Indig-curious: What are the challenges for non Aboriginal theatre practitioners in accessing and interpreting Aboriginal themes?
Jane Harrison Submitted to Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology Master of Arts (Research) in Playwrighting 2009
Keywords
Aboriginal, Indigenous, Theatre, Performance, Cultural protocols
Abstract
How do non-Indigenous theatre practitioners, especially actors, access and incorporate Aboriginal themes in the plays they create or perform in? Will it ever be acceptable for a non-Aboriginal actor to play an Aboriginal role? In literature there are clear protocols for writing Aboriginal characters and themes. In the visual arts and in dance, non- Indigenous practitioners might 'reference' Aboriginal themes, but what about in theatre performance? This research embodies one cultural dilemma in a creative project and exegesis: exploring the complex issues which emerge when an Aboriginal playwright is commissioned to write an 'Aboriginal themed' play for two non-Aboriginal actors. 1. Introduction 1
2. Why this project? 7
3. Methodology 12
4. Aboriginal themes; can they be defined? 20
5. Aboriginal themes - de rigueur or cultural property? 31
6. Responsibility, anxiety and guilt; the burdens of the message maker 43
7. Identity, and can Aboriginality be learnt? 50
8. The non Aboriginal actor – no longer ‘blacking up’ 53
9. Why White Girls don’t Dreamtime … 59
Appendix A: Permissions to quote 67
Appendix B: Creative Development Can White Girls Dreamtime?/Custody 69
Appendix C: Custody script 70
References 71
Acknowledgments
I would like to first acknowledge my children, Savannah and Nova, for their continued understanding and acceptance of the process we all undertook; George and Philip, who read an early draft and provided judicious feedback, not always graciously accepted at the time; and finally, the notes and feedback provided by my supervisors, first Craig Bolland then David Megarrity. Together, we ran a marathon.
In developing the various versions of the play I thank Annalouise Paul and Lisa Scope, for their commission of the play, their creative input through the workshops and their leadership in seeking funding and opportunities; Rachael Maza for her insight and her straight talking; Kristina Totos for her dedicated direction of the Inscriptions showcase; and Marcus West and Inscriptions for their belief in me and support.
Each day, I take another small step in my journey of reconnection to my culture and every Aboriginal person I meet contributes to that journey. I thank my Aboriginal friends, colleagues and mentors for their wisdom, leadership and beauty of spirit.
‘Perhaps some day Australian writers will use Aboriginal myths and weave literature from them, the same as other writers have done with the Roman, Greek, Norse, and Arthurian legends.’ David Unaiponi
i Unaipon, David, 2001, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines, The Miegunyah Press, p4
1. Introduction
David Unaipon, as an Aboriginal writer and collector of Aboriginal1 stories and myths in the 1920s, had a commitment to sharing those stories with non Aboriginal people1. But what can we make of his urging of Australian writers to ‘use’ Aboriginal myths? Did Unaipon mean that non Aboriginal writers should have the freedom to utilise Aboriginal myths and stories without qualms, without recourse, without responsibility? Or did he merely hope that Aboriginal myths would be afforded the status and respect of the equivalent mythology harking from Europe? That they would be valued as part of our country’s cultural expression?
When Germaine Greer, academic, writer, commentator, expatriate and non Aboriginal Australian, declared, in her essay Whitefella Jumpup, that ‘We can dance too’2, - was she faintly echoing, eight decades later, the polymath David Unaipon’s sentiment? Did she mean that Aboriginal myths and stories and ceremonies also belong to non Aboriginal people? The non Aboriginal people could learn to integrate Aboriginality into their being, or as she expresses it:
‘For 200 years the Aboriginal peoples have been seducing the whitefellas, subtly drawing them into their web of dreams …’3
And how do these quotes relate to this exegesis, which is concerned with writing about Aboriginal themes for non Aboriginal theatre practitioners? In this exegesis, I will explore how Aboriginal themes can be used in a way that is acceptable to Aboriginal people. Neither Homer nor Shakespeare are around to shudder or praise the way their work has been reinterpreted, but Aboriginal people are alive and well and are outspoken about how they are depicted on the page, stage and on the screen, as will be demonstrated. On the page, which includes play scripts, non Aboriginal Australians are increasingly incorporating Aboriginal themes and characters into their writing and there are protocols for the writer to follow. But for the stage, what are the constraints around the non Aboriginal actor in relation to Aboriginal themes? Is it acceptable – or will it ever be - for a non Aboriginal actor to perform an Aboriginal role? Who will do
1 The word Aboriginal has been used throughout, interchangeably with Indigenous, to signify both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, with an apology if that offends.
the ‘accepting’ or ‘rejecting’– the white audience, or the Aboriginal audience? Do these two audiences have the same expectations of what is presented on stage? The precedents and clear protocols (see Appendix) for the non Aboriginal writer who wishes to access Aboriginal themes in literature do not always translate to performance and performers.
My exegetical question is: ‘Indig-curious. What are the challenges for non Aboriginal theatre practitioners in accessing and interpreting Aboriginal themes?’
My reflection:
A note on the term ‘Indig-curious’. The term ‘bi-curious’ has entered into the popular lexicon, referring to ‘someone who does not identify as bisexual or homosexual but feels or shows some curiosity in a relationship or sexual activity with someone of the same sex … The term bi-curious implies that the individual has had no sexual experience - or very little - of that sort, but may continue to self-identify as bi-curious if they do not feel they have adequately explored these feelings …’ 4. I coined the term ‘Indig-curious’ for this exegesis as I felt it was a (somewhat cheeky) phrase that evoked a similar curiosity about Aboriginal culture and people, especially when the non Aboriginal person is coming from a low knowledge base, but has a passion to understand more.
So why have I chosen this theme, and how have I explored it? Firstly, the theme emerged from the play I was commissioned to write for two non Aboriginal actor/producers. I am a playwright with Aboriginal heritage (Muruwari) who writes Aboriginal themed plays, which is why I received the commissioned, the process of which I will describe in the next section, Why this project? Secondly, I explore the topic by conducting a literature review, defining my methodological approach and then identifying a number of emergent themes which I expand upon in the chapters of this exegesis. The final chapter sums up my findings.
The literature review revealed an array of material concerned with issues of protocols and cultural appropriation, defined as ‘the adoption of some specific elements of one
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culture by a different cultural group’5, usually the dominant culture. These issues are related to writing Aboriginal themes in fiction, non-fiction, film and television, and many of the concerns raised apply equally to writing for theatre. However, the literature review also exposed a gap in the literature concerned with one specific issue raised in this exegesis: how does the non Aboriginal performer access Aboriginal themes? Quite astonishingly, I was unable to find any extant literature that addressed that precise issue. This may be explained by the small body of Aboriginal plays, the relatively few Aboriginal playwrights, and the resulting smaller pool of critical thinking that relates specifically to Aboriginal theatre. Indeed, Aboriginal playwrights are a recent phenomena: Kevin Gilbert was anointed the first performed Aboriginal playwright with his play The Cherry Pickers (1968). It was not until 1978 that performing arts publisher Currency Press published The Cake Man, by Aboriginal writer Robert Merritt.
Although the focus of this exegesis is writing for Aboriginal theatre, it will also draw upon exemplars from literature, film, television and art, dance and music that incorporate Aboriginal themes. I will examine works that have been created by both Aboriginal and non Aboriginal artists in Australia and internationally, particularly from colonised countries with Indigenous populations who are also grappling with issues of appropriation and cultural expression.
The literature review did highlight a trend, in recent years, for non Aboriginal Australian writers to incorporate Aboriginal themes or to write Aboriginal characters into their narratives. In fiction, Alex Miller (Journey to the Stone Country, 2002), Kate Grenville (The Secret River, 2005) are award-winning examples. More specifically in theatre, as Katherine Brisbane, the founder of Currency Press, points out; there have been a number of plays with Aboriginal characters, written by non Aboriginal writers, since 1927. She lists6 some of them as:
Brumby Innes Katherine Susannah Prichard (1927) Fountains Beyond George Landen Dann (1944) The Foreman Jill Shearer (1978) The Man from Mukinupin Dorothy Hewitt (1979) Close to the Bone Ned Manning (1991)
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Bullie’s House Thomas Keneally (1981)
It is not within the scope of this exegesis to critique the content of these plays, or to analyse how the authors went about researching the Aboriginality of the characters or themes of their respective plays. I simply note that these non Aboriginal playwrights had the self-belief to write these plays; likewise the theatre companies were confident in the material to produce them.
In a more local sample, of the 12 playwrights who enrolled in the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Master of Arts (MA) in Playwriting course in 2006, two non Aboriginal playwrights have included Aboriginal characters in the plays they are writing. Of the eight playwrights who attended the Theatrelab7 Workshop in July, 2006, two non Aboriginal playwrights had previously developed Aboriginal characters in their plays. Of the seven 2007 Inscriptions8 writers, one had incorporated an Aboriginal character into his filmscript, while another had written a play about the Myall Creek massacre, centered on the massacre of 28 Aboriginal people by white ex- convicts in 1838. Neither were Aboriginal writers. In the General feedback on entries for the Short and Sweet short play festival, 20069, the judges noted the influx of scripts relating to ‘white guilt’ (their term), with over twenty plays submitted on issues of reconciliation and relationships between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal Australians.
Why do non Aboriginal writers feel the need to write Aboriginal characters/stories? How can they feel confident they can write these characters sensitively? How do they research the material, to be confident of the authenticity of the character’s voice? How do they ensure the Aboriginal community is happy with the character/content - or don’t they feel obligated to? Rachel Perkins, Aboriginal director, suggests that in order to write Aboriginal characters if you are non Aboriginal, one must take a multi-faceted approach, as did Louis Nowra in writing the screenplay of the film Radiance, (1998) which she directed:
‘He [Nowra] had done his research, he's lived it, his coming from a position of being very informed and when you've got those things, ability, talent, research, and experience, you can write or create on any level, regardless of your race.’10
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Not everyone feels as inclusive as Perkins. In a critical essay, Anita Heiss, Aboriginal writer and academic, argues:
‘The 1990s saw increased discussion, both within and outside the Indigenous community, on the issue of non-Indigenous writers writing about Aboriginal society and culture. For some non-Indigenous writers working in the area, their case for doing so gains credibility as they are seen to be providing a voice (however indirectly) to Aboriginal Australia. However, this attitude is unacceptable to many Indigenous writers who are tired of competing with white writers for the opportunity to write and be published in the area that is particularly and specifically related to their lives ...’11
Perhaps the growing trend for non Aboriginal writers to tackle Aboriginal themes or to write Aboriginal characters is made easier by the existence of protocol documents, developed in consultation with Indigenous people, such as those produced by the Australia Council for the Arts12? Or perhaps the writers are merely reflecting, or being early instigators of, a trend in the wider society – a desire or curiosity to understand Aboriginal culture and bring it in from the fringe, to mainstream it, as it were? Keeping in mind, that any protocol documents that have been developed can only be a guide, and while not following them may prevent you from receiving funding from government entities such as the Australia Council, the protocols have no power to stop non Aboriginal writers from writing about Aboriginal themes in an inaccurate (Marlo Morgan’s Mutant Message Down Under, 199013) or unfavourable light (Bad Dreaming, Louis Nowra, 2007).
So in many ways this strand of the debate is moot; many non Aboriginal writers and playwrights are already writing Aboriginal characters; the horse has bolted. But when it comes to the non Aboriginal performer, what guidance is there, begging the question, is it ever acceptable for the non Aboriginal performer to act in an Aboriginal role? And if it is acceptable, what would be the protocols for a non Aboriginal performer in utilising ‘Aboriginal themes’ in their performance?
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This exegesis and the play, Custody, which is contained within it, will explore the issue of how non Aboriginal Australians can access Aboriginal culture, as well as exploring my own views as a writer with Aboriginal heritage who writes for theatre. The development of the play has informed the direction the exegesis takes, and the exegesis has provided a means to articulate the many issues that have arisen during the play’s gestation.
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2. Why this project?
This was a challenging play to write, on many levels. It concerns itself with cultural identity – Aboriginal and non Aboriginal, and how to belong in Aboriginal country when you are not Aboriginal. Its themes are Aboriginal, yet it was written for non Aboriginal actors. I would never have considered ‘unpacking’ the complexity of the issues involved in writing an ‘Aboriginal themed play’ for non Aboriginal actors, but for the arrival in my inbox of an email:
From: Lisa Scope Date: 10 January 2006 4:21:34 PM To: Jane Harrison Cc: Annalouise Paul Subject: Proposal. For an Aboriginal Writer
‘Dear Jane,
I would like to introduce myself you. Hun Bun & Scope Productions are looking to commission an Aboriginal playwright for a play for a 2007 season in Sydney. Annalouise Paul and myself will co-produce and perform, and we would be very interested in talking with you about our project.
The play would be for two females, of non Aboriginal background, age range, 30- 40yrs. The play would be a one act about 45-60 min in length. Our themes revolve around femininity, a woman's place in society, family, interwove[sic] with cross cultural divides and we are very open to other ideas and themes.’14
Annalouise Paul and Lisa Scope, the two actor/producers, had recently met while attending a workshop together. They decided to commission a play in order to generate work for themselves, intending to act in the final production. They tossed around ideas on the kind of play they wanted to work on, deciding they were interested in exploring ‘Aboriginal themes’ incorporating family and spirituality. They believed that they needed an Aboriginal writer to write such a play. In their search for a writer, the producers happened upon an interview with me on the internet, and as result they
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contacted me via email. My reactions to the initial email (reproduced above) were; how did they find out about me? What ‘kind’ of play did they want me to write? Were they expecting me to write ‘Aboriginal characters’ for them? I emailed back my phone number and they agreed to ring me to discuss their proposal. Overall, I was a little reluctant, as I was about to begin my MA, and I had proposed another idea entirely in my submission to QUT. As such, I felt I was too busy to write an additional play. However, I was open to the idea of a commission; all of my produced plays had been commissioned - Stolen and Rainbow’s End, both by Ilbijerri, and Walkabout by Chamber Made (re-written by Richard Frankland but based on my script). As an ex- advertising copywriter, the idea of writing to a brief represented a challenge, not a limitation. I responded:
Hi Lisa
Sure, I would be interested in talking to you. …
Can you tell me a little more about why you want an Indigenous playwright? And also why me? And more about how you would see this working.
Regards
Jane15
They rang the next night. Months later they told me how nervous they were about the prospect of talking with me. Some of the areas discussed in that first conversation, as minuted by Lisa Scope, included:
Why an indigenous writer - * cross cultural * dreamtime and mystical meaning * connections * educational16
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We discussed some of the logistics of the process, and their motivation in approaching me, detailed in a subsequent email to me:
‘We didn’t really talk about having an Indig [sic] 'play' as such but more Indig [sic] 'themes' and therefore it made sense to commission an Indig [sic] playwright. Also, we didn’t want to do just another play that everyone else has done over and over again …’17
They also assured me that they didn’t expect to ‘play’ Aboriginal characters in the play. The email went on to say:
‘Annalouise and I met just after Christmas [2005] to discus what we wanted to do as a project and we talked about the importance of story telling and how we where both interested in exploring indigenous themes and decided an indigenous playwright would be the way to go. Then we started to look for a playwright and through our research we found you.’18
After this discussion I agreed to take on the project, deciding it would make an intriguing topic for a play and accompanying exegesis for my MA studies. The actor/producers’ role, at this point, would be to develop a contract outlining each of our responsibilities, funding arrangements and the deadlines for each stage of the project.
My reflection:
Although the project was fascinating as an ‘idea’, I had no immediate sense of how to solve the ‘problem’ of the play. First I had to understand what ‘the problem’ was. What would I be trying to say in this play?
Soon after, I met Paul and Scope in Sydney for a brainstorming session. At this first session, I suggested that we structure our play around seven themes: Language, Family, Land, Spiritualism, Customs, Dreamtime, and Corroboree (dance). These summed up ‘Aboriginal culture’ from the perspective of the actor/producers and gave me a thematic framework for the play.
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Soon after this meeting my ideas shifted, and I suggested that the play could be about how non Aboriginal people access Aboriginal themes in a creative sense. What are the stereotypes, myths, fears, assumptions on both sides? I then provided the actor/producers with an early synopsis of the play, for the purposes of the funding submissions they were managing. The play was given the working title of 'Can White Girls Dreamtime?', a line I had used in a draft synopsis and which seemed to encapsulate the questions I wanted to explore in this play:
Can White Girls Dreamtime?
By Jane Harrison
Description
This play is an exploration into the murky waters of how to include Aboriginal content in plays by non Aboriginal theatre practitioners.
And if that sounds dull it won’t be, using satire, humour and pathos in scenes which explore Aboriginal culture. The Dreamtime, family, connection to land, customs and rituals, language the will all be examined in this episodic and thematic play of seven scenes.
It will be a lesson and a gift, as the two non Aboriginal performers stumble their way through the protocols, the stereotypes, the challenges and the thrills of this brave new world where Aboriginal culture is celebrated and embraced and is (perhaps?) no longer the exclusive domain of the blackfella. Omnipresent will be the Aboriginal Protocol-meister, who, through the joys of multimedia, will stand in judgment of their efforts and will ultimately answer the question – Can White Girls Dreamtime?19
Writing any play is difficult (for me). This one had the added constraints that I would be limited to a two-hander, and that I would be writing for the producers who were also the performers, and whose performance styles I was unfamiliar with. I had to write a play to suit them, one that would also find a ready, commercial audience … While I
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was writing the play, the parallel process of the outlining the exegesis would assist me in the teasing out the subject matter of the play, beginning with an attempt to define the indefinable; what was an ‘Aboriginal-themed’ play? But before that, I had to define my methodology.
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3. Methodology
I approached this exegesis through an inquiry lens that is constructivist (Denzin & Lincoln, 199420; Lincoln & Guba, 198521), whereby knowledge is indeterminate and without ‘objective truth’, and where meaning is derived from the process of organising experience into a ‘comprehensible, understandable, and explainable form’ (Lincoln & Guba, 200122). The exegesis encompasses a level of personal narrative and this methodology has been described variously as Heuristic Inquiry, Reflexivity and Auto- Ethnography. Moustakas (1985), an early developer of the Heuristic Inquiry approach, describes the intensely personal nature of the research as ‘an effort to know the essence of some aspect of life through the internal pathways of the self’23. Moustakas expands this by urging the researcher to ‘respect their own questions and problems, to suggest a process that affirms imagination, intuition, self-reflection, and the tacit dimension as valid ways in the search for knowledge and understanding.’24 Reflecting back on oneself as the primary research tool has also been described as ‘Reflexivity’. It disputes the idea of ‘objectivity, being ‘both an epistemological statement about the connected nature of knowledge and a political statement about the noninnocence of research’25 according to de Freitas (2008). Another mode of reflexive methodology is Auto-Ethnography, described as ‘self-narrative that places the self within a social context’. (Jupp, 2006)26 In Writing the New Ethnography, Goodall Jr (2000, p 131) asks: ‘Who are you? Who are you when you write? Who are you in your writing? What are the differences, if any? To the work? To your audience?’27
The Auto-Ethnographic fragments included in my research are one stream of narrative that is concerned with the subjective, felt, lived and intuitive – or ‘other’ forms of research. Recognising them as ‘other’ forms of research, I have selected to quarantine my reflective thoughts from the main body of my exegesis through the use of boxes, forming a split layered narrative (Lather, 199528) approach in my presentation. The boxes are entitled with ‘My reflections’, and where they appears, it is a signal to the reader that the comments contained within are of a reflexive nature. I believe these segues will augment and demonstrate some of the complexities inherent in my arguments. As the exegesis draws to a conclusion, the boxes become more dominant,
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as I move away from the literature to privilege my own experiences and learnings, encapsulated in these reflections.
My reflection:
In reflecting on these issues of the exegesis and the play I am writing for the MA, I am writing from my perspective as a writer, as a person of Aboriginal heritage, as a playwright, and as an Aboriginal playwright who is immersed in the concerns of an Aboriginal person. Each of these descriptors has a different raison d’etre, and different modus operandi. As a writer, and this could be influenced by my earlier career as an advertising copywriter, my primary purpose is to communicate clearly, to educate, to explain, to be persuasive. As a person of Aboriginal heritage, my purpose is to be culturally sensitive and to actively promote the positive aspects, of which there are many, of Aboriginal culture. As a playwright, my purpose is to write plays which entertain and excite, evoke a world on the stage using the tools of dialogue, action, aided by sound, lighting and the set, in a way that brings a story to life and resonates with the audience. As an Aboriginal playwright, my purpose is to creatively share the experiences of Aboriginal life so that that Aboriginal people feel validated, but also to educate non Aboriginal audiences, to widen their perspectives about Aboriginal people and culture. Sometimes these motivations are conflicting.
My reflection:
My arguments are informed by my Aboriginal heritage and my lived experience as an Aboriginal playwright. All of my works for theatre (with the exception of a 10 minute play, Polygamy, for the 2008 Melbourne Short & Sweet Playwrighting festival) have had Aboriginal content, including Stolen (1998 and Rainbow’s End (2005) both produced, and On a Park Bench and Blakvelvet (so far unproduced), Walkabout (2005). Stolen and Rainbow’s End were both commissioned by Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Theatre Company, of which I have also been a board member and part time artistic coordinator (2004).
My reflection:
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My lived experience includes my recent roles in the workforce (Aboriginal Research Officer at a University and a Aboriginal Child and Family Welfare organisation, and as Project Liaison for client Koorie Business Network during the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games). In these roles, often in mainstream organisations, I have operated as a type of ‘cultural boundary rider’, on the edge of the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ worlds, travelling between the dominant ‘white world’ and the less visible, less understood Aboriginal community. The role requires one to act as a type of interpreter, not in terms of language but of meaning and protocols, slipping backwards and forwards, and frequently making mistakes, misreading the signs, being accepted, not being accepted, being questioned and being challenged by both camps, as an interpreter often is.
As a researcher in the playwriting process, my position is also from ‘within’ and ‘without’. I can glean the positions of others through the literature, but I am also an active participator in the research through the process of writing the play, workshopping it, revising it, being the recipient of feedback that isn’t always flattering or easy.
In looking at the context for my research, I examined the literature, predominantly originating from Australia but from also Canada and New Zealand, where there are commonalities as nations where the indigenous people have been colonised. Key words in the literature search included: Aboriginal/Indigenous coupled with theatre, protocols, appropriation, and acting. As the pool of literature specifically focused on Aboriginal theatre is small, I deepened my search for relevant documents which pertained to other performance genres, where they dealt with ‘Aboriginal themes’, including dance, film, television, music. While my exegetical question is focused on the performance of a play, it is also necessary to discuss the writing of the play, as they serve two different, but intertwined, purposes. Again, as the academic literature on Aboriginal theatre practices is scant, I have included the views, gleaned from within grey literature29, of many Aboriginal as well as non Aboriginal arts practitioners whose work could be described as ‘Aboriginal-themed’.
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Throughout, I have included the views, with their written permission (see Attachment *), of the actor/producers, Annalouise Paul and Lisa Scope, who commissioned the play, and the cultural consultant/dramaturge, Rachael Maza. Other creative producers, particularly Aboriginal creatives, have been given voice through my review of the literature. In building up this evidence I have acted as a bricoleur; or bowerbird, amassing a collection of ‘gems’ from other Aboriginal thinkers and creative practitioners that have a similar ‘colour’ or that showcase their opinions on similar themes. They are gems, to me, as they are rare viewpoints from beyond the dominant paradigm, where whiteness is invisible because of its ubiquity and dominance, like ‘water is to fish’, surrounding us but undistinguished.
The inclusion of the play script informs the exegesis. The ratio between the exegesis and the play, Custody, along with the previous incarnation of the play Can White Girls Dreamtime?, is approximately 2:1. I have inserted excerpts from both of the plays throughout this exegesis, to illuminate the intersection of theory and the actual reality of the play. The cast list of each of the plays is listed below to help the reader to orient themselves:
Can White Girls Dreamtime?
CHARACTERS:
Susan Baxter: 39, an internationally recognised actor, having just returned to Australia after 15 years away. Confident, successful.
Motivation: Searching for her own way to contribute/understand black/white relationships in Australia
Inala Williams 28, thinks she has Aboriginal heritage and is on a mission to prove it. An emerging playwright.
Motivation: Wanting to establish herself as an Indigenous playwright, wanting ‘success’, wanting acceptance in her own community.
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Throughout INALA wears a array of pro Aboriginal rights T shirts – perhaps getting more outrageous as time goes on.
Custody
CHARACTERS:
This play was commissioned by and written for two actors, Annalouise Paul and Lisa Scope, and therefore the physical embodiment of the characters reflect those actors.
SUSAN: The conceit of this play is that on first impression SUSAN could pass for an Aboriginal. The script calls for her to have olive or dark skin.
Otherwise, SUSAN is early 40s, well groomed, well dressed, has a slight American accent that dissolves away as the play goes on. She is introverted, polite, superficially superficial.
INALA must look like she doesn’t have Aboriginal heritage. Otherwise, she is in her late 20s, early 30s. If clothes maketh the women, then INALA is a try-hard radical who wears her heart emblazened across her chest, in the form of T shirts boldly proclaiming her political opinions. She comes across as brusque, outspoken, and physically has a bit of a swagger, especially at the start of the play.
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REBECCA is LILY’S grandmother, a traditional woman and an Elder. She wears lovely flowery dresses and a beanie. We see REBECCA via a video link up.
VOICE of an automative system announcing docket numbers at a bureaucratic office.
VOICE of the CASEWORKER at the custody meeting.
SETTING:
The play’s setting is ALICE SPRINGS and it needs to read like a hot, dry landscape with the impression of wide open desert spaces. One solution would be to project images of desert landscapes onto a scrim that also shimmers with a heat like effect.
Other setting such as the cemetery could be projected onto the scrim. The art work in the Gallery scene could also be projected.
There are more claustrophobic indoor scenes, such as the hotel room, the impression of which could be made with a few, well chosen props eg a mini bar.
The old Kombi van, BIRRA BIRRA, could also be solved by a projection, but it would be fabulous to have it on stage, with its physical bulk, budget permitting.
In all, there are a variety of different settings presented in the play and how they are created is up to the creative skills of the set designer. There is a
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spectrum of timeframes from early morning through sunset and late at night. The settings are:
BUSINESS CLASS ON A QANTAS PLANE. Two seats side by side. Headphones, sickbag.
ABORIGINAL ART GALLERY WITH WHITE WALLS and also a bench seat.
BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES GOVERNMENT OFFICE with a machine that prints out dockets
TENT IN THE DESERT plus folding chair
SWISH HOTEL ROOM with mini bar plus office equipment such as computer, printer, fax etc. Photo of Lily. Suitcases. French Champagne. Coke.
LAUNCH VENUE. Props include canapes and trays of drinks. Microphone for Susan’s speech.
SWISH HOTEL ROOM with bed.
TRADITIONAL COUNTRY Landscape at night. Smoky fire – either ‘real’ of in the VIDEO footage of the traditional women dancing with SUSAN and INALA.
BESIDE THE ROAD Birra Birra. Box of Krispy Kremes.
TENT IN THE DESERT plus Birra Birra. Empty bottles. Folding chair. A small fire burning. Footage of a plane overhead.
BEANIE FESTIVAL EVENT Props include two beanies – one stylish, one mad.
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CUSTODY GOVERNMENT ROOM Video screen showing footage of REBECCA and LILY
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4. Aboriginal themes; can they be defined?
The question of what are ‘Aboriginal themes’ is asked wherever Aboriginal peoples co-exist with colonising peoples. A call for papers for a conference entitled Comparative Cultural Studies and First Nations Studies, focusing on Indigenous people from Australia, Canada and New Zealand, asked: ‘What is Indigenous literature? How do Indigenous writers/academics see non-Indigenous academics/critics/readers relating to it now and in the future? In other words, who has the right to speak and what can be said? What does a comparative methodology have to say about the oft-laid charges of non- Indigenous "appropriation" of Indigenous literature and culture, and Indigenous "censorship" of non-Indigenous writers and commentators?’30
But before I can even attempt to define ‘Aboriginal themes’ it is pertinent to define who is ‘Aboriginal’. The accepted definition is straightforward – a person is Aboriginal if they meet three criteria: they have Aboriginal heritage; they identify as Aboriginal; and they are accepted within the community as Aboriginal31. While establishing descent can be challenging for some, for me it is the third criteria which offers the most challenges, as acceptance is out of the individual’s control – and it can depend on who is doing the ‘accepting’ or ‘rejecting’. For example, some members of the community might accept a person, while others might reject them, for complex reasons.
Often you are categorised - by others, and often non Aboriginal others – by the way you look, especially your skin colour, but identity is far more complex than that.
My reflection:
As a light skinned person with Aboriginal heritage I often find non Aboriginal people are more likely to question my Aboriginality than Aboriginal people. After a recent public speaking event an audience member declared that I ‘didn’t look Aboriginal, didn’t sound Aboriginal and didn’t dress like an Aboriginal – I was so well dressed.’32
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The fixation on the colour of your skin can lead to anxiety if it does not fit with the expectations of others. The anxiety arises because one’s skin colour is how you are ‘seen’, it is in the eye of the beholder, and so it is often ‘they’ who are defining your Aboriginality /non Aboriginality.
My reflection:
A reading of Custody held in Sydney on 18 October, 200733, had an audience of year nine and ten secondary school students from Darwin (only one of whom, according to the teacher, was Aboriginal). The teacher was originally from Sydney but had been working in Darwin for three years. After the reading there was a round table discussion with the actors, myself and the students, during which the teacher commented, ‘We’ve only seen one Aboriginal person since we’ve been in Sydney, haven’t we class?’ I interpreted this as meaning that she had only seen one person who, in her eyes, ‘looked’ Aboriginal, i.e. very dark skinned like her sole Aboriginal student. How could she be so sure she had only seen one Aborigine when the appearance of urban Aboriginals varies? This is despite the teacher saying earlier that one of the other teachers at the school, who they described as being red-haired and pale had identified herself as being Aboriginal. The teacher indicated that this – the teacher’s non- confirming appearance - had been confusing to them at first.
Yet the recent mapping of human genome produced the startling evidence there are only three genes that are mostly responsible for skin colour34. Three genes cannot define who you are and how you identify; therefore your colour alone could not possibly define your Aboriginality. And yet how much you look ‘Aboriginal’ can have a huge effect on your life and the way in which people respond to you, both Aboriginal and not. The issue of skin colour was also something I chose to explore in the play I was writing.
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My reflection:
While the actor’s skin colour is important to the conceit of Can White Girls Dreamtime?, it also was a source of anxiety for the commissioning actors. In an email to me regarding a submission they were developing Scope asked: do you think it is important to mention our skin colour?35
My reflection:
In Can White Girls Dreamtime? Inala assumes that Susan, written for Annalouise Paul, is Aboriginal, based on a number of factors but backed up by her perception of Susan having darker skin. I wanted to play with these ‘tricks of the eye’ – Paul has an olive complexion, has black hair and could, and has, ‘read’ as Aboriginal.
Defining Aboriginality is problematic, both within and outside the Aboriginal community. Indeed, Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton argues there is a problem in ‘indeterminacy of categories such as ‘Aboriginal’, ‘race’ and ‘gender’36. Carol Lasuer’s poststructuralist viewpoint is that ‘Aboriginality is everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.’37
If defining who ‘is’ an Aboriginal is difficult, then defining Aboriginal ‘themes’ or ‘content’ is more so. Are Aboriginal stories simply those that contain Aboriginal people/characters? (Sending one back to the definition of ‘who is Aboriginal’?) Are Aboriginal stories only those which are ‘traditional’ or Dreamtime stories? Are Aboriginal stories those that are controlled by Aboriginal creators, irrespective of the content? Or are there other elements that must be incorporated when one is trying to define Aboriginal themes? Does it depend on who the audience is? In an essay that analysed the work of Aboriginal film maker Tracey Moffat, Lisa French asks:
‘Yet the question of what we perceive in watching these ‘Indigenous’ film and video oeuvres is as puzzling as Aboriginal identity itself. Does the content
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become ‘Aboriginal’ by handing the camera over to the Aboriginal person? Questions such as this have been the subject of much argument in film studies, as the vexed relationships between subject, object, the unfathomable ‘Other’, the Machine and the Gaze have been teased out.’38
Aboriginal ‘culture’ is another amorphous term, one that can be meaningless by trying to be all-encompassing. It is argued that there is no one ‘Aboriginal culture’. The following description of Aboriginal society was taken from a website on the Arrente people of Alice Springs area:
‘At contact there was no single, homogeneous Aboriginal society. Groups differed in aspects of their cultural and social organisation, and in the Northern Territory alone, over 100 different languages were spoken … Likewise, music and dance, kinship systems, art forms and ceremonies differed dramatically between regions. … Even today regional variations remain; there is no one Aboriginal society and people in different regions tend to emphasise their own distinctness and identity.’39
The Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Language2s40 and others [ABS41] agree that there were more than 500 dialects before white contact and a wide array of cultural practices, so trying to neatly package multiple cultures into one package called ‘Aboriginal culture’ is unnecessarily reductive. In wider society and in the media, ‘Aboriginality’ can be reduced to a set of symbols. ‘Traditional’, northern Australian motifs equal Aboriginal culture. Painted up (dark) skins, ochre colours, red, black and yellow together, the Aboriginal flag (originally designed as a flag for land rights but now embraced as the Aboriginal flag) dot paintings or raark, boomerangs, the sounds of didgeridoos and clap sticks, all instantly synthesise into a recognisable aesthetic. However, for the urban Aboriginal these traditional elements can be almost as foreign or inappropriate or artificial or superficial as they are to the non Aboriginal person, with many elements of traditional culture, such as ceremonies and language, lost, stolen (particularly for those removed from their families and communities) or no longer meaningful. This does in no way suggest that there is no urban, or south eastern, Aboriginal culture, just that it isn’t synonymous with traditional culture.
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In theatre, is there a set of themes that are recognisably ‘Aboriginal’? The Teacher’s Notes for Page 8, David Page’s autobiographical play, seem to think so:
‘Provide your students with a copy of the Contemporary Aboriginal Theatre table. Ask them to create their own table for Page 8, using three columns to identify the features of the performance that correspond to the features of contemporary aboriginal [Sic] theatre.’42
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Contemporary Aboriginal Theatre Related Study Areas*
Dramatic Form
Non-Linear Narrative Eclectic and Fragmented A combination of the styles and traditions of western performance with aspects of Indigenous language and culture
Thematic Concerns
Grief Kinship/Family Relationships Identity The Stolen Generation Assimilation Racism Reconciliation Connection with the land Interactions with the law Effects of the past on the present
Dramatic Techniques and Conventions
Direct Audience Address Symbolism Visual Metaphor Storytelling Dance and Music Multi Media Indigenous Language Political Oratory Presentational Acting Stand up comedy Realism
* The Teacher’s Notes for Page 8
While some themes, such as visual metaphor and multi media, are commonplace in the non Aboriginal play, others – such as the ‘Stolen Generation’ and ‘connection with the land’ - are largely associated with the Aboriginal play. But do they define the ‘Aboriginal play’? Must the ‘Aboriginal play’ contain one or more of those themes?
My reflection:
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Three Aboriginal playwrights of my acquaintance have told me that they have submitted play ideas to a theatre company, ideas based on their own lives. The proposals were rejected, with the suggestion that the stories were not ‘Aboriginal enough’. In each case, their stories told of a personal journey as urban Aboriginal people, and were not concerned with political ideas or the ‘larger’ issues faced by Aboriginal people. I would argue that they are Aboriginal plays, as they tell stories of lives led by individuals who identify as Aboriginal and have lived lives defined by their Aboriginality.
To analyse the elements of an Aboriginal play, I examined some recent existing plays by Aboriginal writers, grouping them into loose categories. In the first group their most obvious trait is their autobiographical slant. These plays are generally narratives characterised by tales of hardship and survival but leavened by humor. Jimmy Chi’s Bran Nue Dae (1991)‘incorporated his own life experiences of relationships, drugs and the law, abused indigenous land rights, self discovery and religion’. John Harding’s Up the Road (1997), the story of a black bureaucrat in Canberra and the internal and external pressures he is subjected to, based on the writer’s time working for the public service; Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead (2002), based on his experiences as a commissioner into deaths in custody; and Maryanne Sam’s Casting Doubts (2002), loosely based on the trials and tribulations experienced running a casting agency for Indigenous performers, which Sam did for a number of years. Other plays of this style include Leah Purcell’s Box the Pony (1997), David Page’s Page 8 (2006), Deborah Cheetham’s White Baptist Abba Fan (1997), Ningali Lawford’s Ningali (1994) and Tammy Anderson’s I Don’t Wanna Play House (2001). Academic Maryrose Casey analyses this approach of, in particular, some of the female Aboriginal playwrights:
‘The monodrama has been used by a number of Indigenous women as a powerful form of talking back. In the 1990s, there were a number of high profile one woman shows such as Ningali (1994), 7 Stages of Grieving (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.’43
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A number of the plays are biographical – Aliwa! (2000) by Dallas Winmar, is based on the lives of Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis’s sisters, while Winmar’s Yibiyung (2008) retells her Grandmother’s story. Tony Briggs’ The Sapphires (2004) centres on the experiences of his mother and aunties.
There are some, but still only a few, purely fictional storylines in plays written by Aboriginal playwrights. Enuff (2002) by John Harding tells the story of a group of Aboriginal terrorists, who decide to use violent measures to protest against white domination; Jadah Milroy’s Crowfire (2002) interweaves three stories of Aboriginal and non Aboriginal characters, living lives of disquiet in an urban environment and is essentially a story of relationships. Wesley Enoch’s Black Medea (2000) reframes the Greek tragedy, adding layers of domestic violence and cultural desecration.
One ubiquitous motif in the Aboriginal plays is the image of the downtrodden. Indeed, Sonja Kurtzer, in her article Wandering Girl, argues that the audience for the Aboriginal writers’ product is attuned to the image of the downtrodden. She believes ‘that it is constrained by a need to present in a way that a white audience sees as valid, yet unthreatening’. Therefore, ‘When Aboriginal people contribute to the discourse on Aboriginality they do not do so from a ‘free’ space.’44
Political themes also dominate the genre. In her essay on black theatrical writing, Katherine Brisbane defines some of the common political themes inherent in Jack Davis’s plays as ‘job discrimination, land rights and the high incidence of black deaths in custody’45 as well as the removal of children and assimilation.
When it comes to the non Aboriginal writer writing on Aboriginal themes, the mythical, spiritual Aboriginal character seems to be an attractive exemplar, particularly in film. He/she is: mystical, earthy, wise, often uneducated, natural, has a profound relationship to the land, is spiritual, mysterious, esoteric, unfashionable, innocent, non- consumeristic, working class, family-oriented and fringe-dwelling. The young Aboriginal boy, Nullah, in Baz Lurhman’s film Australia (2008) perfectly illustrates this archetype, as do many of the roles played by David Gulpilil, as I explored in a scene in Can White Girls Dreamtime?
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Can White Girls Dreamtime?
INALA: … If you were to think of characters or films that personified those qualities, who would you think of?
SUSAN: I’ve been out of the country for a while, so my examples might be a bit old, but David Gulpilil –
INALA: In Walkabout?
SUSAN: Yes! And in The Tracker, definitely. God, he was good.
INALA: I’d forgotten that one. And Rabbit Proof Fence, of course.
SUSAN: Where he does that mysterious staring off into the distance, not saying much, but you know there’s this incredible thought process going on –
INALA: Hmm … You know Susan, you’re not the first to want characters like that –
She flips over the butcher’s paper to reveal words on a page:
Characteristics As found in:
WISE DAVID GULPILIL
SPIRITUAL WALKABOUT
MYSTICAL RABBIT PROOF FENCE
UNEDUCATED STORM BOY
There is a deathly silence from SUSAN while INALA is quietly revels in her triumph.
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My reflection:
In my role as artistic coordinator at Ilbijerri Theatre Cooperative I sometimes vetted calls or emails from (non Aboriginal) film makers who had written a script with an Aboriginal character and were seeking an actor to play the role. Inevitably, those characters, written by young and earnest scriptwriters, would display some ‘mystical’ dimension.
Interestingly, the spiritual dimension to the Aboriginal character appears to be at odds with our largely secular society. But it appears to be acceptable to an Australian audience, in the way that giving a ‘white’ character religious convictions wouldn’t be. The religious (and I recognise that spirituality and religion are not synonymous) white character would be a target for derision, usually. Perhaps the spiritual Aboriginal is an extension of the ‘noble savage’ construct, whereby traditional Aboriginal people are more ‘noble’, more ‘inherently ‘good’, while non Aboriginals are civilised and hence degenerate? I am not implying that Aboriginal people are not spiritual – on the contrary – but that for non Aboriginal people on the ‘outside’, their viewpoint of Aboriginality spirituality may be idealised, rather than grounded in reality.
Is it in fact these ‘romantic’ qualities that attract the non Aboriginal writer to develop an Aboriginal character? Does this romanticising of Aboriginal characters distract from the development of other kinds of stories, that might reflect the diversity and increasing urbanisation of Aboriginal people, causing the ‘authentic’ stories of an urbanised group to be viewed as ‘inauthentic’ by the dominant white society?
Paul and Scope, the actor/producers who commissioned me to write a play for them, shared the opinion that Aboriginal plays were ‘real’ and were attracted to this dimension. If drama is about conflict - and it is true that Aboriginal people have more drama/conflict in their lives than most, especially the ‘usual’ white, middle class theatre makers – then the Aboriginal story will be intrinsically more dramatic. The ‘Aboriginal story’ is developed within the context of a harsh reality: Social indicators from 2007 show that Aboriginal people have a life expectancy 15-20 years below that of other Australians; the employment rate is 58.5% compared to 78.1% for non
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Indigenous46; Aboriginal people are 17.3 times more likely to be arrested, 11 times more likely to be imprisoned. In 2003, the rate for Indigenous deaths in custody was 2.1 per 1,000 while it is 1.6 per 1,000 for non Aboriginal Australians47. Only 33% of Indigenous Australians finish school, compared to the national average of 77% and only 30% of Aboriginal families own their own home compared to 70% of other Australians48. These social determinants only hint at the tragedy and layers of intergenerational trauma that play out in Aboriginal lives on a daily basis … But maybe the ‘real’ that Paul and Scope were talking about is a different kind of ‘real’ – the candour, the groundedness, earthiness, the humour that so often manifests in the Aboriginal play?
In summary – can ‘Aboriginal themes’ be defined? Yes – and no. There are some common topics and styles of delivery in Aboriginal plays - triumph over adversity, the highly personal story that offers the audience a ‘peephole’ into the lives of the ‘other’, they are often naturalistic in style. These traits are not exclusive to Aboriginal plays and they alone do not define an Aboriginal play. If the Aboriginal play eludes categorisation in terms of content, then perhaps it could be thought of in terms of who is telling the story – who ‘owns’ the discourse? As Aboriginal people are culturally diverse, therefore an Aboriginal themed play could be more simply defined as one which is created by an Aboriginal person and expresses their experience of their culture … life through their lens … which might be, is certain to be, complex and multi-faceted.
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5. Aboriginal themes - de rigueur or cultural property?
Increasingly, non Aboriginal writers are accessing Aboriginal themes and writing Aboriginal characters into their literary output. Non Aboriginal arts practitioners in the art forms of dance, fine art and music are referencing, mimicking and ‘being influenced by’ Aboriginal culture. Is this cultural appropriation, as some critics might see it? Or is it a desirable movement, a natural extension of the curiosity non Aboriginal people might have about another, rich culture than has for so long been invisible or ignored?
For those non Aboriginal writers and arts practitioners, why do they feel the need to incorporate Aboriginal themes at all? The argument that only Aboriginal writers have a ‘right’ to write Aboriginal characters in literature has already been superseded. Award- winning writers such as Alex Miller, with Journey to the Stone Country, and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River have received critical acclaim for their sensitive portrayals of Aboriginal themes and characters. Reviews of Journey to the Stone Country highlight the complexities of writing about Aboriginal characters by a non Aboriginal writer:
‘As a whitefella writing about black and white history in this country, Alex Miller often goes where angels dare not tread.’49
‘Miller also accepts the challenge to write of Aboriginal people. It is thirty years since Thomas Keneally did so in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Since then Keneally has reflected that he must have been ‘a fucking madman’ to undertake such a venture.’50
As more non Aboriginal writers interact with Aboriginal people, as does Alex Miller, who modeled his characters of Annabelle Beck and Bo Rennie on real-life friends of his, one of them Aboriginal, do they have a right to write from their point of view? And has it come to the point in our country’s creative journey that Aboriginal themes are so ‘fashionable’ that writing about them is almost de rigueur, as novelist Carmel Bird suggests when commenting on the launch of a colleague’s book:
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‘It was a contemporary novel about a crime. There were no Aboriginal characters in the story, and no Aboriginal issues or questions either. Yet a woman in the crowd made the comment that the author had not, in this novel, dealt with the current Aboriginal issues. It was a very strange comment. It was a comment which, just a few years ago, would have been virtually impossible to frame. The idea that a reader would now have an expectation that a contemporary Australian novel absolutely must display some attitude to matters of Aboriginality is a very twenty-first century idea.’51
Later, Bird, who has herself written about the Stolen Generations, answers her own rhetorical question:
‘In a sense the woman who commented on the absence of Aboriginal issues in a work of current fiction was right on track, and it has become – I say this as a writer of fiction – difficult not to include the issue of race in the writing of fiction, because the questions are so urgent and so current, so perpetually present in one’s heart.’52
So who has claim over ‘Aboriginal themes’? In literary forms – fiction, plays and screenplays - Aboriginal writers now have the opportunity to present their own stories, as there are publishers willing to publish them, theatres - including mainstream - willing to programme and audiences eager to read and see the creative output. But this is a relatively recent phenomena, with a relatively small output. Indeed, before Gilbert’s The Cherry Pickers (1968) Aboriginal characters in plays were the construct of the non Aboriginal author, or as Sonja Kurtzer states ‘it has been the oppressor who has sought to define Aboriginality’.53
This explains the discontent with the idea of non Aboriginal writers telling ‘our stories for us’ given that ‘Indigenous people are able to tell their own views of history’54. Part of the dissatisfaction stems from the inaccuracy of past portrayals, as writer Alexis Wright states:
‘I do not like the way … our histories have been smudged, distorted and hidden, or written for us. I want our people to have books, their own books, in
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their own communities, and written by our own people. I want the truth to be told, our truths, so, first and foremost, I hold my pen for the suffering in our communities.’ 55
There is also the question of control over how one is represented, in literary forms and on the stage and the screen. ‘Control over representation’ has a political imperative, according to Langton. She says that ‘to demand complete control of all representation … is to demand censorship, to deny the communication which none of us can prevent’56. She quotes E. Ann Kaplan, who advocates, as an alternative, for a ‘decentering of Western culture’ via a ‘dialogue with the other culture … within frameworks we bring with us.’57
A major part of the criticism is driven by a desire, by the audience for the creative product, for an ‘authentic’ discourse. This audience is often non Aboriginal, and this is somewhat ironic, as it is the first desire of the Aboriginal writer to create images and stories for their own community, and entertaining the non Aboriginal audience is secondary.
Yet they are an audience, and cannot be ignored, and they have expectations of the genre. Kurtzer postulates that ‘Aboriginal literature meets the desires of the hegemonic culture to hear ‘authentic tales of the ‘other’58. Kurtzer goes on to state that at a 1996 conference for Indigenous writers and playwrights, delegates noted that:
‘When they speak, they do more than just tell about their lives as individuals. Their stories are seen to represent a body of knowledge … As autobiographical texts, the stories are seen to represent the truth. Therefore issues of cultural maintenance and integrity are extremely important to the indigenous community.’ 59
As Aboriginal cultural output has developed an audience, readership, viewers and collectors, it has become a ‘commodity’ with a monetary value (think of the prices generated for Aboriginal visual artists such as Rover Thomas, Emily Kame Kngwarreye and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri). Aboriginal artist Richard Bell declares
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‘Aboriginal art is a white thing’, and criticizes the too-dominant role that non Aborigines play in the management or ‘business’ of his art form:
‘Aboriginal Art has become a product of the times. A commodity. The result of a concerted and sustained marketing strategy, albeit, one that has been loose and uncoordinated. There is no Aboriginal Art Industry. There is, however, an industry that caters for Aboriginal Art. The key players in that industry are not Aboriginal. They are mostly White people whose areas of expertise are in the fields of anthropology and 'Western Art' … those issues conspire to condemn it to non-Aboriginal control.’60
Perhaps it is because Aboriginal creative outputs are different and counter-intuitively ‘exotic’ that Aboriginal culture occupies the role of ‘unique selling proposition’, in the linga franca of the marketing world. This marketing of the signs and symbols of Aboriginal Australia can be seen everywhere, from the uniforms of the Qantas stewards to the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games and 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne that incorporated Aboriginal themes. Greer thinks these symbols are our only unique identifier:
‘Australia’s only way of branding itself in the world market has been to co-opt the insignia of Aboriginality, with didgeridoos, boomerangs, spot [sic] paintings and skeleton animal shapes …’61
The commodification of Aboriginal culture breeds opportunities for exploitation, exemplified by a number of literary hoaxes where the authors falsely identified themselves as Aboriginal. Serbian immigrant Sreten Bozic published The Track to Bralgu (1977) under the authorship of ‘B Wongar’, a fabrication. Wanda Koolmatrie, ostensibly an Aboriginal woman, won an award for life writing for My Own Sweet Time (1994) before being exposed as Leon Carmen, a white male62. The claiming of a false identity is rightly condemned, as Rosemary van den Berg, an Elder of the Nyoongar people, declares:
‘… there has become, in recent years, the practice of non-Aboriginals claiming, or assuming, an Aboriginal identity in order to gain money, awards
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and fame as indigenous writers and artists. These cheats are stealing Aboriginal identities from the indigenous people.’ 63
Van den Berg believes Aboriginal people are now ‘fightin’ back’ after years of exploitation. Indigenous artists from other colonised countries are also wary of exploitation. Brent Michael Davids, a native Canadian composer, outlines his disquiet:
‘So, can Non-Natives compose indigenous music? For three strong reasons, the answer is No. First …indigenous people see and experience their lives in their own ways and voice those ways musically. As we immerse ourselves in our own indigenous communities, we shape our lives from those communities in the most intimate and remarkable way… Second, as Native Americans we are responsible not only for ourselves but for our communities as well. As a Mohican, the music I compose must bear up under the weight of tribal scrutiny. Creating music that empowers our people -- to the betterment of our Indian nations -- obligates us as indigenous composers! The resolute commitment to tribal communities does not come from Non-Native composers for whom tribal approval is not a concern.
Finally, our younger generations are struggling to find healthy identities in the face of many contemporary sicknesses. It is imperative that we try to provide good indigenous role models.’ 64
In music, though, it can be argued that the barriers between white and black performers are increasingly blurred, as are their styles of musical expression. For example, white boys rap, Aboriginal girls rap, a musical style that began with African and Latino Americans. For some white Australian musicians, the years of collaboration with Aboriginal musicians have lead to trust, or more accurately, the years of trust have lead to collaboration. The 2006 Melbourne International Arts Festival featured a concert, Murundak - "Alive" featuring Aboriginal musicians onstage with their white colleagues, one of whom, Shane Howard, declared:
‘We've seen a new Australia and we're not going back. It's not black and white any more. People like myself and Neil (Murray) and Paul (Kelly) and Peter
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Garrett, so many whitefellas now have been out there, interacting with Aboriginal people, and we're beyond colour. We're brothers and sisters.’65
So one measure of the collaborative process working is if there is a sense of equality between black and white participants.
Many would agree that cultural appropriation is inappropriate; but what of that subtle variation ‘referencing’, where one’s work is based on another source? Imants Tillers is an Australian visual artist who has in a long practice of referencing other artworks by other artists such as Van Gogh but also Aboriginal artists Michael Jagamara Nelson and Emily Kane Kngwarreye. Tillers declared:
‘It is impossible today for an Australian artist not to take Aboriginal art into account, into serious consideration.’66
In an essay entitled ‘Impossible to ignore: Imants Tillers’ response to Aboriginal art’ anthropologist Howard Morphy, who writes extensively about Aboriginal art, talks of Tillers controversial ‘engagement’ with Aboriginal art:
‘In incorporating Michael Jagamara Nelson’s Five dreamings 1982 as one of the main images within his The nine shots (1985), Tillers opened himself up to accusations of appropriating Aboriginal imagery without permission and impinging on the moral rights of the artist. The offence was compounded by the very ‘placedness’ of Aboriginal art, its apparent inseparability from locality. Aboriginal art was in place and Tillers’ art apparently challenged identities based on locality, removed images from their cultural contexts, and juxtaposed them with images from other places and times.’67
Tillers provocation was returned by Aboriginal artist Gordon Bennett, whose work The nine ricochets 1990, borrowed imagery from Tillers’ work. In the years following The Nine Shots Tillers continued to incorporate Aboriginal symbols and themes but the difference was that ‘Permission was granted and collaboration acknowledged.’68 Indeed he developed ‘a personal relationship with Michael Jagamara Nelson, whose work he had originally incorporated into his own without permission.’69
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Gordon Bennett also references other artists - Hans Heysen, Margaret Preston, Vincent van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. But who would criticize Bennett for ‘fightin’ back’ when his referencing is seen as an act of political defiance – not cultural appropriation? In a National Gallery of Victoria publication, Bennett’s predilection for referencing is worn like a badge of honour:
‘Bennett’s referencing, appropriation and recontextualisation of familiar images and art styles challenges conventional ways of viewing and thinking and opens up new possibilities for understanding the subjects Bennett explores.’70
Morphy asks, provocatively, that if Tillers work takes a post-colonial approach to Aboriginal art, meaning it belongs to a time where Aboriginal art is acknowledged and given due credit, ‘does this mean almost by definition that it [Tiller’s art] has become more Aboriginal?’.71 And yet Morphy acknowledges the challenges of incorporating another’s cultural expression in one’s own, concluding that:
‘While ‘borrowing from’, ‘being influenced by’, ‘finding inspiration in’, ‘learning from’, and ‘building upon’ other people’s artworks is always going to be an integral part of art practice, it is never going to be without its dangers.’72
Does this contention have implications in terms of theatre performance? To follow Morphy’s argument through - if a non Aboriginal actor ‘inhabits’ an Aboriginal character do they become more Aboriginal? To me, part of ‘Aboriginality’ is the ‘being’, ‘the lived experience’, not the artificial approximation within a limited timespan of that lived experience on stage.
Another subtle variance on referencing is ‘mimicking’, or closely imitating another, and in this example, casting a wider net than that of theatre, I will use an example from dance. Stephen Page, the esteemed artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre, described the beginnings of the collaborative process whereby Australian Ballet dancers participated in a Bangarra-devised show, Rites:
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‘I remember the first time the (Australian) Ballet and Bangarra met. I got all the ballet dancers to take their ballet shoes off and let their hair out and everyone sat in a circle and I got a ballet dancer and a Bangarra dancer to come to the centre of the circle and made the ballet dancer just mimic the Bangarra dancer. So it was all very quiet, it was sort of like a little contemporary ritual. Once they observed each other in a style it’s actually a really good way for them to learn’.73
A review of Rites in the Herald Sun reiterated the point that the non Aboriginal dancers were expected to take on the Indigenous dancing style of Bangarra:
‘It’s fascinating to watch Australian Ballet principal artist Steven Heathcote adopting indigenous moves.’74
This is the closest example of Greer’s assertion that ‘we can dance too’. Once again, though, it is interesting to note who is in control of the cross-cultural process. If Aboriginal people are in the driver’s seat, have a say in what transpires, then the collaboration is likely to be favourable. If the Bangarra dancers were dancing with the Australian Ballet dancers in an Aboriginal themed production where a non Aboriginal person was directing/ choreographing, the outcome may have not been so easily accepted.
My reflection:
Late in Custody, when Inala has just discovered that Susan isn’t Aboriginal, as she had always assumed, Inala decides that it is inappropriate for Susan to play an Aboriginal role. Susan responds:
Play excerpt:
SUSAN: I won’t be blacking up, and I won’t be mimicking a black woman, if that’s what you’re worried about. [Beat] What?
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INALA: Nothing.
SUSAN: I won’t be pretending to be Aboriginal! I won’t be trying to pass myself off. [To herself] Christ, you are so P.C!!
My reflection:
The paranoia, for Inala, is partly based on her fear of the repercussions from the Aboriginal community for allowing this ‘mimicking’ to go ahead.
It is clear that there is no across the board, standard, one size fits all protocol for the utilisation of Aboriginal themes in artistic endeavours. While funding bodies such as the Australia Council and state arts bodies have firm protocols in place when dealing with Aboriginal content (see Appendix), and they direct the creative to consult, but they don’t spell out how to consult. You, as a writer might want to use a Dreamtime story in your play (Uniapon would be pleased) – but who do you talk to, in order to gain permission to use this story? You might not know who the custodian of that story is, or who has the ‘authority’ to grant you permission. You might speak to one person in the community, but another Elder thinks they have custodianship and these issues may be exacerbated by conflict between different mobs in an area. Gaining permission, therefore, can present a set of challenges to the non Aboriginal (and Aboriginal) person. Consultation can take considerable time. A request for permission to use a particular story might not be seen as a priority in a community that might be struggling with other issues. They might not even want to grant permission – if they don’t know you, they may not trust you. You might represent the oppressor! A ‘story’ to an Aboriginal person might mean something other than a mere tale, it might be sacred. They have no way of controlling what you do with it, despite protocols, which are not legal imperatives, merely guides.
Consultation can go belly-up if the wrong people are spoken to, if the consultation is not thorough enough for all parties to be satisfied. The film Australian Rules (2002), divided the Aboriginal community of Point Pearce, as it depicted real events, in
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particular a fatal shooting, that they claimed the white author had no right to write about. Aboriginal broadcaster Kelrick Martin highlighted the issues:
‘Consultation occurred between the Point Pearce community and the filmmakers of Australian Rules - there is no doubt. Whether or not that consultation was adequate is definitely in question. Tait Brady [producer] … claims that permission was gained, from relatives of the deceased boys and the community elders. David Wilson says this is true, but there are TWO families involved in the shooting. One was vehemently against the inclusion of their deceased. Representatives of the other were approving – but they incurred the ire of the rest of the family who again were not happy. And whoever granted permission on the community’s behalf was not the true representative elder of Point Pearce. He says one “yes” does not qualify as permission. And you must clarify the correct person to speak on behalf of others.’75
It takes time and effort to consult or collaborate and the result might not be satisfactory. Many creatives who might be ‘Indig-curious’ are often confused about where to start, with the result it falls in the ‘too hard basket’.
For some, this need for the ownership of Aboriginal themes to rest in Aboriginal hands can be explained simply as the writer ‘writing what they know’. Native Canadian writer Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm expands upon this theme:
‘I really think that writers need to write about what they know. When you try to write from some other perspective, you do so at your own peril. Could I write from a white Canadian perspective? Probably, yeah. Why? Because I have both ancestries. I think it’s easier for [Aboriginal writers] to write [from a non-Aboriginal perspective] because we’ve been forced into those school systems, we’ve been forced into mainstream society. We’re fluent in the language. Many of us are forced to be bicultural. So it’s not really being untrue because it’s already part of who we are and part of our knowledge base … But I wouldn’t presume to write a character who was Pakistani, for example. I’ve been to Aotearoa many times; I have friends there, I have stayed there for months at a time. But I would feel huge trepidation to even include a
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Maori character, and if I did I would probably be getting my friends to read it and [see whether] it sounds true, because that’s what it’s about: truth. It’s not just about being true to yourself as a writer. Readers consciously or subconsciously pick up on it when somebody is not truthful.’ 76
I find it fascinating that Akiwenzie-Damm says she would not write a character who is Pakistani - presumably because that culture is far-removed from her own - but she might, with caveats, allow herself to write a Maori character. A Maori person would have similar experiences to her as a Native Canadian, both being members of colonised Indigenous races. Perhaps it is their shared experienced as the oppressed that links them?
For the writer or actor with white Anglo heritage, their access to ‘exotic’ – foreign or different - material, if they were to follow the adage to ‘write what you know’, can be severely curtailed. Fellow QUT MA playwright Natalie Faulkner recalls being a student in performance at QUT in the 1990s. Appropriation was a sensitive issue:
‘The appropriation accusation was often leveled at shows that explored racism, abuse of any kind (drugs, sex, whatever) - that had 'victims’ – it was a double accusation of making mileage/success/sensationalism from somebody else's pain - and of presuming a 'voice' of somebody who was disempowered already - it was seen as a kind of patriarchal arrogance. In order to justify an opinion, in the end, you had to be able to say you were entitled to it because you had lived it.’77
The students were directed to draw solely upon their own experiences – what little there was:
‘As 20 something white middle class people we had little ‘life experience’ to draw upon, therefore our writing and performance pieces were essentially boring.’ 78
Paul and Scope expressed a similar view on the paucity of the ‘white middle class experience’ as a basis for a play. These arguments are not new. In an article about the
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1985 production in New York of Thomas Keneally’s Bullie’s House (1981), a play with Aboriginal characters played by Aboriginal actors Justine Saunders and Ernie Dingo, the Director, Kenneth Frankel noted:
'We felt we had to do a play, like this, that said something different … I think theater here is becoming staid, five people sitting around waiting for the phone to ring or for a knock on the door. This play goes back to more theatricality, and we felt it was worth bringing actors all the way from Australia to do it.’79
Cultural appropriation and control of images and themes – these are challenging issues that this essay can only skim. There is no doubt that there is a fascination and curiosity from non Aboriginal people who want to draw upon the rich cultural traditions of Aboriginal Australia, and express them through storytelling, dance, art, music or performance. But there can be the strong sense of exploitation when non Aboriginal people ‘use’ Aboriginal cultural heritage as if it was their right to do so. I sure that is not what Uniapon intended with his statement. So, as a process, there is a need for Aboriginal people to have control of the output, for cultural and business reasons, as well as reasons of authenticity, the latter of great importance to both the Aboriginal audience and the non Aboriginal audience.
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6. Responsibility, anxiety and guilt; the burdens of the message maker
An Aboriginal writer or actor has a responsibility to their community for the way they portray their characters in a way that a white writer or actor does not. The sense of responsibility can be above and beyond what the non Aboriginal writer must shoulder in relation to their writing. The nearest parallel might be with the writer who draws upon the experiences of family and friends, a situation which can lead to fallout if the character is seen as unfavourable or unsympathetic. But the two scenarios are not equal; the Aboriginal writer’s characters are seen as representative of the community: with so few of them on stage and on the screen, an audience doesn’t have alternative portrayals to draw upon and they could be considered archetypes. This weighs heavily on the artist. Aboriginal director Rachel Perkins feared the community’s response to her film Radiance (1998):
‘As a filmmaker Rachel Perkins cannot speak for an entire community, no filmmaker can, yet their reactions to her films remain one of the most important considerations she would no doubt have to grapple with. In speaking with her one of the most important things she mentioned was the reaction of Aboriginal audiences to her films, believing that they would be "the biggest critics".’80
My reflection:
When I write an Aboriginal themed play or book, I feel a sense of accountability to ‘my community’. The members of the community will ‘growl’ (scold) you or even reject you should you portray Aboriginal life in a way that they think is untruthful, misleading or not acceptable. I also feel an accountability to my own artistic needs – sometimes this is in conflict with community expectations.
One might say that the Aboriginal community is very sensitive about how they are portrayed and this, as in most aspects of Aboriginal life, has its basis in the historical way we have been portrayed by whitefellas. This sensitivity is also a reflection of the importance of storytelling in Aboriginal cultural life, playing a central role in educating children81, for example, and as an oral culture. Plays, therefore, are more than just a
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form of entertainment, where as in the Western canon they are a heightened take on life and plots must have ‘high stakes’, drama equaling conflict. For an Aboriginal audience, a play is often seen as an authentic representation of their community and culture, and so it must reflect community values and concerns. Authenticity is more desirable than attaining the lofty dramatic ideal of ‘high stakes’.
My reflection:
There is political pressure that I, as the writer, feel I am under to tell certain aspects of the Aboriginal story and not ‘air the dirty linen’ of other, less savory, aspects. What white writer would have those responsibilities attached to their creative efforts? That if they ‘got it wrong’ – there could be backlash and possible shunning from the community to which they belong? Perhaps in the highly individualistic mainstream western world there is no ‘community’ to which the writer or actor is accountable. As for the actor, when are they responsible for their characterisations? Perhaps only when they are portraying a real person, or in the interests of historical accuracy? So, in Can White Girls Dreamtime? when Inala speaks of having to leave the country should her play be anathema to the Aboriginal community, she is voicing my own sense of impending dread when faced with potential backlash. When I speak of backlash from the ‘community’ I do so with the knowledge that there is no one ‘community’, that there is no consensus of opinion from an Aboriginal audience/community. One audience member will disapprove the way the writer has portrayed a character; another will applaud you for exactly the same reasons. But both believe that you, as the writer, must agree with, and take into account, their viewpoints. You have a responsibility to present a story that matches ‘their’ story.
Sally Riley, manager of the Indigenous branch of the Australian Film Commission, also speaks of the pressures on Aboriginal film makers. There can be ‘a tension between responsibility to your community and responsibility to your craft’82, she says. Several Aboriginal film makers, including Ivan Sen, are adamant that they don't want to be regarded as making ‘issues films’, and can resent the limitations of being pigeon- holed:
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‘[Sen] described his recent projects as ‘stories about me and my family’, and has plans for several features to be shot overseas that don't have Aboriginal subjects. Young Aboriginal film maker Catriona McKenzie is also wary of labels. She has made several award-winning shorts: one of them, The Third Note, stars Deborah Mailman. But the important thing about the character she plays is not her Aboriginality, says McKenzie: it's the fact that she's blind.’83
Richard Frankland, Aboriginal filmmaker, agrees that the creator can ‘become categorised as a message giver as opposed to an entertainer.’84 Yet Jack Davis held the view that ‘writing itself … is a political act, a splitting of the mind between ones own thought and the demands of black politics.’85 Marcia Langton, in her discourse on Aboriginal filmmakers, makes the point that activism is expected:
‘The contribution of Aboriginal women film-makers lies especially in their distinctive narratives of the familial tensions of their lives, grounded and gendered in their post-colonial Aboriginal identities, their ability to transform Aboriginal traditions, such as the mythological tropes and orality into cinematic forms, in their duty as cultural activists and in their exemplary artistic and aesthetic gifts.’ 86[My emphasis]
Being ‘political’ can be mistaken for being ‘politically correct’, where language and behaviors are chosen to minimise offence along gender, racial or cultural grounds87. Being politically correct can influence the creative product in a way that is not always in the best interests of the ‘story’. It may force the writer to give words or actions to a character in order to satisfy the anxieties of the audience, rather than in a way that mirrors the complexities and contradictions of people in ‘real’ life.
My reflection:
In a read-through of the MA plays (November 2006), I received some feedback from the other playwrights that the character of Inala was ‘irritating’. Did their concern stem from having a less than sympathetic Aboriginal character? Did they then experience some cognitive dissonance – unable to reconcile the character’s Aboriginality and her negativity? I wondered if they had a strong need for Aboriginal people to be portrayed
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in a positive light? In other words, if she was not Aboriginal, would anyone care whether she was irritating? Her stonewalling behavior, from my point of view, was a plot device, necessary for the ‘drama’.
Another pressure for the Aboriginal writer is that they must fulfill the need for Aboriginal people to see their lives portrayed on film, stage or in print, but has the added responsibility of being educative for the non Aboriginal audience:
‘In the protocols and guidelines of the Australia Council, this year the ATSIA board have confirmed that Indigenous writing and writers take on the responsibilities of being more than academics and artists, but take on the role of being educators. They are the informants of Indigenous history, art, law and culture.’ 88
This educative dimension to an Aboriginal film, play or book is desirable to the non Aboriginal audience or reader, as it offers as easy point of access into the culture, a point acknowledged by academic Maryrose Casey:
‘Theatre texts written by Indigenous Australians have made an important contribution to Australian theatre and to the process of sharing information and knowledge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.’89
But ‘educating’ the audience can be burdensome to the writer. If one is educational, one also needs to be accurate (as it will be up for scrutiny) and this alone is an onerous task and not always compatible with the desire to excite and entertain through drama. And can the non Aboriginal theatre practitioner be up to this task? How could a non Aboriginal actor embody an Aboriginal character in a way that is educational? The writer, non Aboriginal and Aboriginal alike, face challenges in writing Aboriginal themes, and those challenges are even more complex when the performer must interpret those words on the stage or screen?
My reflection:
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When I abandoned Can White Girls Dreamtime? (this is explained in detail in subsequent Reflections) and informed Scope and Paul of my decision, Scope was anxious to reiterate that they had never intended to play Aboriginal characters. I reassured her that I took full responsibility for the development of Inala who begins the play as an Aboriginal character, only to realise that this premise was unacceptable to one of the audiences for the play and would compromise its possible staging.
Although they did not have the burden/privilege of responsibility touched upon in earlier, the actor/producers still had a full set of anxieties of their own, of the kind described by Greer:
‘White Australians are in the main anxious to avoid upsetting black Australians by referring to them in ways they might find offensive, but at the same time they are so unfamiliar with black people that they have no way of knowing what gives offence and what doesn’t.’90
As a result of the anxiety that pervades the whole question of how Aboriginal people and stories are portrayed, there are areas of exploration which are often avoided by the non Aboriginal playwright – particularly if portrayal has a negative slant or highlights sensitive areas.
My reflection:
In July 2006 I undertook a Theatrelab workshop in Sydney with legendary American playwright Edward Albee. Front page in the broadsheet newspapers at the time were reports of sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities. Albee, in his final address to the playwrights, predicted a rash of plays 12 months later about these issues. I was bold enough to contradict him. The gist of my response was: ‘No, there won’t be. Because non Aboriginal writers don’t feel it is their place to be critical about aspects of Aboriginal life, and Aboriginal writers fear the backlash from their own community should they write about some of the highly confronting issues surrounding or involving parts of the Aboriginal community.’ Three years later (a short time span in which to research, develop and stage a play, granted) I have yet to hear of the type of play Albee
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predicted in development. I would also be surprised if a mainstream theatre company would be brave enough to produce such a play.
Louis Nowra’s non-fiction book, Bad Dreaming, (2007) focused on Aboriginal male violence. While Nowra had previously had strong connections with members of the Aboriginal community (See Rachel Perkin’s earlier praise) this publication triggered a furious response, especially (but not exclusively91) among Aboriginal males, who yet again felt stereotyped and demonised, as journalist Margaret Wenham cited in her review of the book:
‘One young Aboriginal man, asked what he thought of Bad Dreaming, remarked sadly he expected as a result of it a fresh bout of disapproving stares from people in the street assuming that because he was a black man, he bashed and raped women.’92
The other end of the spectrum is the tippy-toeing around Aboriginal ‘issues’, or the viewing of Aboriginal issues through the lens of ‘white guilt’. Guilt can shadow the non Aboriginal creative trying to incorporate Aboriginal themes, as Rolf de Heer, the director and co-writer of the film Ten Canoes (2006), acknowledges:
‘In the end, it's like there is a lot of guilt involved (in those other films). So I guess where this one fits is that it's the first truly guilt-free one," he says, with a laugh. "In its story and subject matter there's nothing that allows us to connect it with white guilt.’93
As an Aboriginal writer I am also anxious about how I portray my Aboriginal characters – neither wanting to offend the community nor wanting to feel artistically thwarted. Yet writers often ‘write out’ their concerns in life, and a writer’s curiosity is a powerful motivator in pursuing a line of inquiry. In my working life, my concerns are about how to understand the challenges and how to improve opportunities for Aboriginal people, I see the strength and resilience of Aboriginal people around me, I also sometimes want to write about the situations we find ourselves in, with, I hope, a sense of empathy and compassion. I want to write what is real, and sometimes that’s not always nice (or politically correct).
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Are non Aboriginal people allowed to comment on or be curious about exploring Aboriginal issues? I would say yes … the codicil being that it is – in our present climate - unacceptable to criticise. In a context where Aboriginal people and culture has been systematically ignored, condescended to and blatantly criticized since white contact, it is no wonder Aboriginal people are ultra sensitive to criticism, even when it comes from within its own ranks. Therefore it follows that some non Aboriginal people will feel very tentative about broaching Aboriginal topics, and will manifest symptoms of anxiety and doubt around their ability and authority to ‘speak’ to Aboriginal subjects, no matter how ‘Indig-curious’ they might be.
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7. Identity, and can Aboriginality be learnt?
We all can, and should, learn more about Aboriginal history, but can ‘Aboriginality’ itself be learnt? Greer argues that ‘There is no “gene” for Aboriginality.’ 94, so if there is no biological difference in cultures, then it follows that it is ‘nurture’ rather than ‘nature’ that defines a culture. Greer further argues that ‘acquiring Aboriginality is to a large extent the getting of knowledge.’ 95 From whence this knowledge is gleaned, or over what time frame it is acquired, is not made explicit. Peter Craven, in the forward to her essay, Whitefella Jumpup (2003), attempts to summarise Greer’s thinking:
‘Aboriginality, for her, is not a matter of lines of descent, of genes and blood, it is a getting of wisdom and of understanding.’96
Can this be possible? Anecdotally, there are examples of people who have integrated into the Aboriginal community, even to the extent of being initiated. And there are people who have a strong affinity and connection with a community, or who have had a belief that they have Aboriginal heritage but have subsequently discovered they do not, and who are still accepted by some members of the Aboriginal community. For example, although his identity as an Aboriginal person has been questioned, Aboriginal activist Gary Foley argues that writer Mudrooroo (Colin Johnson) has ‘earned his stripes’. In this regard Foley appears to be in agreement with Greer:
‘What the critics of Mudrooroo seem not to appreciate is that to acquire an Aboriginal identity (regardless of how) in 1965 was not exactly something that people were queuing up to do … To have been bestowed with an Aboriginal identity and then embrace and live that identity among Aboriginal people when times were tough is, for me, sufficient for Mudrooroo to be regarded as a member of the Aboriginal community.’ 97
Foley is less sympathetic to the Archie Weller, another writer whose claims of Aboriginality have been questioned. Yet Weller appears to be in agreement with Foley, arguing that your acceptance as an Aboriginal person by the community should be factored into the criteria:
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‘Proving descent should be a ‘detail’ in deciding who is Aboriginal... If you grow up in a West Australian country town and you think you are Aboriginal and people think you are Aboriginal. You bloody well are.’98
But Foley questions whether ‘rich kid’ Weller had been thought of as Aboriginal in his local town. According to Foley, the important distinction to be made is that Mudrooroo lived as an Aboriginal person - his identity was tied to that of being an Aboriginal person. He copped the ‘bad’ with the ‘good’. Once again, it is not the role of this essay to confirm or deny any person’s Aboriginality (except for my own) but simply to demonstrate some of the nuances involved within establishing identity. Within the context of my play Custody and its earlier iteration Can White Girls Dreamtime?, the different attitudes to Mudrooroo/Weller are useful to be aware of, only if they serve to remind us that the issue of one’s identity in the Aboriginal community is a delicate one. Mudrooroo poignantly reminds us of its precariousness:
‘I had discovered that identity is a fragile thing and can be taken away, just as it can be given.’99
Greer states how we should think of Aboriginality, if not the result of our biology:
‘…if we think of Aboriginality as a nationality, it suddenly becomes easier. A man of Algerian descent who is born in France is French; birth and not race is the criterion of nationality.’ 100
But I think, isn’t it up to the ‘man of Algerian descent who is born in France’ to state how he identifies – not Greer? Isn’t this another example of the dominant ‘other’ defining one’s identity? He may think of himself as Algerian, he may think of himself as French or French/Algerian. It might also depend on how others in the community see him – the expectations of others can play a huge part in shaping one’s identity.
My reflection:
I was once asked, after speaking about my play Stolen at a public event, why I referred to myself as ‘Aboriginal’ and not ‘Australian’. My reaction was: why would someone
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think they were mutually exclusive? Another time, during a Radio National interview, also on Stolen, I was asked: ‘Do you feel more Aboriginal at the end of this [the playwriting] process?’. I was gobsmacked. I felt his subtext was that I needed to learn how to be Aboriginal, that somehow I was only ‘part’ Aboriginal before writing Stolen.
How does one’s ‘identity’ affect the playing of an Aboriginal character in a play? A lifelong embeddedness in the Aboriginal community, as is Mudrooroo’s experience, may give one the grounding in ‘being Aboriginal’, even if the biological heritage is absent, but this is at the other end of the spectrum to the lot of an actor inhabiting a role for a relatively short time. The actor can hardly be expected to absorb and understand and therefore reflect accurately the nuances that make up the package we label ‘Aboriginality’. In the version of the play Can White Girls Dreamtime? the Inala character was introduced to the audience as someone who thought she had Aboriginal heritage. Could the actor in this role ‘pull off’ the role of an Aboriginal character (albeit a light-skinned Aboriginal) convincingly? Theoretically, it is possible. Award winning actor Greg Stone believes it is a measure of the actor’s craft, not cultural background that would make it believable101. But whether it is possible, does not impact whether it is acceptable.
My reflection:
In late 2006 I passed on the draft of Can White Girls Dreamtime? to Rachael Maza, who was engaged as a cultural consultant on this project. Rachael told me that she believed the Aboriginal community would not accept the play as it was written, that is, with a non Aboriginal actor playing the role of a ‘light-skinned’ Aboriginal playwright that ended with the character’s heritage still ambiguous. Maza’s feedback was as I had suspected; that my play would antagonise members of the Aboriginal community, and that antagonism would be ultimately detrimental to the play and cloud the types of discussions I had hoped the play would evoke. I had to consider how I could overcome this obstacle …
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8. The non Aboriginal actor – no longer ‘blacking up’
In the – not so distant – past, white actors ‘blacked up’ to play Aboriginal roles in film, TV and theatre. Casting was inappropriate and downright offensive, as in the film Journey Out of Darkness (1967) which had a plot:
‘… reminiscent of Dust in the Sun, but is also saddled with a title that betrays the film’s view of being Aboriginal. If that wasn’t bad enough, white actor Ed Devereaux (what’s that Skippy?) blacked up for the role of an Aboriginal tracker and Sri Lankan-born singer Kamahl (why are film critics so unkind?) played the role of the Aboriginal killer.’102
When Aboriginal people have control over their cultural expression, they often make different kinds of casting decisions. Kevin Gilbert’s The Cherry Pickers was first performed with an all Aboriginal cast in 1971 but then not again for 20 plus years, as ‘Gilbert refused to license the piece for production until it could be performed by an all Aboriginal troupe, which did not occur until a year after his death in 1993.’103 But Aboriginal people are not always in positions to make those kinds of choices. The production of the TV series Boney (1972) cast a white actor from New Zealand, James Laurenson, in the role of the ‘part’ Aboriginal detective. The search for a suitable actor for the role proved trying for the producers, who complained of having looked Australia-wide for 18 months104:
‘The problem was to find someone with experience and expertise who could sustain a sole lead role in a series, and be thoroughly believable as the complex half-caste character - and he had to look the part. The physiognomic requirement immediately excluded many actors who would otherwise have been competent in the role.’105
The producers were fixated on look of the actor in making their selection:
‘James Laurenson said that McCallum [The producer] was being "frightfully polite and gentlemanly" when they were settling the final details. "He was saying, 'We do think you're absolutely right for the part with your wide
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cheekbones and your, ahh, nose is the, umm, right shape, ahh, and your, er, lips...' and he began to dry up, obviously feeling very embarrassed.’106
The casting of James Laurenson, rather than an Aboriginal actor angered Aboriginal activists including Bob Maza (the father of Rachael Maza, my cultural consultant for the play):
‘[Bob Maza] was very outspoken in his belief that Aboriginal actors were not being given a chance. He cited the ATN-7 serial The Battlers, in which Vincent Gil was heavily made-up to play an Aboriginal boxer, and the film Journey Out Of Darkness, which featured Ed Deveraux in 'blackface' make-up, as precedents which proved his point.’ 107
Laurenson himself, although sympathetic to the feelings of the Aboriginal community, believed he was a suitable choice for the role:
‘I think an actor has the right to play any part if he believes he can do it, and that goes no matter what colour he is. And in that sense I have a right to have a go at playing Boney who is, after all, a half-caste, so as a white I’m half-way there in terms of blood.’108
The series was remade in 1993 as Bony, and, unbelievably, another white actor, Cameron Daddo, was cast in the lead role, the character now being described as a descendant of the original detective. Again, there was protest at the casting of a non Aboriginal actor, this time with some, however limited, success, as the role was adjusted and he ‘became simply a white man who once lived with Aboriginals.’ What progress toward representation on our screens had been made in 21 years? Where once an Aboriginal character – albeit played by a white man - could be shown on our screens, was it now unacceptable to even have an Aboriginal character as the key protagonist of a television programme? Fundamentally, they chose to erase his cultural identity rather than cast an Aboriginal actor.
Those days of casting a white actor to play an Aboriginal role, complete with the application of heavy makeup – up to a half day’s work in the case of the first series of
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Boney - are behind us. However, they are recent enough for Aboriginal people to remember them with disgust, and non Aboriginal people to condemn their predecessors’ ignorance. Would casting a non Aboriginal actor in a play with Aboriginal themes cause a similar, negative reaction and flout an unspoken rule? Beyond the skin colour, how can the non Aboriginal actor possibly access and convey all of the cultural and political requirements, particularly as many of them are not clearly defined? It can also be argued that if non Aboriginal actors are permitted to play Aboriginal roles, what roles will there be left for Aboriginal actors? We now have a growing pool of talented and experienced actors, partly in thanks to the likes of Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) encouraged Aboriginal acting students, however these actors are usually cast into roles where their Aboriginality defines them. There are some Aboriginal actors who have been able to cross over into mainstream roles, in particular Aaron Pederson, Deborah Mailman and Leah Purcell and most of their ‘colour-blind’ roles have come in television. Pederson played a detective and a doctor respectively in the TV mainstream series Water Rats (1996 - 2001) and MDA (2002 – 2005), Mailman was a central character in the television series The Secret Life of Us (2001 – 2005) and at the time she commented on the dearth of opportunities for Aboriginal actors:
‘I think there's a huge gap in casting Aboriginal actors in commercial television … at the moment I'm the only actor in an ongoing role. Some people think that there aren't many Aboriginal actors around, and if there are, they're not that good. It's stupid. There's such an incredible pool of talent out there and they're still coming out of drama schools. People just need to take a leap of faith …’109
There is a counter argument that it is the actor’s skill that makes a role believable, not their cultural heritage, and that a role should be awarded on merit, not race. Colour blind casting proposes that actors from other cultures be given ‘white’ roles3. Aboriginal actors can be the recipient of this approach; Deborah Mailman played the part of Lep, a Cambodian child refugee with limited English in Small Poppies. A
3 The process doesn’t not appear to occur often in reverse, perhaps as there are many more ‘white’ roles in the Western canon than ‘black’ roles. Robert Downey Jr played a black man in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008) however the role was written for a white man playing an Africa American
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sophisticated theatre audience will accept a convention once it is established, as audiences have done so forever – men playing women being the most common example. Does the casting have another dimension – as a political or social statement, or as a fantasy or surrealistic element? This sanctions a white actor to play an Indian character (Greg Stone in Cloud Nine, MTC, 2003) and a middle-aged man to play a five year old (Geoffrey Rush in Small Poppies, Belvoir Street, 2000).
There is a rich history of actors playing other genders (in the 2007 film I’m not There Cate Blanchett plays Bob Dylan). Indeed theatre in many countries still cast males in female roles. At a performance of the Banraku Puppet theatre (Melbourne, 2006) the female puppets were voiced by male actors who explained that their role was not to ‘mimic’ the female voice – they gave a demonstration of a high pitched, exaggerated voice – but to ‘feel’ the ‘emotions’ of the character and express them through the voice.
Heterosexuals play gays (Sean Penn playing Harvey Milk in Milk, 2008); gays play straight. Non Anglo actors often play races other than their own.
My reflection:
In Can White Girls Dreamtime the character Susan highlights the diversity of the roles she has played as an actor:
SUSAN: ‘I’ve played Hispanic roles in New York, a Russian immigrant mother seeking political asylum in USA, complete with accent, and I was once a young Greek girl, and there was one play where I was an Indian woman AND her Turkish lesbian lover AND her fat Indian husband. Ironically, in the US they wouldn’t put me in roles as an Australian – because I didn’t look like Nicole Kidman or ‘whoever’.’110
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Delightfully, I was able to quote Annalouise, for whom the role of Susan was written, almost verbatim.
One might argue ‘why would playing an Aboriginal role be any different?’ Lighter skinned Aboriginal actors often complain they are discriminated in the casting for Aboriginal roles against because they don’t ‘read’ as Aboriginal. Indeed the perils for casting by ‘colour’ – where if you are not ‘black enough’ for a white audience to ‘read’ you as black, then you won’t get cast as an ‘Aborigine’ - are outlined in Maryanne Sam’s play Casting Doubts.
Part of the educative process, then, is to educate the non Aboriginal audience that Aboriginality does not equal colour. You don’t have to educate a black audience in quite the same way, even though the Aboriginality of the character might need to be made explicit, as they have members of their own family/community who are similarly light skinned.
My reflection:
The educative process extends to the ‘real world’ where light skinned people such as myself are told ‘you don’t look Aboriginal’ as if that fact alone precluded people like me from being so.
So, if the predominantly white audience can be educated to accept the lighter skinned Aboriginal actor, can they accept a non Aboriginal actor playing an Aboriginal character? What the non Aboriginal actor can’t bring to the role, and this is the crux of the matter, is something ethereal, intangible, which is their cultural integrity. This is their sum total of their experiences, background, family and community relationships and exposure to aspects of culture including Aboriginal English, body language, knowledge of history etc.
Katherine Brisbane speaks about the intangible qualities the Aboriginal actor brings to a role:
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‘A successful production of Radiance by Wesley Enoch for the Queensland Theatre Company and Kooemba Jdarra aroused a variety of responses, with some audience members recognising with applause aspects of Aboriginal life revealed by actors rather than the text …’111 [my emphasis]
My reflection:
Custody requires the character of Inala to employ verisimilitude: the audience needed to accept that Inala believes she has Aboriginal heritage; that she could be, without her trying to ‘play’ an Aboriginal person. The play is then takes us on a journey of increasing doubt about her having ’istory, to the point where she acknowledges that she doesn’t have Aboriginal heritage. The writer walks a tightrope; the actor even more so.
Perhaps the current climate of heightened awareness, unlike in the days when actors blacked up, would preclude a theatre company for even considering flouting the unspoken rule of a non Aboriginal actor playing an Aboriginal character.
In conclusion, while I believe that some non Aboriginal people can acquire a familiarity with Aboriginal people and culture which allows them to be accepted within an Aboriginal community, and while I understand that it is the actor’s craft that helps them to inhabit a role, so that in theory a highly skilled and sensitive non Aboriginal person could play an Aboriginal role, I think that there would be no purpose to casting a non Aboriginal person, unless one was deliberately playing with an audience’s expectations in order to make a point about race.
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9. Why White Girls don’t Dreamtime …
I have examined the challenges that face the non Aboriginal creative in attempting to utilise Aboriginal themes in their arts-based practice and I have outlined some of the barriers and shown examples of where they have been successfully overcome, and where they have not. I have used examples from film, television, painting, dance and music, as well as theatre, where they exist. My conclusion will focus more now on how I wrestled with those challenges in the crafting of my own play Custody.
Given my sensitivity towards what I perceived the Aboriginal community’s rejection of the idea of a non Aboriginal person playing an ‘Aboriginal’ role, which dovetailed with my own misgivings, I had to find a way to provide the actors with a play that met their brief, ie ‘Aboriginal themed’ but that didn’t drift into the area of performance ‘appropriation’.
I could have written a play that didn’t contain any recognisable ‘Aboriginal themes’ but argued that it was informed by my Aboriginality and that that in itself was sufficient. Yet I was also interested in the general sense of fear and caution regarding Aboriginal issues that I encountered in the general community. There seemed to be a high level of anxiety among non Aboriginal people; a fear of offending, a fear of ‘saying the wrong thing’ of ‘doing the wrong thing’.
The non Aboriginal (dominant) community seems mostly blinkered to the Aboriginal experience; white culture dominates to the point where few Australians know anything about Aboriginal people other than what they are spoon fed via the media – usually sensational examples of crisis and calamity within Aboriginal communities. The dominant culture – white culture - has not incorporated Aboriginal practices, language, foodstuffs, or spirituality, in the way they have in New Zealand. Aboriginal culture is barely visible here. Poet and critic Alison Croggon, in a forum, It’ll be all white on the night (2007)112 made the observation that Maori culture seems to infiltrate the New Zealander’s daily way of life in a way Aboriginal culture doesn’t here. She gave the example of the use of language, where Maori words are part of the standard language of pakehas, or non Maoris.
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My reflection:
Those that do know something about Aboriginal culture might assume that everybody shares in that knowledge. During the feedback session of the reading of Can White Girls Dreamtime?, (QUT, November 2006), one of the audience commented on Susan being ignorant of the term ‘Koori’, saying that ‘everyone knows what Koori means’113. This is not the case, indeed my actors themselves did not know the meaning of the word and asked me to define it during our first face to face meeting. There may be the perception within certain circles that ‘everybody’ knows ‘this stuff’ but in my experience ‘everybody’ doesn’t. I am asked similar questions perhaps two or three times a year, maybe because as a light skinned Aboriginal person, I am not seen as ‘threatening’, or maybe because I move in a variety of social and work circles, not just amongst the ‘intelligentsia’ who all do (or think they do) know ‘this stuff’114. Indeed, I would even suggest that many Aboriginal people have limited knowledge about Aboriginal culture, a situation which is a direct consequence of colonisation, Stolen Generations, missions and other forms of institutionalisation, the suppression of Aboriginal language and banning of ceremonies – part of the myriad of losses Aboriginal people have endured since white arrival. Some Aboriginal people are disconnected from their culture. Many, me included, are on a lifetime journey of reclamation. Also, very little of this side of our shared history has been taught in schools.
During the feedback session at the QUT reading it was also suggested that as an Aboriginal child, Lily would know more about her culture. Yet again, this is not my experience. In my role as a researcher at an Aboriginal Childcare agency and a University, I have unique experience from which to draw upon. Part of that role required me to interview professionals who work with Aboriginal children in out-of- home care. One worker commented that ‘Clients will often identify with their Aboriginal heritage but often in iconic ways – eg they will draw the Aboriginal flag but their connection/knowledge to land and culture is limited. Eg they don’t know their mob, or their stories.’115
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If there are Aboriginal people who have limited cultural connection then it follows that there are many more non Aboriginal people who are ignorant about Aboriginal culture. Remembering once again, that there isn’t one culture, there are many, as Greer remarks:
‘Most whitefellas cannot differentiate between one Aboriginal group and another. Australian schoolchildren are more likely to be able to name native American peoples than Australian.’116
My reflection:
I want my play to address the anxiety and the ignorance with which many non Aboriginal people approach Aboriginal people and culture. In Susan and Inala, I tried to develop two exemplars that illustrated different nuances of this behavior. Inala, who we early on see as believing she has Aboriginal heritage, has a ‘longing to belong’. In a sense, she is exploring her sense of identity as someone who desires to ‘belong’ to this country. Susan, on the other hand, is blissfully ignorant of Aboriginal culture, despite her having co-parented an Aboriginal child (who herself has been disconnected with her culture due to her mother’s disconnection) Again I must reiterate that in my experience Lily’s disconnection is, sadly, very feasible. As a person who has also been out of Australia for some time, Susan also is unaware of some of the changes that have taken place, ie the introduction of protocols around the utilisation of Aboriginal material in the performing arts etc. Having been away for so long gives her credibility, as a character, to display her ignorance in a way that if she had been living in this country for the past 15 years would not.
My political aspirations for the play were in a sense hijacked by the characters themselves. In a creative takeover, they developed their own agenda, discarding along the way many of the nagging issues that I had wanted to incorporate. The ‘irritating’ nature of Inala in the earlier version proved to be a perfect instrument to voice the many indignities concerned with cultural insensitivity that I had collected and squirreled away over the years.
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I mentioned in an earlier reflection that I had to try and overcome the obstacle of the negative feedback I had received from Rachael Maza, in relation to Inala as a character who believed herself to be Aboriginal. This was a major crux of the character’s arc, which ended with her subsequent doubts about having Aboriginal heritage. But given Maza’s concerns, which mirrored my own anxieties, that the Aboriginal community would not accept the premise of a non Aboriginal actor ‘playing’ an Aboriginal role, I had to re-think the premise of the play.
In Can White Girls Dreamtime?, the intention was that the audience also believe she was Aboriginal, with the reveal at the play’s ending perhaps a shock to both Inala and them. However, her certainty about her heritage declined as the play unfolded. Up until I wrote the scene where she admitted that she wasn’t Aboriginal (17 July, 2006) I had not worked out how I would get around the challenge of a non Aboriginal actor playing what appeared to be an ‘Aboriginal role’. It did nag at me that a non Aboriginal actor would embodying an Aboriginal person on stage, even if she was operating under a delusion. I was particularly concerned it would play into the stereotype that a light skinned Aboriginal was no different to a white person. I wanted the audience to understand and experience the grief of her journey, which was about her coming to terms with her identity. However, I still had doubts about an actor who wasn’t Aboriginal in real life playing Inala. And those doubts, coupled with Rachael’s feedback, tipped my attitude to the play to the point where I considered Can White Girls Dreamtime? unacceptable. I, in effect, decided to throw out 130 pages of a script and start again.
In re-writing the play as Custody I kept many of the characteristics of Susan and Inala, along with the basic story arc. Custody, when compared to Can White Girls Dreamtime?, focuses more on the challenges of non Aboriginal people trying to understand the Aboriginal world, rather than two diametrically opposed sets of personal values. The most radical change the play underwent was that Inala would now be someone who thought she was Aboriginal, without the audience necessarily sharing her conviction. The reveal, at the end, makes it clear that she has Afghani heritage, not Aboriginal.
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While there are many hurdles for the non Aboriginal person in accessing Aboriginal themes, however, every situation is unique and one rule cannot be applied. Simply, what is possible is not always acceptable. What is acceptable in one situation may not be acceptable in another.
My reflection:
The 2002 Tokyo International Festival’s production of my play Stolen had a Japanese cast and director while the Australian production, with its Aboriginal actors and director, bookended the festival, an arrangement Ilbijerri, as co-producers, supported. Yet when a number of Australian schools approached Ilbijerri in the hope of mounting a school production with a non Aboriginal cast, Ilbijerri, with my imprimatur, refused. To paraphrase Ilbijerri’s concerns, Aboriginal people should be permitted to tell Aboriginal stories themselves, especially with a story such as Stolen which has a sensitive subject matter, that of the Stolen Generations. I believe that the distinction is, that if the play is being performed on Aboriginal land (Australia) then is should only be performed by Aboriginal actors, but in another country, where Aboriginal actors are not available, then it is acceptable for Aboriginal plays to be performed by non Aboriginal actors.
The question of whether it is acceptable to cast a non Aboriginal actor in an Aboriginal role in Australia is, on the surface, not paradoxical. Firstly, why would you cast a non Aboriginal actor? Why would you want to? It has been suggested that the white, middle class, who make up the bulk of theatre audiences, desire ‘cultural authenticity’, while the black audience, who attend an Aboriginal play to see their stories told on stage, expect nothing less than cultural authenticity. Given there breadth of experienced Aboriginal actors, there would be, in most cases, no need to cast a non Aboriginal actor. There is no need to do a ‘Boney’ any more (there never was) based on the argument that there isn’t an Aboriginal actor skilled or qualified. In relation to a non Aboriginal actor playing a role that the audiences assumes is a light-skinned Aboriginal person, as the role of Inala was written in Can White Girls Dreamtime?, the feeling is, as Rachael Maza declared in her feedback on my script, ‘maybe in 50 years, but not now …’117
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Why cast a non Aboriginal person when it is difficult for many Aboriginal actors to sustain careers in this country, due to a tendency to write ‘white’ and to cast ‘white’. This ‘white-out’ on our stages and screens thwarts the ambitions of many non white- looking actors in Australia, I would argue, not only those with Aboriginal heritage. A newspaper online blog asked ‘in our culturally diverse city, are our casting processes suitably colourblind?’ which elicited the following divergent responses:
‘I was a working actor in the UK for 6 years. I was cast in regional and national theatre, television, commercials and film. When I returned to Sydney 6 years later with a rather healthy CV, I was told by one prospective agent that I would get very little work because I didn't "look Australian"!?’ [The actor had Indian heritage]
‘You're damned if you do and damned if you don't! eg. If you cast an aborginal [sic] person you're accused of tokenism or being overtly PC. If you don't you're accused of bias or failing to reflect diversity in the community.’
‘Who the hell cares? You've got to cast for the character you're picturing in your mind's eye. Unless you're doing a new Benetton commercial, this point is baseless. What if I felt that Jews were not properly represented in Home & Away? Would I be cast on that strength alone? With a society this frightened to offend, probably.’118
One realm where a certain ambiguity creeps in is when an Aboriginal play is produced overseas. While director Frankel argued it was worth bringing an Australian cast over for the production of Bullie’s House, that situation is seldom financially possible. Director Lee Lewis, in her monograph It’ll be all white on the night, asked why the plays of black American playwright August Wilson were not staged in Australia – the answer she had repeatedly heard was ‘there weren’t enough Black American actors in Australia to be able to do so’119. Yet she counteracts with the fact that his plays have been staged in Japan with a Japanese cast. Similarly, in 2007 my play Rainbow’s End was produced in Tokyo with Japanese actors … as was Wesley Enoch’s Miracle at Cookie’s Table, which premiered in Tokyo (2006) well before its 2007 Australian production.
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Could there be a production of Radiance with a white cast? Perhaps. Sylvia Wood120 argues that the central theme in Radiance is incidental to the Aboriginality of the characters and that the play primarily represents madness, with the characters superimposed on the theme. Could there be a production of The Cherry Pickers with a white cast? I doubt it.
My exegetical question is how the non Aboriginal actor can access and interpret Aboriginal themes. It is all about process. Consultation, collaboration between equal participants, following protocols determined by Aboriginal people and Aboriginal people having control are the keys. Stephen Page can encourage a white dancer to mimic his Aboriginal dancers as long as Stephen Page, as an Aboriginal director, is in control. If that dancer was to then start teaching Aboriginal dancing, or produce his own ‘Aboriginal’ dance, alarm bells would ring within the community – both black and white. If you take Aboriginal people out of the decision making loop, then the process, and the reaction to the final creative product, for Aboriginal people is usually compromised.
The Aboriginal experience is part of our ‘shared history’ and all of us need to acknowledge that. We all need to re-write our history, to include the presence and contribution of Aboriginal people who have been ignored, misunderstood, or condescended to in the past. But the inclusion of Aboriginal themes needs to be done with knowledge, respect and insight – complex criteria to meet.
I further asked, early in this exegesis, if Aboriginal writers should be writing for non Aboriginal performers? Yes, as many Aboriginal writers live in both worlds, and will even have non Aboriginal family members. Aboriginal people are often bi-cultural. Should they write Aboriginal characters for non Aboriginal actors? The simple answer is no. The writer has a responsibility to the community to tell Aboriginal stories, as there is still so much ignorance and misunderstanding and still such a wide gulf between black and white in this country. Aboriginal actors are an intrinsic part of that story telling process.
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Theatre is about exploring ideas, and if you write safe, then you are not encouraging debate. Greer tried to ignite debate about what it is to be an Australian in Whitefella Jumpup, but after a flurry of reactive comments, the debate petered out and we are little advanced. Perhaps, as Greer expressed:
‘The whole Aboriginal question ends up consigned to the too-hard basket, and there we are content to let it stay.’121
Fundamentally, I accepted the challenge to write a play with ‘Aboriginal themes’ for two non Aboriginal actors, responding to an unmet need that is encapsulated in the kind of hesitant questions that so many of my non Aboriginal acquaintances have directed towards me:
‘I would like to know more. I have so many questions.’122
In my plays am I helping non Aboriginal people to ‘dance’? First we must rekindle and strengthen our own dances, our own ‘web of dreams’, but to facilitate that we must also educate non Aboriginal people as to what and who we are. We must share our history and to that end non Aboriginal people must have access to Aboriginal themes and extend their curiosity about Aboriginal culture. For me, ‘I don’t know’ is a great place for non Aboriginal people to start their exploration, as opposed to ‘we know best’. In the past there has been too much exploitation - whitefellas exterminating Aboriginal culture - not asking, not learning, not seeing the beauty, the richness, the strengths and wisdom – or pillaging Aboriginal culture, using it for their own gains. We need the Aboriginal story, on the page, on the stage and on the screen, to be told, as Uniapon desired. I hope Custody helps in some way to explore issues of identity and belonging in a way that is daring, thought provoking, meaningful and educational. We need Indig-curious audiences and readership, as long as Aboriginal people are in control of the message and how that message is expressed.
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Appendix A: Permissions to quote
From Annalouise Paul, Friday, June 19, 2009
Dear Jane,
I am writing to confirm my support for your exegesis and the inclusion of my name, Annalouise Paul and any content related to me as actor/producer during development phases of the script CUSTODY (and its previous other titles) since its initial commission. The process began with an understanding that the exegesis was to be written in conjunction with the play, and I continue to support your MA in this.
I look forward to hearing of your great results and continuing this much-valued relationship.
With thanks,
Annalouise Paul
From Lisa Scope, 19 July, 2009
Hi Jane,
I have read the exegesis as of June 2009 and grant you permission to quote me.
Kind regards
Lisa
From Rachael Maza, 31 July, 2009
To whom it may concern,
Regarding: Exegesis – Jane Harrison
I, Rachael Maza Long, have read the exegesis – July 2009 and are happy to be quoted.
Yours sincerely Rachael Maza Long
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From Natalie Faulkner, 21 June, 2009
Hey Jane,
…. Of course you can quote me. I’ll have a trawl through my sent items and see if I can find it. I suspect that it will have been deleted, but I’ll check tonight.
Nat xx
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Appendix B: Creative Development Can White Girls Dreamtime?/Custody
Workshops, Date Creative Team
Sydney, April 2006 Jane Harrison, Annalouise Paul, Lisa Scope Reading, QUT, Qld, November, 2006 Jane Harrison, Annalouise Paul, Lisa Scope A Month In the Country, Albury Feb - March 2007 Jane Harrison, Annalouise Paul, Lisa Scope, Rachael Maza (Dramaturg) Wisemen’s Ferry July 2007 Jane Harrison, Annalouise Paul, Lisa Scope, Rachael Maz
Inscription, Sydney August 07 Jane Harrison, Annalouise Paul, Lisa Scope, Kristina Totos Komilda High School reading October 2007 Jane Harrison, Annalouise Paul, Lisa Scope
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Appendix C: Custody script
Note: As of July, 2009, the play Custody is a work in progress. I have not yet resolved the problems of the play to my satisfaction. I have made the decision to insert the 2007 version of the script, the most compete version, into my exegesis in order to fulfill the obligations of my MA.
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References
1 Uniapon’s quotation appears in the introductory chapter of Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines, His collection of myths and stories were first published under the authorship of William Ramsay Smith in Myths & Legends of the Australian Aboriginal, 1930. Uniapon was not to receive credit for his scholarship for decades. See the Introduction: Repatriating the Story in the 2001 edition 2 Greer, Germaine, 2003, Whitefella Jumpup: The Shortest Way to Nationhood, Quarterly Essay, 11 p76 3 Greer, Germaine, 2003, ibid, p39 4 Website, accessed 6 June, 2009 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-curious 5 Website, accessed 16 April, 2009 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation 6 Brisbane, Katherine, 1996, The Future in Black & White in Black & White Australia, Currency Press pamphlet 7 Theatrelab was a privately funded organisation based in Sydney which develops scripts for theatre, television and film. Writers submit scripts in certain categories and are selected through a competitive process to participate in Masterclasses with expert teachers. In 2007 it changed its name to Inscription. See http://www.inscription.com.au/cms/index.phps 8 Inscriptions, see Theatrelab 9 Short and Sweet 2006, General feedback on entries, accessed 16 July, 2006 at assets.theartscentre.net.au/shortandsweet/rscs/2007%20Files/WRITER_ITC;%20Feedback%20 notes.pdf 10 Walburgh, Gavin, 1996, quoting Perkins, Rachel, Indigenous Representations and identity in the films of Rachel Perkins, accessed 26 April, 2006, at http://www.lakemac.infohunt.nsw.gov.au/library/links/hschelp/english/radiance.htm 11 Heiss, Anita, 2002, Writing about indigenous Australia--some issues to consider and protocols to follow: a discussion paper, Critical Essay, Southerly, 22 June, 2002, accessed 30 November, 2007 at http://www.asauthors.org/lib/pdf/Heiss_Writing_About_Indigenous_Australia.pdf 12 Protocol documents include: Writing Cultures; Protocols for Producing indigenous Australian Literature, 2002, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, Australia Council Performing Cultures; Protocols for Producing Indigenous Australian Performing Arts, 2002, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, Australia Council Towards a Protocol for Filmmakers Working with Indigenous Content and Indigenous Communities, 2001, Indigenous Unit of the Australian Film Commission Indigenous Arts Protocol: A Guide, 1998, Indigenous Arts Reference Group, Arts NSW Our Culture, our Future: Report on Australian Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights, 1999, accessed 14 August, 2005 at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/1999/51.html 13 For more information on Mutant Message Down Under, which made claims about Aboriginal people and which the author later admitted were made up, see http://www.creativespirits.info/resources/books/mutantmessage.html accessed 16 April 2009 14 Email Scope, Lisa to Harrison, Jane, 10 January 2006
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15 Email, Jane Harrison to Scope, Lisa, 11 January, 2006 16 Email Scope, Lisa to Harrison, Jane, 6 May 2006 17 Email Scope, Lisa to Harrison, Jane, 3 August, 2006 18 Email, Scope, Lisa to Harrison, Jane, 6 May 2006 19 Harrison, Jane, submission to Griffin Theatre, 11, April, 2006 20 Denzin, NK & Lincoln, YS., 1994, Handbook of Qualitative Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks 21 Lincoln, Y., & Guba, E., 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry, Sage Publications, New York 22 Guba, Egon G., & Lincoln, Yvonna S., 1989, Guidelines and Checklist for Constructivist Evaluation, Sage Publications, Beverley Hills, accessed 16 April 2009 at http://www.wmich.edu/evalctr/checklists/constructivisteval.htm 23 Moustakas, Clark, 1985, Heuristic Inquiry, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 3, 39-55 accessed 7 October, 2008 at http://jhp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/3/39 24 Moustakas, Clark, ibid 25 de Freitas, Elizabeth, 2008, Interrogating Reflexivity: Art, Research, and the Desire for Presence, p470, in Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research, Knowles, J Gary, & Cole, Ardra L., Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks 26 Jupp, Víctor, 2006, The Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods, Sage Publications, London 27 Goodall Jr. Lloyd H., 2000, Writing the new ethnography, accessed 5 June, 2009 at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=GXROxwvodIMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_su mmary_s&cad=0 28 Lather, Patti, 1995, The validity of angels: Interpretive and textual strategies in researching the lives of women with HIV/Aids, Qualitative Inquiry, 1(1) 41-68, accessed 5 June, 2009 at http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/41 29 Material which might not be formally published, including things such as conference proceedings, unpublished theses, as well as newspaper articles, websites etc 30 Comparative Cultural Studies and First Nations Studies, 2005, call for conference papers, accessed 1 December, 2007 at https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/clclist/2006- October/000001.html 31 AIATSIS Fact Sheet 11, Proof of Aboriginality or Torres Strait Islander Heritage, ATSIC Act, accessed 3 August, 2006 at http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/library/family_history_tracing/fact_sheets/Fact_sheet_11 32 Audience member, 6 July, 2007, during question and answer session at Writing about Indigenous issues, Mt Waverley Library, Melbourne 33 Custody reading, 18 October, 2007, Sydney 34 For further information on the genes responsible for skin colour see http://yannklimentidis.blogspot.com/2007/10/genomewide-association-of-skin-color-in.html or http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14719854.400-genes-in-black-and-white.html 35 Email, Paul, Annalouise to Harrison, Jane, 9 July, 2006
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36 Langton, Marcia, 2003, Grounded and Gendered: Aboriginal Women in Australian Cinema in Womenvision : women and the moving image in Australia, 2003, ed. French, Lisa, Melbourne, Damned Pub., p44 37 Laseur, Carol, 1997, beDevil: Colonial Images, Aboriginal Memories accessed 1 December, 2007 at http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/litserv/SPAN/37/Laseur.html 38 French, Lisa, 2003, Womenvision : women and the moving image in Australia, ed French, Lisa, Melbourne, Damned Pub, p46 39 Aboriginal Art Culture Tourism website, accessed 11 July, 2007 at http://aboriginalart.com.au/culture/ 40 Website, Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages accessed 13 April, 2006 at http://www.vaclang.org.au/ 41 Australian Bureau of Statistics Population Composition: Indigenous languages 4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, 1999, accessed at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/aadb12e0bbec2 820ca2570ec001117a5!OpenDocument 42 Clausen, Matthew, 2005, Teacher’s Notes, Page 8, Sydney Opera House, accessed 16 May, 2005 at tn_page8.pdf 43 Casey, Maryrose jas review of books, Issue 44, April 2005, accessed 7 January, 2007 at http://www.api- network.com/main/index.php?apply=reviews&webpage=api_reviews&flexedit=&flex_passwor d=&menu_label=&menuID=homely&menubox=&Review=4844 44 Kurtzer, Sonja Wandering Girl: who defines ‘authenticity’ in Aboriginal literature? in Blacklines; Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians, ed Grossman, Michele, Melbourne University Press, p188 45 Brisbane, Katherine, The Future in Black and White: Aboriginality in Recent Australian Drama 1995, accessed 26 April, 2006 at http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/images/history/1970s/blacktheatre/story2.html 46 Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision, 2007, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2007: Headline Indicators accessed 14, May, 2008 at http://www.pc.gov.au/oid/headline_indicators 47 McCall, Melissa, Deaths in custody in Australia: 2003 National Deaths in Custody Program (NDICP) annual report, accessed 13 June, 2009, at http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tbp/tbp012/part2.html 48Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2005, The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, accessed 16 November, 2008, at http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/ihw/hwaatsip05/hwaatsip05.pdf 49 Stretton, Andrea, Slabs of butter, layers of history, Sydney Morning Herald, in Notes for Reading Groups, Journey to the Stone Country, accessed 11 May, 2005 at http://www.allenandunwin.com/_uploads/BookPdf/ReadingGroupGuide/9781741141467.pdf 50 Stretton, Andrea, ibid 51 Bird, Carmel, 2002, An Overview of the Presence of Indigenous Characters in Australian Fiction accessed 26 April 2006 at http://www.carmelbird.com/indigenous.htm, 52 Bird, Carmel, ibid 53 Kurtzer, Sonja, ibid, p182
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54 Lake, Blanch, 2004, Professor Sally Morgan: The Importance of Stories, Art + Law Archive, quoting Morgan, Sally, accessed 17 July, 2006 at http://www.artslaw.com.au/ArtLaw/Archive/2004/04TheImportanceofStories.asp 55 Wright, Alexis, 1998, Breaking Taboos, Tasmanian Readers' and Writers' Festival accessed 25 April, 2006 at http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-September- 1998/wright.html 56 Langton, Marcia, 1993, ‘Well, I heard it on the radio and I saw it on the television …’, Australian Film Commission, NSW 57 Langton, Marcia, ibid p24-25, quoting Kaplan, E. Ann, 1989, Aborigines, Film and Moffatt’s Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy: An Outsider’s Perspective, The Olive Pink Society Bulletin, vol. 2 no. 1, pp13-17 58 Kurtzer, Sonja, ibid, p181 59 Kurtzer, Sonja, ibid, p187 60 Brisbane Institute, Bell's theorem of Aboriginal art: it's a white thing, 11 November 2003, accessed 26 April, 2006 at http://www.kooriweb.org/bell/article5.html 61 Greer, Germaine, ibid, p19 62 For a critical examination of Carmen’s fraud, see Takolander, Maria, 2005, The unhallowed art: Literature and literary fakes in Australia, accessed 16 April, 2009 at http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue4/takolander.htm 63 van den Berg, Rosemary, 1998, Intellectual property rights for Aboriginal people in Australia no 8, accessed 6 July, 2006 at http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP898rvdb.html 64 Davids, Brent Michael, 1995, Indian Actors are not enough, Indian Country Today, accessed 26 April, 2006 at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5088/is_199503/ai_n18491599 65 Dwyer, Michael, 20 October, 2006, History Wars – the Musical, The Age Newspaper, accessed 5 November, 2006 at http://www.theage.com.au/news/music/history-wars-the- musical/2006/10/19/1160851052066.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap265 66 Fitzgerald, Michael, 23 October, 2006, Both Sides Now, Time Magazine, quoting Tiller, Imants, accessed 6 November, 2007 at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1549781,00.html?iid=chix-sphere 67 Morphy, Howard Impossible to ignore: Imants Tillers’ response to Aboriginal art, accessed 17 June, 2007 at http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/TILLERS/Default.cfm?MnuID=4&Essay=5 68 Morphy, Howard, ibid 69 Morphy, Howard, ibid 70 National Gallery of Victoria, Gordon Bennett, accessed 6 November, 2007, at http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/gordonbennett/education/intro.html 71 Morphy, Howard, ibid 72 Morphy, Howard, ibid 73 Hopper, Jennifer, 2006, J Arts Crew, accessed 9 July, 2007 at http://www.theprogram.net.au/featuresSub.asp?id=3436&state=1&category=248 74 Website, The Sun Herald review, 16 April 2006, accessed 9 July, 2007 at http://www.bangarra.com.au/press/reviews.html
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75 Martin, Kelrick, 2002, Australian Rules film review, accessed 8 April, 2007 at http://www.abc.net.au/message/blackarts/review/s655039.htm 76 Boucher, Lorie, 2002, Fertile Roots, Arid Soil: Aboriginal Writing’s Struggle to Thrive, quoting Akiwenzie-Damm, Kateri, accessed 2 December, 2007 at http://www.writersblock.ca/spring2002/interv.htm 77 Email Faulkner, Natalie, to Harrison, Jane 78 Email Faulkner, Natalie, ibid 79 Fein, Esther B, 13 May 1985, Aboriginal actors, at Long Wharf, are adjusting review, The New York Times, quoting Frankel, Kenneth, accessed 26 April, 2006 at http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9E07E3D81239F930A25756C0A96 3948260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Organizations/L/Long%20Wharf%20Theater 80 Walburgh, Gavin, 1996, Indigenous Representations and identity in the films of Rachel Perkins, accessed 26 April, 2006, at http://www.lakemac.infohunt.nsw.gov.au/library/links/hschelp/english/radiance.htm 81 Stories of the Dreamtime, accessed 6th June, 2009 at http://www.dreamtime.net.au/dreaming/index.htm 82 Hawker, Philippa, 19 June, 2006, In full colour, review, The Age newspaper, quoting Riley, Sally, accessed * at http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/film/age19jun02.html 83 Hawker, Philippa, 18 June, 2002, Black magic: Aboriginal films take off review, The Age newspaper, accessed 1 May, 2006 at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/18/1023864429878.html 84 French, Lisa, 2003, Womenvision : women and the moving image in Australia, ed French, Lisa, Melbourne, Damned Press, p113, citing Taylor, Catherine, Black film-makers tell their tales, quoting Richard Frankland in The Australian, 6 September, 1999, p20 85 Brisbane, Katherine, 1995, The Future in Black and White: Aboriginality in Recent Australian Drama, accessed 26 April, 2006 at http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/images/history/1970s/blacktheatre/story2.html 86 Langton, Marcia, 2003. Grounded and gendered: Aboriginal women in Australian cinema, in ed French, Lisa, Women Vision: women and the moving image in Australia. Melbourne: Damned Publishing, p44 87 Website, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness accessed 5 June, 2009 88 Peters-Little, Frances, November 2004, Applying the practical to the unattainable, speech at AIATSIS Conference, accessed 17 January, 2006 at http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal_studies_press/news 89 Casey, Maryrose, Blak Inside: 6 indigenous plays from Victoria review on The Australian Public Intellectual Network website, accessed 7 January, 2007 at http://www.api- network.com/main/index.php?apply=reviews&webpage=api_reviews&flexedit=&flex_passwor d=&menu_label=&menuID=homely&menubox=&Review=4844 90 Greer, Germaine, ibid p45 91 Thompson, Jay Daniel, Bad Dreaming review, accessed 6 June, 2007 at www.colloquy.monash.edu.au/issue013/nowra.pdf 92 Wenham, Margaret, More like a nightmare, April 06, 2007 review of Bad Dreaming, accessed 6 November, 2007 at http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21509924- 5003424,00.html
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93 Schembri, Jim, July 7, 2006, De Heer's shame revealed, The Age Newspaper, accessed 7 July, 2006 at http://www.liveshares.com.au/live-shares-articles/2006/7/7/de-heers-shame- revealed 94 Greer, Germaine, ibid p19 95 Greer, Germaine, Ibid, p16 96 Craven, Peter, 2003, Introduction, in Whitefella Jumpup: The Shortest Way to Nationhood, Greer, Germaine, Quarterly Essay 11, pV 97 Foley, Gary Muddy Waters: Archie, Mudrooroo & Aboriginality May 1997, accessed 17 July, 2006 at http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_10.html 98 Foley, Gary, ibid, quoting Weller, Archie 99 Foley, Gary, ibid, quoting Mudrooroo 100 Greer, Germaine, ibid p15 101 Stone, Greg, 2006, personal conversation, May, 2006, Melbourne 102 Krausz, Peter, Screening Indigenous Australia: an overview of Aboriginal representation on film, accessed 1st May, 2006 at http://www.enhancetv.com.au/shop/product.php?printable=Y&productid=12668885&cat=255& page=1 103 Hickling, Alfred, 16 May, 2002, The Cherry Pickers review, The Guardian Newspaper, accessed 26 April, 2006 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2002/may/16/theatre.artsfeatures 104 Storey, Don, Boney, Classic Australian Television 2005, accessed 21 January, 2007 at http://www.classicaustraliantv.com/Boney.htm 105 Storey, Don, ibid 106 Storey, Don, ibid 107 Storey, Don, ibid 108 Storey, Don, ibid 109 Website, Mailmen, Deborah, accessed 13 September, 2006 at http://www.mook- e.com/bio/mailmen.htm 110 Email Paul, Annalouise to Harrison, Jane, 111 Brisbane, Katherine, 1996, The Future in Black & White in Black & White Australia, Currency Press pamphlet 112 Croggon, Alison, 15 August, 2007, It’ll be all white on the night forum, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne 113 Play reading, November 2006, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane 114 During a presentation on ‘Teaching Aboriginal content in the Curriculum’, held at La Trobe University, Bundoora, on Monday 5 November, one academic from SA University told us that four years ago ‘he knew nothing’ about Aboriginal history in this country 115 Bambett, M, Jackson, A, Harrison, J, Hunter, S, Lewis, P, Not One Size Fits All; Measuring the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal children, 2007, La Trobe University, VACCA, Take Two, unpublished 116 Greer, Germaine, ibid, p45
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117 Maza, Rachael, 2007, personal conversation, Melbourne 118 Entertainment blog, 25 October, 2006, Is casting egalitarian when it comes to race?, Sydney Morning Herald, accessed 26 October, 2006 at http://blogs.smh.com.au/entertainment/archives/the_green_room/006919.html 119 Lewis, Lee, 15 August, 2007, It’ll be all white on the night forum, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne 120 Wood, Sylvia, 1998/9 Representations of Indigenous people in Film and Text, accessed 1 May, 2006 at http://anenglishpage.tripod.com/indigenous.html 121 Greer, Germaine, ibid, p47 122 Sandy Garrett, 8 July, 2006, personal conversation, Violet Town
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