on this piece that moves from realism to black comedy. The set design for the original production was done by a number of indigenous artists. Bennett’s unexpected death in 1997 cut short one of the great careers of an Australian playwright.
Indigenous
Drama of the 1990's shows
that the ideology of an unchanging Indigenous society based entirely on a kind
of primordial Indigenous cultural essence totally disregards the contemporary
Indigenous contexts. Indigenous Drama has, and always will be, a complex and
vibrant dramatic form that is based in the sophisticated Indigenous
storytelling traditions. The movements of this time, paved the way for a new
generation of Indigenous playwrights and playmakers including Vivienne Cleven, Jane Harrison, Geoffrey Narkle and Wesley Enoch. The change of funding of the Arts Council in Australian theatre
meant that more indigenous theatre was produced under the guise of Indigenous
theatre companies receiving funding to co-produce works with major theatre
companies from a number of states or a number of indigenous companies and
indigenous artists getting funding for festivals This period saw the formation
of the Victorian-based Ilbijerri Theatre Company, the Kooemba
Jdarra Indigenous Performing
Arts Company in Queensland and the Aboriginal Arts Festival in Brisbane.
Ilbijerri
(pronounced ‘il BIDGE er ree) is a Woiwurrung word meaning Coming
Together for Ceremony and they are the longest continuous running indigenous
theatre company in Australia and the only long term indigenous company in
Victoria. In 1990 a group of Melbourne Indigenous artists and community members
came together to form a professional theatre company for the Indigenous and
Torres Strait Islander people of Victoria. Since then we have been initiating
and developing performances in collaboration with our community and artists.
John
Harding also wrote the
indigenous drama Up the Road originally in 1991
developed for a combined Ilbijerri Theatre (known later as the
Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative) Later co-productions were done during the 1990’s with
Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre and the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney under the
direction of Neil Armfield. Up the Road centres around the story of a middle class
indigenous character called Ian Sampson. Sampson is a Canberra bureaucrat who
comes back to his hometown for a funeral after a decade away. This realist
drama examines modern notions of indigenous identity through the way it
deals with notions of change in individuals and in communities. This is
indicative of how far indigenous drama had grown during the 1990’s. The
diversity of subject matter, form, style and conventions explored by indigenous
drama during the 1990’s helps to develop acceptance by mainstream theatre
companies to develop and give a greater profile to indigenous drama.
As frustration grew amongst much of the
indigenous community at the slow pace of recognition of ingenous rights and
issues many strong cultural demonstrations of the desire for true recognition
and change was evident. 1988 had marked the bi-centennary of British settlement
in Australia, and it was in this year that Prime Minister Bob Hawke attended
the Barunga Festival in a small Indigenous community south of Katherine. There,
the Chairmen of both the Northern and Central Land Councils, Galarrwuy
Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja, presented the Prime Minister with the Barunga
Statement. The Barunga Statement called on the Australian Government to
recognise the rights of Indigenous land owners and to formalise a Treaty with
them. It was bordered with Yolu and central Australian designs, and was
modelled on the Yirrkala Petition (1963) which the previous
generation of Yolngu leaders had sent to the House of Representatives in
protest against mining on the Gove Peninsula. Galarrwuy and Mandawuy’s own
father was a signatory to this petition. On receiving the Barunga Statement (1988) at the Barunga Festival,
Prime Minister Hawke vowed that his government would enter into a Treaty with
Indigenous Australians by 1990. However, this promise would never be realised.
The Yothu Yindi song ‘Treaty’ was composed by
Yothu Yindi in collaboration with Paul Kelly and Midnight Oil to protest the
failure of the Australian Government to honour the Prime Minister’s promise to
Indigenous Australians at the Barunga Festival. The song ‘Treaty’ used the
historic djatpangarri song cycle style and a dance beat and rapidly
climbed the Australian charts as did the album on which it was released, Tribal Voice (1992). The song became an
inspiration for young and old indigenous people and other Australians that
justice and respect would finally be shown. A short play which explored the
various promises made and broken to different Indigenous nations, was put on at
the Melbourne Fringe Festival at the Organ Factory in 1992. Entitled Treaty, this play used the
song as its inspiration and ended with a celebratory dance after an actor
wearing a Paul Keating mask made a formal apology to all the Australian
Indigenous nations.
In
the early 1990’s, we also see the emergence of what has since become more
common place as a performance form for Indigenous drama, the one person or
monologue drama. This new movement in Indigenous drama was particularily driven
by writer-performers such as Ningali Lawford, Deborah Cheetham, Deborah Mailman and Leah Purcell. Seminal indigenous dramas of this type include Ningali
Lawford’s (1994) show Ningali, Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch’s The Seven Stages of
Grieving (1994), Deborah Cheetham’s 1997 drama White
Baptist ABBA Fan and Leah Purcell’s Box the Pony (1997).
These
semi-autobiographical dramas have many of the hallmarks of indigenous drama such as storytelling,
music, song, shifts in time, place and style and use of various indigenous
languages. It is interesting to note that the primary movers behind this type
of indigenous drama were female indigenous performers. Some of the reason for
this can be seen as the nurturing of these performers through the National
Black Playwright’s Conference, the emergence of a number of indigenous theatre companies
where indigenous performers were nurtured and trained, the training of some
indigenous performers through Drama programs at institutes such as Queensland
University of Technology and the WAPA, the mentoring of such performers by indigenous performers
of the previous generation such as Bob Maza and Justine Saunders and the support and
comradery which these indigenous performers and performer/directors like Rhoda
Roberts, Rachael Maza and Wesley Enoch provided to and for
one another.
Early
in 1993, Perth saw the formation of the Yirra Yaakin Theatre by an Aboriginal
Steering Committee. The company was initially formed to take part in ongoing
youth theatre programs. The initial work developed was centred on group devised
pieces and training of young indigenous people in the arts. By 1995, the
company had appointed full time Artistic Director David Milroy. Here is a link to a video discussing the early days of Yirra Yaakin. https://www.sutori.com/en/story/aboriginal-theatre--jMZogiGQ4rjBKXHgQ4ebRTC9
Indigenous
drama during the 1990’s can be seen as a time when the indigenous mono-drama
arose as important form of indigenous drama. This form has been used by a number of Indigenous women as
a powerful form of presenting stories and issues which had never before been
seen on the Australian stage. In 1994, there was an explosion of drama by and
about indigenous women staring with Merril Bray’s Mechanics of the Spirit which was written in 1993 but first
produced in 1994 . In the 1990s, there were a number of high profile one woman
shows such as Ningali (1994), Seven Stages of Grieving (1994), I Don't Want to Play House (1994) and Box
the Pony (1997). Each
of these texts created by Indigenous women, often in collaboration with others,
explored their personal biographies as a way of revealing the broader social
and political framework. Ningali is an autobiographical
play that explores ancient claims to land and place within the story of
Ningali’s journey of her life from Fitzroy Crossing in northern Western
Australia to Perth to Anchorage in Alaska (working on American Field
Scholarship) to Sydney (working for the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander
dance Company). The staging of the original play
captured the abstract but realistic subjectivity of the subject matter and
writing style by the stage floor being covered in a floorcloth which depicted
an abstract portrait of Lawford herself so her face
becomes portrait, backdrop and staging for her story and exploration of notions
of identity. In I Don't Want to Play House, Andersen tells the
story of her childhood. She presents a story that includes, abuse, violence and
dislocation but at the same time, Anderson infuses the story with the optimism
and joy of childhood. The text requires the single storyteller to take on
multiple characters offering the reader or audience a splintered view of events
from different perspectives. Andersen was raised in an environment bound by
secrets and through the text she breaks the silence and bears witness to hidden
actions.
Box the Pony by Leah Purcell and Scott Rankin depicts the lives of Aboriginal families and individuals from the 1930s to present time and show the social and personal problems such as poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, displacement and loss of identity.
Box the Pony by Leah Purcell and Scott Rankin depicts the lives of Aboriginal families and individuals from the 1930s to present time and show the social and personal problems such as poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, displacement and loss of identity.
Of
particular note of these indigenous dramas of the 1990’s is Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch’s Seven Stages of
Grieving. This play evolved
through Mailman’s collaboration with Enoch and the development
of Brisbane’s Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing
Arts Company.
In
1993, the International Year of Indigenous Peoples, the Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing
Arts Company was established in Brisbane. This company committed itself to
presenting the stories, traditional and contemporary of Indigenous Australians.
Under the guidance of Wesley Enoch (who was trained at
the Performing Arts Institute at the Queensland University of Technology), this company thrived, producing many productions of
importance such as Murri Love, The Seven Stages Of Grieving, Little White Dress, Changing Time, The Dreamers, Radiance (a co-production with the Queensland Theatre
Company), Purple Dreams and Bitin'
Back.
The
process of the evolution of this play is interesting from the point of view of
Indigenous dramaturgy since the play is
essentially a one-woman semi-biographical piece that was developed through
discussions, workshops and shared writing done between a talented performer and
a young talented director/playwright.
The play follows the experiences of an Indigenous ‘everywoman’ and it reveals real events, family histories and personal experiences. The development of this play questions many notions of Indigenous drama. The play was produced through a genuine collaboration between a talented actress and a director/playwright and thus questions our notion of theatre making as primarily the domain of the playwright. The Seven Stages of Grieving is also not a play bound by the constraints of realism, it is both thematically and stylistically complex. The play is in done in a monologue storytelling form and tells separate but thematically linked stories of alienation, dislocation, loss and ultimately grieving mixed with humour. Each of the 24 scenes tells a new story and they combine to form a collage for a solo female actor to disclose the histories and lives of over 200 years of social and political relationships – a history of “grief, misunderstanding and injustice.” (The Seven Stages Of Grieving Program Notes Enoch 1993). The play challenges the notion of Indigenous theatre as being overly reliant on naturalistic drama techniques. A variety of performance styles are evident in the play and the original performance from traditional indigenous storytelling to symbolism, soundscape to physical theatre and stand-up comedy. One scene that is indicative of much indigenous drama of the period (and indigenous drama of the early 21st century) is Scene 12 entitled "Murri Gets a Dress' which is delivered in the style of stand up comedy. This monologue satirizes the discrimination of Blacks receiving racism or "special treatment" in the form of stares and whispers. Being delivered in stand-up style makes it an amusing account of a racism that exists and this enables an audience to laugh and respond to serious issues of racism:
Scene 12 Murri Gets a Dress
(Delivered in the style of stand up comedy)
Have you
ever been black? You know when you wake up one morning and you’re black?
Happened to me this morning. I was in the bathroom, looking in the mirror,
“Hey, nice hair, beautiful black skin, white shiny teeth ... I’m BLACK!”
You get a
lot of attention, special treatment when you’re black. I’m in this expensive
shop and there’s this guy next to me, nice hair, nice tie, nice suit, waving a
nice big pump-you-full-of-holes semi-automatic gun in the air and the shop
assistants are all looking at me. “Keep an eye on the black one ... eye on the
black one.”
OK, so I
went to try on a dress and the shop assistant escorts me to the ‘special’
dressing room, the one equipped with video cameras, warning to shop lifters, a
security guard, fucken sniffer dog ... ‘Get out of it’. Just so I don’t put
anything I shouldn’t on my nice dress, nice hair, beautiful black skin and
white shiny teeth...
(Enoch & Mailman The Seven Stages of Grieving)
The
mid and late 1990’s saw a proliferation of indigenous drama of different
styles. In 1996, Ray Kelly followed his 1989 Get Up and Dance with a much more solemn
piece entitled Somewhere in the Darkness. This play explores the
various social and emotional problems facing young indigenous men. Enuff by John Harding, was also finally produced at this time. Enuff is a play originally written and
produced as a radio drama for ABC Radio National in 1998 as part of the NAIDOC program. explores the
question: 'How far can you push a race of people before they push back?'. (p 4)
In the author's introduction, Harding discusses the anger and hate some
Indigenous people feel towards non-Indigenous people because of the past and
ongoing abusive treatment of Indigenous Australians. Hardy’s play raises the
serious and complex questions of the lack of respect for Indigenous cultures and
sacred sites and the endless negotiations Indigenous people have to engage in
with often hostile and overly bureaucratic authorities. The play is probably
the first indigenous drama since Mudrooroo’s The Aboriginal
Protestors Confront the Declaration of the Australian republic on 26 January
2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller which is set in the future. Hardy’s Enuff presents a possible future where
Indigenous Australians are training for armed insurgence and guerrilla warfare.
Set in a training camp, the play centres around the lives of five young
Indigenous people and their reasons for choosing a violent response. The play
took on an extra layer of potency when it was restaged during the early 21st
century after 9/11 attacks on the twin towers in New York. In the end,
Harding's play contests that violence is not the way for indigenous peoples as
the play asserts prophetically that violence only exacerbates the vulnerability
of any group to exploitation.
Belonging by Tracey Rigney was another significant
indigenous drama of the 1990’s. It
tells the story of a young teenage girl who is trying to find her path between
racism and exclusion on one side and pressure towards self destructive choices
on the other. Casting Doubts by Maryanne Sam extended this type of
deliberation in its exploration of the experience of Indigenous actors within
an arts industry that marks ‘aboriginality’ solely on the shade of skin colour
and only offers token roles. This is an issue that is more thoroughly explored
in a platform paper written by Hillary Glow and Katya Johanson in 2009 entitled ‘Your Genre is Black’: Indigenous Performing
Arts and Policy.
Another
play of this period, Crow Fire by Jadah Milroy, focuses on the challenges confronting Indigenous people in
urban environments. The play is complex and combines three stories, one of an
Indigenous couple, one of a Euro-Australian couple and a story of an Indigenous
man from a desert community. The text parallels the struggle for sense of self
and place for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The Indigenous couple
in the play struggle for a sense of identity in the face of
isolation both physically and emotionally from Indigenous and white
communities. Milroy mirrors this struggle for identity and purpose with the
Euro-Australian couple. They are living unhappy and sterile lives. These
stories are cleverly cross-cut with the story of a man from a desert community
who has come to the city to try to secure assistance for his community. The
desert man in Milroy’s piece, is reminiscent of Sweet William from Merritt’s 1975 classic The
Cake Man -1975. He is a
tragic Everyman who comments astutely on aspects of urban and tribal
communities but ultimately lacks the skills to negotiate in the city and ends
up destroyed by drugs and isolation.
Conversations with the Dead by Richard Frankland was originally
commissioned by LaMama Theatre in Melbourne and
co-produced by LaMama and Ilbijerri Theatre Company. The play is an artistic response to Frankland's experiences working as a field investigator for the Royal
Commission into Black Deaths in Custody in the late 1980s. The play is a moving
journey of discovery and grief. The audience is asked, literally in the first
dialogue of the play, to:
“Imagine that
you're a Koorie, that you are in your mid-twenties, that your job is to
look into the lives of the dead and the process, policy and attitude that
killed them”.
(Frankland 2002:182)
Frankland’s play is a poetic and savage play that takes a journey
through the issue of aboriginal deaths in custody and his writing deals
this in confronting but dramatic ways. The play’s material is confronting,
painful and ugly without sentimentality.
In
the text of his play, Frankland goes on to ask:
“What would you
do? Where would you put the memories?
What would
keep you sane?
Who do you
think could understand what you carry inside you?”
(Frankland 2002:222)
Late
in 1993, non-indigenous playwright Louis Nowra’s Radiance premiered at the Belvoir
Street Theatre in Sydney. There has
always been much debate in academic and theatre circles about what constitutes
an indigenous drama. Some advocates believe that only indigenous people can
write about indigenous issues and stories. Others believe that if a person
works with and for indigenous people, that their writing constitutes as
indigenous drama. As Louis Nowra points out in his
preface to the published version of his play Radiance, he had already conceived the play as a three hander for
three indigenous females when indigenous actress Lydia Miller, “…Asked me if I would write something for herself and
Rhoda Roberts. ‘Something about sisters,’ she said. I told her I had
already started.” (Nowra 2000:xiii).
The play is about Cressy, Mae and Nona, three half sisters with little in common but the ghosts of their childhood and their mother whose funeral brings them together again after many years. The house in which they were raised in tropical Queensland becomes the backdrop for their turbulent and humorous reunion, as the sisters try to discover common bonds beyond the pain of their past.
The
crux of the play comes when Nona finds out that she is in fact Cressy’s child
and that her ‘mother’ was her grandmother. The original production of the play
at Belvoir Street Theatre had Mae played by Rachael
Maza, Nona played by Rhoda
Roberts and Cressy played by
Lydia Miller. In an interesting twist to the ending, a Queensland
Theatre Company version of the play
directed by Wesley Enoch changed the ending so
that the play finished with Nona joyously scattering the tin of the ashes. A
wonderful film version of the play was made in 1997 directed by indigenous
director Rachel Perkins with the screenplay written by Louis Nowra and Nona played by
Deborah Mailman, Mae played by Trisha Morton Thomas and Cressy played by Rachael
Maza.
In 1994, the black comedy Bindjareb
Pinjarra a devised drama about the bloody Nyoongar
Massacre of the Nyoongar people near Pinjarra in 1834
premiered in Perth. Bindjareb Pinjarra
was devised through improvisation, without a script or director. The ensemble
included Phil Thomson, Kelton Pell, Geoff Kelso and Trevor Parfitt. The cast researched
the incident from Nyoongar and colonial sources and presented the incident from
the indigenous perspective, which sees the "battle" as a premeditated
slaughter of anything up to 750 Aboriginal men, women and children.
1997
saw a string of indigenous drama pieces such as King Hit and Cruel Wild Women. However, the highlight
in terms of indigenous drama was the Sydney ‘Festival of Dreaming’ which saw a range of Indigenous drama from a revival of
the text-based drama Up the Ladder to street theatre and the Koori clowning troupes such Oogadee
Boogadees, to the collaborative work of Mimi to an all indigenous
performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream.
Mimi as a piece of indigenous drama used an interesting
indigenous model of collaborative work involving remote, urban and rural
communities, and Stalker's Theatre Company (a non-indigenous
company who have developed model for group devised work). Stalker’s Theatre
Company created a company called Marrugeku Company which was created
specifically to create Mimi.
Under
the direction of Rachael Swain, members of this company traveled to remote
communities such as the Kunbarllanjnja and worked with
custodians of stories, dance and elders and
developed a rich piece of cross arts drama. In the piece, the Mimi, represented
by stilt walkers are the spirit people. Mimi used songdrama and song cycles of the Kunbarllanjnja
to create a rich piece of theatre. The performance centred on a story where the
Mimi and the Binnini (the local name for indigenous people) travel together
portraying the history of significant events since time began. They reconcile
the differences between the human and the spirit worlds and they journey
through the night into the world of the Yawk Yawk, the daughters of the Rainbow
Serpent responsible for the
creation of the earth. The set design for Mimi was done by members of Stalker’s
Theatre Company and using many of the
ideas and sketches done by elders and members of the Kunbarllanjnja community.
Also
as part of the Festival of Dreaming, Rachel House performed in Wimmin’s Business Season, a program which
included revivals of Seven Stages of
Grieving with Deborah Mailman, Box the Pony with Leah Purcell, Ningali with
Ningali Lawford and Deborah Cheetham in White Baptist ABBA Fan. The satire of the improvised drama Bindenjarreb Pinjarra provided a stark contrast
to a version of Waiting for Godot entitled Ngundalelah
Godotgai performed in the
Banjalung language with English
subtitles. Julie Janson’s historical drama Black
Mary about the indigenous bushranger Mary Anne Ward
supported the epic quality of Noel Tovey’s indigenous production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which amazing dreaming
designs. Wesley Enoch directed a production
of Roger Bennett’s Up the Ladder which explores the world
of 1950’s sideshow boxing matches.
The
work of the Ilbijerri Theatre became very important
during the 1990’s. Under the guidance of Rachael Maza, this company seemed to
grow from strength to strength. The plays of the Ilbijerri Theatre explore a
range of complex and controversial issues from a uniquely Indigenous and Torres
Strait Islander perspective. Jane Harrison’s renowned classic Stolen was the company’s second major success in
1998. This play toured nationally and internationally, finding critical acclaim
and resonance with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences.
Stolen by Jane Harrison, was originally commissioned in 1992 by the Ilbijerri
Theatre Company (known later
as the Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Co-operative). After the success of John Harding’s Up the Road, the group was casting their net out for new and
challenging ideas so they placed an advertisement in a number of Melbourne
newspapers for a writer/researcher to work on a project on the Stolen
Generation. Jane Harrison, an indigenous writer who had never written a play before,
applied for and was awarded the position.
“Writing
the play was a big step in my (continuing) journey home, a way of connecting
with the Koori community and further understanding my own
‘longing to belong’ ”. (Harrison 2000: xiv)
The
play took six years to develop, and in that time Harrison and researcher
Antoinette Braybrook interviewed many
people for their stories about their stolen generation
experiences
and conducted many workshops under the guidance of indigenous actress Kylie
Belling. This became a dramaturgical process which was held up as many as
crucial to the success of the authenticity of the play as a truly amazing piece
of modern Indigenous drama. By 1993, a draft script entitled The Lost Children was sent to indigenous
director Wesley Enoch and a
moved reading was organised. The title was changed after indigenous audiences
at early readings argued that the children were never lost but were ‘stolen’.
It then took another five years to raise the money for a full scale production.
Finally, in 1997, Aubrey Mellor (the then Artistic
Director of Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre) and Sue Natrass (Artistic Director of
the Melbourne International Festival at that time) agreed to finance the
project as a joint initiative.
Stolen tells the story of five Indigenous
children forcibly removed from their families. Each has a past and a journey to
share with the audience. Anne is a pale-skinned adopted child who must
reconcile herself with her true identity. Sandy is a young man who is on the run from authorities
but who remembers the culture and family he was torn from. Shirley is a mother
who was not only was stolen from her family, but has grown up seeing her own
children stolen from her. Ruby is an abused young girl being trained for
domestic service, who eventually becomes overwhelmed by mental illness. The
final main character is Jimmy who is a lively young man filled with enthusiasm
for life who rebels against the system, is beaten and eventually takes his own
life in jail. The stories of these separate characters interweave into a
collective narrative of great richness and complexity. Segregated from their
communities, these characters struggle with the pain of their lives as they try
to forget their families, their culture and their place. The play is a powerful
piece which addresses the stories and experiences of the Stolen Generation while addressing
other issues of identity and deaths in custody. This is done through humour and the use of different
narrative structures synonymous to each character – a song, a letter and the
line up.
Under
Wesley Enoch’s direction of the first production, the play was transformed into
a pivotal moment in indigenous theatre. The original production starred Tammy
Anderson as Anne, Stan
Yarramunua as Sandy, Pauline
Whyman as Shirley, Tony
Briggs as Jimmy and the
incredible talent of Kylie Belling as the tragic Ruby. A
great resource for the play can be found at QPAC:
Bennell, Eddy. My
Spiritual Dreaming. Deckchair Production. Perth. 1992.
Bennett, Roger. 1989. Up
the Ladder (theatre program and playscript). Darwin Theatre Company.
Bennett, Roger. Funerals
and Circuses. 1995. Currency Press. Strawberry Hills,
Sydney.
Black Theatre ABC. Messagestick [11/8/02]
http://www.abc.net.au/message/tv/ms/s640055.htm
Black Voice: A History of Indigenous
Theatre
(Radio Program). ‘Awaye’. ABC Radio National Australia. October 28th,
2011.
Brisbane,
K. 2001. The Future in Black and White
Indigenousity in Recent Australian Drama. Currency Press. Surrey Hills., Sydney.
Casey,
M. 2004. Creating Frames. Contemporary Indigenous Theatre in Australia 1967-97.
University of Queensland Press. Brisbane.
Chi, J. and the Kuckles. 1990. Bran
Nue Dae. Published by
Currency Press & Magdabala Books. Broome & Sydney.
Enoch, Wesley. Deborah Mailman. The 7 Stages of Grieving. 1997.
Currency Press. Strawberry Hills,
Sydney.
Harrison, Jane. Stolen. Currency Press. 1998.
Johnson,
E. 'What Do They Call Me?' in Australian
Gay and Lesbian Plays ed. Bruce Parr. Sydney: Currency Press.1996.
Narogen, Mudrooroo, Heiner
Muller. Aboriginal Demonstrators Confront the Declaration of the Australian
Republic on the 26th January 2001 with the Production of Deruftag by Heiner
Muller. 1993. Published by University Press. Sydney.
Roberts, R. 1997. ‘A Passion for Ideas: Black Stage’. Third Rex
Cramphorn Memorial Lecture. Belvoir Street Theatre. Sydney. 13 November.
1997.
Weller, A. Nidjera
(prompt script). 1990. Melbourne Workers Theatre. Melbourne.
1.
Why was the Bran Nue
Dae such a success?
2.
There are various theatrical conventions and forms used in Seven Stages of Grieving to tell this
woman’s story in the play. What is the
function and effect of the episodic form of the play and the different
theatrical conventions and forms used in the piece?
3.
What is the effect on the audience on hearing the stories
from each role told separately and episodically?
4.
Discuss with students how the non-linear structure work in The Seven Stages of Grieving? Enoch and Mailman played themselves
with the order of the scenes to achieve different effects. Experiment with
changing the order of the scenes in the play.
5.
Are drama pieces such as Bran
Nue Dae and Mimi
which combine different art forms more conducive to indigenous drama than text-based
drama? Discuss.
6.
Why do you think that plays like Up the Road find greater acceptance during the late 1990’s compared
to the early 1990’s? Are Australian audiences more ready to accept a diversity
of indigenous experiences in the 21st Century than they were during
the 1970’s to the early 1990’s?
7.
Look at the narrative structure and narrative devices used
in Stolen. How does each of these
devices suit the development of both the narrative and individual characters?
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