Parramatta Girls
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PARRAMATTA GIRLS PO BOX 1715 STRAWBERRY HILLS NSW 2012 EMAIL [email protected] WEB www.belvoir.com.au ADMINISTRATION (02) 9698 3344 FACSIMILE (02) 9319 3165 BOX OFFICE (02) 9699 3444 CB_ParraGirls Program.indd 1-2 6/3/07 9:24:30 AM Company B presents PARRAMATTA GIRLS Written by ALANA VALENTINE Directed by WESLEY ENOCH The Company B production of Parramatta Girls opened at Belvoir St Theatre on 21 March 2007. With VALERIE BADER Lynette ANNIE BYRON Gayle JEANETTE CRONIN Melanie LISA FLANAGAN Kerry GENEVIEVE HEGNEY Maree ROXANNE McDONALD Coral LEAH PURCELL Marlene CAROLE SKINNER Judi RALPH MYERS Set Designer ALICE BABIDGE Costume Designer RACHEL BURKE Lighting Designer STEVE FRANCIS Sound Designer MICHAEL McGLYNN Musical Director KYLE ROWLANDS Fight Director LUKE WOODHAM Stage Manager NELL RANNEY Assistant Stage Manager SOPHIE DOUBLEDAY NIDA Secondment PRODUCTION THANKS: Alien Proof Construction, Chameleon Lighting and Turramurra Music. COVER IMAGE: Alex Craig PHOTOGRAPHY: Heidrun Löhr DESIGN: Mollison Communications This program has been sponsored by the NSW Department of Community Services. CB_ParraGirls Program.indd 3 6/3/07 9:24:30 AM CB_ParraGirls Program.indd 1 6/3/07 9:24:31 AM WRITER’S NOTE All of the stories in Parramatta Girls have been recounted to me by former inmates of the Girls’ Training School, Parramatta, previously known as the Parramatta Girls’ Home, and used as a venue for ‘delinquent’ and ‘destitute’ girls as far back as 1887. I have spoken to more than 35 women, including those from interstate and now living in England, attended the Senate enquiry hearings at Parramatta, spoken to men who were in boys homes and read testimonials, recorded face to face interviews and listened to women, their relatives and friends on the telephone. Accordingly, I would like to offer my sincerest thanks and love to Coral Pombo, “Upwards of, and possibly more than 500 000 Australians Diane O’Brien, Denise Luke, Joyce McBride, Eddie Chatfi eld, Kerry Roman, Lorraine from Campbelltown, Marlene Riley-Wilson, Christine Riley, Janice experienced care in an orphanage, Home or other form of Pender, Joan Dale, Valerie Wenberg, Leila Wenberg, Marjorie Woodrow, Jan out-of-home care during the last century. As many of these people McGuire, Rita Johnston, Kate Nicholas, Mary Farrell, Carolyn Welsh, Dale Frank, Vicki King, Sandra Abraham, Liz Ebeling, Barbara Denison, Patricia Pedersen, have had a family it is highly likely that every Australian either Denise Dravine, Patricia Dawson, Wilma Cassidy, Lynette Aitken, Judi was, is related to, works with or knows someone who experienced Fraser-Bell, Gail Snell, Maree Giles, Bonney Djuric and Melody Mandeno and several others who have asked to remain nameless. childhood in an institution or out-of-home care environment.” None of the characters on stage represents a single individual. Instead, they Forgotten Australians, Senate Committee Report, August 2004 are composites, dramatic interpretations and representations distilled into versions of the courage, humour and suffering that I have witnessed. Many of Image: Parramatta Girls’ Training School. (Reproduced with kind permission of State Records of NSW and NSW Department of Community Services.) the characters, however, retain the names of women I have interviewed, and I use these names with permission. Theatre often allows us to look into the vagaries of human nature under the cover of the ancient past, or behind the shield of geography, but not in this instance. This story is about conditions endured by Australian children within living memory. I thank the NSW Ministry for the Arts for awarding me the 2003 Writer’s Fellowship to research this play. I thank George Whaley and the actors at the Byron Writers Festival. I am deeply grateful to the artistic vision of Neil Armfi eld and all the staff and artistic collaborators at Company B, especially Wesley Enoch, for their insistence that we continue to look into the cauldron of our own history and fi nd in it a place of healing, joy and empowerment toward a common future. Alana Valentine CB_ParraGirls Program.indd 2-3 6/3/07 9:24:32 AM DIRECTOR’S NOTE The truth is always tricky to tie down. There are so many truths. I remember being told about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Apparently they worked with four definitions of truth – a sense of individual truth, a sense of community truth, forensic truth and official truth. There are things that are written down, there are things described through science, but it’s the other less tangible, more human truths that always seem to be at question and are constantly and mercilessly interrogated. Why is that? Why is how it feels somehow given less weight than what can be documented? Human beings are messy things. Our histories inform the way we interact with the world. You walk into a shop and don’t get served… Is that racism or just bad service? I guess both truths are real and dependent on a state of mind, your history and your ability to cope. Desmond Tutu said that there could be no reconciliation without truth. Hence a society that wishes to reconcile needs the truth told – placed on the public record in all its humanity, all its mess, its contradictions and arguments. Truth telling is a way of feeling like your story is being heard. The acknowledgment gained by telling your story is half the journey to the healing we seek. And if you can’t be heard, if you can’t get your story placed on the public record, you will force it, you will fight for it to be heard. Simple truths should never be forgotten in the complicated messiness – it has never been right to bash children, it has never been acceptable to sexually abuse children, it has never been justifiable to incarcerate people without a trial. No amount of good intentions excuses abhorrent behaviour. Wesley Enoch CB_ParraGirls Program.indd 4-5 6/3/07 9:24:33 AM CB_ParraGirls Program.indd 6-7 6/3/07 9:24:34 AM submissions, and try to imagine the effect FORGOTTON AUSTRALIANS on a person’s character as a result of abuse and ill-treatment. Empathy must be Senate Committee Report | August 2004 | Page 4 diffi cult to achieve when your own life has been sweet. (Sub 284) 1.8 Without doubt this inquiry has generated the largest volume of highly personal, emotive and signifi cant evidence of any Senate inquiry. 1.12 To fully understand the roller-coaster of emotions generated by this inquiry is 1.9 Many hundreds of people opened their lives and the memories of indeed very diffi cult. We as Committee traumatic childhood events for the Committee in their public submissions members have read the submissions and at the hearings. Some people were actually telling their story to another and sat through deeply emotional and person, including family, for the fi rst ever time. For some these memories disturbing hearings. One Committee and their life story remain so distressing that they asked for their name to member has described the inquiry as be withheld or to be identifi ed only by their fi rst name. Many others who for “the most emotionally wrenching period I a range of reasons preferred that their identity remain undisclosed provided have spent in politics in 15 years”, a view confi dential submissions. All these people desperately wanted the Committee shared by all members. The Committee to read and hear what they had experienced in childhood and the impact that understands the courage of those care those events have had throughout their life. They wanted their voice to be leavers who wrote submissions and the heard. complex emotional problems faced by many in completing their submissions. 1.10 The power of these submissions in conveying a life needlessly haunted The Committee is aware of many cases by potent feelings of guilt and shame is overwhelming and must be where the writing of a submission took acknowledged and addressed in a decisive and resolute fashion; that these many months of agonising over and reliving events happened, that the care leavers were not to blame, that theirs is not painful past events: a background of shame, that they should be recognised and understood as having had a childhood full of emotional and social deprivation. These types of things have never been released from my mind before. Writing 1.11 For the Committee members and parliamentary staff involved with my life experience for this submission this inquiry the scale and magnitude of the events described in evidence has really broken me emotionally as I am was overwhelming. To think that a human could treat another in such reliving all these issues and events. (Sub a psychologically and physically abusive manner is unthinkable; to treat 341) a child in such a manner is simply incomprehensible. Yet it happened. Comments were made during evidence that it is impossible for others to fully Telling this story is one of the hardest comprehend what was happening unless they had actually experienced this things I have had to do. I’m telling you life, and that a certain desensitisation could occur. These feelings were well things I’ve never told anyone before, not expressed in one submission: even my brother and sister. We never discuss being in that place, the shame and it occurred to me that Senators and other government staff involved in damage it has caused is just too powerful. reading and assessing submissions, could easily become hardened to their (Conf Sub 44) content. It appears there were many, many incidents that are questionable, Image: Parramatta Girls’ Training School. (Reproduced which took place in government institutions like Parramatta Girls’ Home.