Performing Indigenous Identities on the Contemporary Australian Stage: Land, People, Culture 9780367242725, 9780429281488

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Mapping the field
Conceptual frame
Production
Dramaturgy
Reception
References
1 Cultural and historical context
Cultural relations in Australia
Indigenous Australian ontologies and cultural practice
A brief overview of Australian colonial history
References
2 Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre
The beginnings
Coming of age
Maturing practice
Autobiographical plays
Stories of family
Trauma and the female role model
Romance
Adaptations of classics
Historiographical intervention
Oppression
Agency, tenacity and inclusion
Relation to traditional formats
References
3 Case study: Scott Rankin’s Namatjira (2010)
The Namatjira Project
Production history
Setting the scene
Plot summary
Analysis
Colonial space: aesthetic approach
Relational identity
“Country”: Aranda and Western ontologies
Christianity
Entrepreneurism
Gender
Conclusion
Coda
References
4 Case study: Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora (2012)
Introduction
The work of Wesley Enoch
Production history
Historical figures
Setting the scene
Plot summary
Analysis
“Nation”: aesthetic approach
“Country”: configuring emplacement
“People”: formulating culture
Temporalities
Historiography
Leadership
Gender
Conclusion
References
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Performing Indigenous Identities on the Contemporary Australian Stage

Over the past 50 years, Indigenous Australian theatre practice has emerged as a dynamic site for the discursive reflection of culture and tradition as well as colonial legacies, leveraging the power of storytelling to create and advocate contemporary fluid conceptions of Indigeneity. Performing Indigenous Identities on the Contemporary Australian Stage offers a window into the history and diversity of this vigorous practice. It introduces the reader to cornerstones of Indigenous Australian cultural frameworks and on this backdrop discusses a wealth of plays in light of their responses to contemporary Australian identity politics. The in-depth readings of two landmark theatre productions, Scott Rankin’s Namatjira (2010) and Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora (2012), trace the artists’ engagement with questions of community consolidation and national reconciliation, carefully considering the implications of their propositions for identity work arising from the translation of traditional ontologies into contemporary orientations. The analyses of the dramatic texts are incrementally enriched by a dense reflection of the production and reception contexts of the plays, providing an expanded framework for the critical consideration of contemporary postcolonial theatre practice that allows for a well-founded appreciation of the strengths yet also pointing to the limitations of current representative approaches on the Australian mainstage. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars of Postcolonial, Literary, Performance and Theatre Studies. Susanne Julia Thurow is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She obtained her PhD in English Philology from Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (Germany) in 2017. Previously, she worked for Big hART Inc., the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney, Goethe Institut and Thalia Theater (Hamburg, Germany).

Performing Indigenous Identities on the Contemporary Australian Stage Land, People, Culture Susanne Julia Thurow

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Susanne Julia Thurow The right of Susanne Julia Thurow to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-24272-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28148-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

This book was researched and written on Wathaurong, Bedegal, Cannalgal, Kayimai, Ngarluma and Western Aranda Country. I acknowledge and express my gratitude to the traditional custodians of these lands, paying my respect especially to elders past, present and emerging, who keep culture alive and evolving. Dedicated to Marianne & Ulrich Thurow

Contents

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction 1 Mapping the field 2 Conceptual frame 5 Production 5 Dramaturgy 8 Reception 11 References 16 1 Cultural and historical context Cultural relations in Australia 19 Indigenous Australian ontologies and cultural practice 21 A brief overview of Australian colonial history 29 References 35

19

2 Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre The beginnings 41 Coming of age 48 Maturing practice 55 Autobiographical plays 55 Stories of family 59 Trauma and the female role model 60 Romance 64 Adaptations of classics 68 Historiographical intervention 70

40

Oppression 71 Agency, tenacity and inclusion 74

Relation to traditional formats 79 References 83

viii Contents 3 Case study: Scott Rankin’s Namatjira (2010) The Namatjira Project 88 Production history 90 Setting the scene 95 Plot summary 95 Analysis 96 Colonial space: aesthetic approach 98 Relational identity 102 “Country”: Aranda and Western ontologies 109 Christianity 113 Entrepreneurism 121 Gender 127 Conclusion 128 Coda 130 References 132 4 Case study: Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora (2012) Introduction 137 The work of Wesley Enoch 138 Production history 141 Historical figures 144 Setting the scene 145 Plot summary 146 Analysis 148 “Nation”: aesthetic approach  148 “Country”: configuring emplacement 154 “People”: formulating culture 163

87

136

Temporalities 163 Historiography 166 Leadership 174 Gender 179

Conclusion 181 References 183 Conclusion References 192 Index

186

195

Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of an expansive 10-year process that has been life-deepening, mind-transforming and heart-bending in every way. I am deeply grateful for the generosity and kind-hearted support of the p ­ eople, who became part of this journey, as well as for the critical challenges that helped develop and strengthen the thinking that flowed into this text. My profound thanks to: Em/Prof. Dr Anna-Margaretha Horatschek (Christian-Albrechts-­ Universität zu Kiel) and Prof. Peter Eckersall (City University of New York) for their faith, patient mentoring and treasured advice throughout the years. Scott Rankin for his curiosity, openness, support and invitation into Big hART’s process, which determined in so many ways my direction of thinking and emotional connection to the field. Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin, Gwenda and Kumantjai K. Namatjira, Peter Tjutjatja Taylor, Hilary Wirri and the extended Namatjira family for their trust and generosity in sharing their stories and for making me feel welcome in their midst. Nicole Forsyth and Evert Ploeg for their friendship and the many critical discussions over the years. Trevor Jamieson, Derik Lynch, Sophia Marinos, Cecily Hardy, Alex Kelly, Debra Myers, Tootsie Daniel, Sonya Wilson, Allum, Jane and ­Marion Cheedy, Allery Sandy, Andrew Viney, Mariaa Randall, Jed Silver, Sera Davies, Stuart Thorne, Tess Schofield, Genevieve Lacey, Rhia Parker, Jess and Neil Fisher, Genevieve Dugard, Stu and Chynna Campbell, Zoe and Matt Davis, Robert and Alison Hannaford, Ruth Burns-Ellis, Susie Skinner, Telen and Neal Rodwell, Nick Higgins and Yumi Umiumare for making my time spent with Big hART enriching, joyous, confronting, beautiful, awkward and insightful. Wesley Enoch, Anita Heiss, Stephen Page, Frederick Copperwaithe, Nardi Simpson, Isaac Drandic, Jack Charles, Lily Shearer, Kelton Pell, Richard Frankland, Lisa Maza, Deborah Cheetham and Rachael Swain for the sometimes extensive, sometimes only very brief conversations about their practice that provided vital contextualisation and perspective.

x Acknowledgements Scientia Prof. Dennis Del Favero (University of New South Wales) for his dedicated mentorship and support as well as the many cherished opportunities created to continue the work begun over the past decade. Prof. Martin Nakata (James Cook University) and A/Prof. Reuben Bolt (UNSW) for their trust and invitation to join Nura Gili, which helped me ground my work in the theoretical landscape and vis-à-vis ongoing debates, while being part of an inspiring and warm-hearted team. Philip Morrissey (formerly University of Melbourne) for his trust and support in the very early stages of this research, continuously challenging my assumptions and understandings through insightful conversation that helped me build my voice in this diverse field. Prof. Edward Scheer, Em/Prof. Stephen Muecke, Sarah Keech, Ben Kelly, Dr Johanna Perheentupa, Dr Anthea Compton, Nakia Bolt (all UNSW), A/ Prof. Ulrike Garde (Macquarie University), Dr Karen O’Brien (University of Sydney), A/Prof. Peter Wright (Murdoch University), A/Prof. Maryrose Casey (Monash University), James Waites, Jochen Strauch, Agnieszka Harmanci and Ulrich Schrauth (formerly Thalia Theater) for helping me make sense of the academic and industry sectors through interviews, coffee chats, strategic mentoring or the simple day-to-day routines of life on the job. Gabriele Soll and Joanna Zygo (CAU) for their incredible patience and diligence in paving the way to this book. Marianne, Ulrich, Alexander and Constantin Thurow, Uta von ­Denkowski, Marcello Bisotti, Babalwa and Stefan Thurow and the rest of my beautiful family for their patience, love, support and celebration of this project. Valentina Adeline Winardi, Lauren Walker, Jaime Comber, Manja ­Kürschner, Henrik Schroeder, Carsten Sawade, Anna-Lena Schenck, ­Elizabeth Kinnaird, Hanna Wojtkowska, Melissa Boardman, Anna Alves, Delia Hughes, Katharina Heger, Christine Tadros, Davina Askew, Ana Pastori, Lucia Bedia Arizo, Lars Trabant, Hanna Ludolphi, ­Sebastian ­Nossenheim, Philip Mehl, Anja Heller, Tine Redlefsen, Nike und Jule ­O stendarp, Thorben Samuelsson, Bernd Troegeler, Faye Ellen, Ivette ­Chedraui, Jin Park, Gabriela Bareda, Dione Joseph, Ylva Soderlind ­Hargreaves, Hartmut and Lidia Schacker, and Lenka Bujnakova for ensuring that life has not stopped over the years, that there has always been a silver lining and enough chai to last beyond the next page. This book contains material pre-published in Australasian Drama Studies No.73, indicated as Thurow 2018. Permission to publish extracts from the manuscript of I Am Eora (2012) has been generously provided by Wesley Enoch and by arrangement with the Licensor, Anita Heiss, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd.

Introduction

As one of the most productive and vibrant sectors within the Australian performing arts landscape, Indigenous theatre forms part of complex cultural practices that intricately interweave and artistically respond to broader socio-political and historical discourses that over years have shaped the Australian postcolonial narrative. In an emerging and constantly shifting context of national reflection centred on questions of accountability, reconciliation and decolonisation, Indigenous theatre formulates and tests pertinent responses to questions of national as well as international relevance. Proposing new coordinates for cultural orientations, the practice discussed in this book provides a powerful point of articulation for Indigenous conceptions of the nexus between performativity and identity. It does so through sophisticated theatrical languages that interweave age-old performance protocols into a decidedly contemporary fold, fluidly formulating concepts of identity that contribute a compelling field for academic inquiry from a multitude of angles. A range of scholars has already leveraged Theatre Studies approaches to this end, combining them with instruments derived from historical (Casey 2004; 2012a), psychoanalytical (Grehan 2009; 2010) and postcolonial studies (Gilbert 2001; 2013) to document and provide insight into the important reconfigurations performed in Indigenous Australian theatre especially across the past 50 years. While these studies to varying degrees explore performances of identity, they hint at yet do not delve into, for example, the significant impact that cultural protocols and conditions engendered by the devising process as well as the cross-­cultural staging context have on Indigenous Australian theatrical works. In the engagement with Indigenous resources, however, these are important structuring principles that circumscribe and channel the means for creating theatrical work in the first place. Engagement with these and their transformation in the writing and rehearsal process therefore offers indispensable instructional input to an exploration of the staged productions. It allows appraising the works in their cultural context as products of complex negotiations between playwrights, directors and various stakeholders, bespeaking the formation of identity not only on the stage but equally importantly in the

2  Introduction rehearsal room – siting theatrical practice within the broader horizon of art making as a way of mediating multiple subjectivities and cultural vantage points. The following study sheds light on the ways in which Indigeneity is constructed and represented on the professional Australian mainstage, for example pinpointing how cultural protocols have been navigated in the production of particular plays and offering a deconstructive reading of practice from an angle that closely considers the staged performance, yet also the aspirations and navigations that have laid the foundations for it to emerge. By doing so, it centralises the interrogation of production and reception as sites of friction and emergence that have significant bearing on the scope of communication in the first place. The theatrical process is here conceived as a laboratory in which stakeholders come to work through questions of power and colonial legacy, aspiring and often clashing over the formulation of ways of engagement that may enable a more equitable contemporary Australian community. Their responses and aesthetics, as well as their implicit exclusions and contradictions, thereby speak to the major challenges that face the reconciliation of cultural relations in Australia. Consequently, this book provides a window into the thorny exploration of decolonisation, enabling a comprehensive critical appreciation of Indigenous Australian theatre as a complex site of cultural exploration by modelling the intricate web of influences between devising processes, dramaturgies and theatrical languages.

Mapping the field Indigenous cultures in Australia, amid their many differences and specificities, share a strong grounding in performative practice that has been passed on through thousands of generations as a means to convey and preserve complex ontologies and knowledges. Contemporary Indigenous ­Australian theatre helps to reinvigorate these established traditions that form part and parcel of the longest continuing cultures on earth, dating back at least 65.000 years (Clarkson et  al. 2017, p.306). Concurrently, practitioners draw on the tools and expressive capabilities of Western theatrical idioms to articulate Indigeneity in the here and now – forging a space in the public domain for the critical reflection of colonial histories and legacies that continue to affect the Australian society as a whole (Casey 2012a, p.7). As a strongly political practice that targets both Indigenous cultural development as well as the reconfiguration of relations to non-­ Indigenous Australians, contemporary artists frequently emphasise their indebtedness to the social justice campaigners of the 1960s and 1970s who won significant milestones in the struggle for recognition of the injustices committed against Indigenous peoples in Australia under colonial rule, pushing for change on both policy and grassroots levels (Enoch 2001, p.9). Their activism was articulated in overtly theatrical idioms, which provided an affective, publicly visible stage for the reconfiguration of discourses on

Introduction  3 Indigeneity (Casey 2004, p.15). The political cause and its negotiation on stage have underpinned contemporary Indigenous Australian performing arts practice since the very early days of colonisation, having been woven into public performances throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries (Casey 2012b; 2013). From the 1970s onward, a discernible Indigenous Australian theatre sector incubated within various dispersed community-­ led initiatives. In the 1990s, these solidified through institutionalisation into the first Indigenous-run performing arts companies, such as internationally acclaimed Bangarra Dance Company or Melbourne-based Ilbijerri Theatre Co-Operative, pushing into the mainstream Australian cultural landscape. With more artists succeeding in forging sustainable careers, the representation of Indigenous Australian people, cultures and perspectives since the turn of the millennium has greatly diversified, offering compelling avenues for critical enquiry into current practice and the challenges facing the Indigenous Australian performing arts sector today. Yet, even though the inclusion of Indigenous actors, playwrights and directors, as well as awareness of the complex protocols surrounding Indigenous Australian cultural practice have been growing markedly over the past 30 years, a question that has continuously begged attention is how recognition of Indigenous values can be achieved also in qualitative terms, such as, for example, through reflection in production processes and through translation of complex Indigenous ontologies on stage. This book provides insight into the manifold ways in which theatre artists have been addressing this challenge especially over the past two decades, centralising the complex negotiation of Indigenous identities in the conceptualisation, production and staging of theatrical works. It thereby connects to significant studies of the sector presented by, for example, Helen Gilbert or Helena Grehan who discuss historical developments and aesthetic formations in works of the 1970s to early 2000s. Same as these investigations, the present study appraises how artists consciously attempt to employ art in order to rebut negative stereotypes pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, to foster understanding and to convey a positive image of Indigeneity to Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences – critically reflecting the strengths and limitations that accompany these endeavours. The book contributes new knowledge firstly by offering a high-level survey of Indigenous Australian theatre practice since the early 2000s – a field only unevenly covered in existing research. Secondly, it provides in-depth critical analyses of two major theatrical works, deconstructing their configurations of identities in light of their underpinning political and artistic agendas as well as their devising processes. These works are Scott Rankin’s Namatjira (2010) and Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora (2012), which were each devised and produced by leading practitioners in the field aspiring to develop best practice in the mediation of political agendas and engagement with sensitive cultural material in the production process and intercultural staging context. The critical enquiry thereby traces their negotiations of

4  Introduction identity with regard to how Indigeneity is conceptualised, negotiated and expressed – on the level of production and content, as well as more broadly with regard to the structural and aesthetic reflection of socio-political discourses in contemporary Australia. The negotiation of identity was chosen as a primary focus for this exploration as it forms a central topic in the creation of social realities in the 21st century. The pluralistic context of Australian society demonstrates that – as anywhere in the world – identity cannot be conceived in essentialist terms but has become a critical task necessary to be worked through by individuals and communities alike. Accordingly, the theoretical concept of identity underpinning the analysis of theatrical works in this book is informed by postmodern approaches that understand the construction of images of self and other as a dynamic and perpetual assemblage and integration of information garnered through perception and reflection of experience (Horatschek 2004, p.277). This continuous process of negotiation overrides the traditional notion of a stable and essential self that provided the grounds on which many colonial conceptions of Indigeneity had been constructed (Zima 2010, p.xii). In contrast, in the creation of identities, people deploy processes of selection and suppression – positively and negatively defining and moulding their self-images on the basis of physicality, history and embeddedness in social and cultural relations and in constant exchange with their micro, local and global environments (Glomb 1997, p.13). Structurally, coherence and continuity in self-concepts and histories are created by postulating particular experiences and information as formative while backgrounding others (Horatschek 2004, pp.276/77). Such choices in any identity constitution are necessary but also form volatile and unstable foundations that need constant acts of collective narrative reinforcement and suppression (Gerig 2000, p.18). It follows that identity needs to be conceptualised primarily not as something one is but as something one does (de Beauvoir qtd. in Butler 1990, p.11). Indigenous Australian theatrical practice magnifies such processes, centralising the performance of identity formation in light of historical context, celebrating Indigenous cultural resources, yet also communicating through strategic configurations and silences how artists position Indigenous subjects in the Australian space. The choice of case studies for this book has been based on their significance for a definition of Indigenous Australian theatre as it emerges from the widelyaccepted protocols for the production of Indigenous Australian performing arts – first published in written form by the Australia Council for the Arts (2007). These protocols were derived from professional art production contexts and collated in a collaborative effort by Meriam-­Wuthathi copyright lawyer Terri Janke and various Indigenous Australian ­performing arts practitioners. Their definition of Indigenous ­Australian  performing arts practice is premised on comprehensive Indigenous control over the creative and production processes, which are most often firmly grounded

Introduction  5 in a communal context. Given the relatively recent upsurge and increased visibility since the 1980s of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theatre practice within the mainstream Australian performing arts market and the challenges facing the Indigenous Australian theatre sector,1 a lot of work marketed under the readily-used label “Indigenous Australian theatre”, however, has not met the criteria of exclusive Indigenous artistic control. Rather, much work has been created collaboratively with the degree of Indigenous control varying considerably. Hence, for the purpose of this study, I use a broad conceptualisation of the label “Indigenous Australian theatre” and apply it to works which have been (co-)written and (co-) devised with Indigenous Australian people in major artistic control. Consequently, a work written by a non-Indigenous playwright such as Rankin’s Namatjira is included in this study because it was devised with Indigenous people in control of the work, and because it provides valuable insight into the potential and the limitations of cross-­cultural collaboration in the Indigenous Australian theatre sector. The overview of contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre provided in Chapter 2 is necessarily selective and encompasses plays that were produced for broad audiences and performed on the Australian mainstage since the 1970s. As such, the study leaves out of consideration, for example, the long and continuous tradition of Indigenous Australian performing arts practice before and in the first 180 years of colonisation – a field recently mapped by Maryrose Casey (2012b; 2013). Due to the heterogeneity of practice and limited documentation of performance especially of small-scale or community productions, the present study focuses on this particular subset of Indigenous Australian performing arts and critically reflects the poetics of storytelling. It thus complements the work of scholars like Casey, whose insightful body of work elucidates Indigenous Australian performing arts from a carefully reflected and contextualised historical perspective.

Conceptual frame Due to the significant impact of cultural factors on the shape and aesthetics of Indigenous Australian theatre, it is imperative to be cognisant of the context within which this form of theatre is created and staged. Consequently, the following overview sketches important aspects relating to the production, dramaturgies and reception of this practice. Production The cultural protocols for producing Indigenous Australian performing arts require that comprehensive and often time-consuming consultations with the owners of cultural material earmarked for theatrical adaptation take place, in which questions of form, content and credit are to be negotiated (ACA 2007). This process is culturally required as stories in

6  Introduction Indigenous Australian communities are valued as a form of social and cultural currency (Kerwin 2010, p.104). Historically, these precautions are called for as many Indigenous communities have been exploited by non-­ Indigenous researchers and artists who appropriated cultural resources without informed consent, adequate remuneration or artistic credit (ACA 2007). Artists’ respect for community and cultural protocols is expressed, for example, through negotiation with community members regarding copyright of stories, artefacts and choreographies, as well as through taking the time to listen closely to stakeholder expectations and desires. Capacity building is another requirement, with artists often investing into the communities they work with in the form of skill-building that will allow a new generation of theatre artists to emerge from within the respective community (ibid.). Success within the mainstream theatre sector is consequently only one of the benchmarks that Indigenous Australian theatre is measured against today. The connection to community remains of overriding importance and creates a strongly-felt obligation for most Indigenous Australian artists and people involved in creating related performance works (e.g. ­Enoch 2001, p.11; Rankin 2018, p.37). The strong focus on “process”, personal connection and the embeddedness of much professional performance in community arts and cultural development settings underline the two-fold objective of Indigenous Australian theatre: On the one hand, it is to provide a site for multiple voices constructing a counterdiscourse to the prevalent, monolithic conceptions of Indigenous identity and restrictive modes of historiographical narration embedded in the dominant ‘coloniser’ society (Gilbert 2001, p.52) – thus, initiating cross-cultural engagement. On the other hand, it supplies a productive space for Indigenous cultures to be practised, passed on and made visible to diverse audiences (Casey 2012a, p.7). Theatre here is deployed in order to inform about, assert and re-valorise Indigenous voices, stories and knowledges for the special benefit of Indigenous audiences who are invited to identify with the work from intracultural positions, producing a shared cultural memory and identity.2 The theatrical performances studied in this book, hence, form a counterpoint to a concept of “ars gratia artis”: As an interdiscursive practice (Link & LinkHeer 1990, p.97), they engender a highly politicised site for the negotiation of identities in the (post)colonial space.3 The extensive negotiation between artists and community stakeholders has repercussions for the concept of authorship in Indigenous Australian theatre: As the playwright has to accommodate multiple subjectivities, all of whom are involved in the production from text to performance, the script comes to reflect a multiply negotiated understanding of historical contexts and contemporary positions rather than only the playwright’s individual experience and understanding of the content and context (Swain 2010, p.34). This shared authorship represents a radicalised form of conventional theatrical collaboration, which is always characterised by a degree of communal creation – i.e. with a creative team working to realise

Introduction  7 the artistic visions of the playwright and director. In Indigenous Australian theatre, the creative devising process (which oftentimes sees script and staging developed concurrently) is meant to rest on Indigenous values of collaboration. The complexities of such active collaboration between arts professionals and community members in this context must be read as a site at which various parties are stakeholders in the conceptualisation of identities on stage. Many contemporary Indigenous Australian and cross-­ cultural theatre makers, like as Stephen Page, Rachael Maza, Wesley Enoch, Rachel Swain or Scott Rankin, create their works mostly on the traditional homelands (i.e. “Country” – see Chapter 1) of the involved communities, drawing on ­traditional and internationally workshopped concepts of sitespecific performance. As Rachel Swain (Co-Artistic Director of Marrugeku) outlines, this opens up the opportunity to access, layer and mediate ancient and contemporary stories of the specific place and the experiential wealth they communicate (2010, p.53). By moulding varied experiences of a certain place through artistic practice, the performance work ultimately reflects an intersubjective negotiation of place and its meaning with a high degree of local ownership. An important aspect of this approach is that the work does not only render a descriptive understanding of the place on its content plane (by “looking at it”) but that it is borne by historical and local developments “in situ”. Hence, it conceptually echoes the social and spiritual relationships of the place, which define it at the time of the show’s creation (ibid., p.66). Of importance is therefore the question of perspective from which a work is devised: Swain’s model proposes that the artist steeps him- or herself in the geographical and social place and consequently acquires the ability to emulate it in poetic communication, inviting audiences to perceive it on personal and emotional levels as an ambiguous entity in continuous becoming (ibid., p.67). For Swain, theatrical storytelling in such contexts, similar to ritualistic practice, is able to reinforce intergenerational ties by reflecting an emplaced story in both its connection to ancient and contemporary lifeworlds (ibid, p.82). As plays generally draw on public stories that are part of the communal “Jukurrpa” or “­Tjukurpa”  – ‘the accumulated stories [of an Indigenous Australian community] that offer spiritual and life guidance, teach basic living and social skills, inform about family, geography and history, and entertain’ (Klapproth qtd. in Casey 2009, p.128) –, the truth effects which Indigenous Australian theatre generates, especially for local audiences, rate paramount in that they inspire empathy, facilitate an exchange of experience and mediate social bonds (Swain 2010, p.57). In this way, the reworking of a “real” world by means of theatrical collaboration creates a shared space of engagement, understanding and cultural ­practice  – firstly unfolding between the creative team and only secondly shared with the audience. The active involvement of non-Indigenous collaborators in devising and production processes for many stakeholders is a cause for concern because they fear it may overwrite the genesis of intracultural expression with

8  Introduction non-Indigenous conventions and expectations, which would be detrimental to the aspiration of decolonising practice despite the best of intentions (Maza et  al. 2013; Sumner qtd. in Maddox 2018). In  response to this, practitioners like Rankin site their practice in the intercultural field as geared toward genuine engagement with their collaborators and emphasise their dedication to articulating a shared understanding of context that in no way aspires to replace Indigenous-only authored expression (Rankin 2018, p.37). A valid point of contention remains of course that audiences and presenters often do not heed these distinctions and interpret the productions co-authored with non-Indigenous practitioners likewise as “Indigenous theatre”. A consequence of this is not rarely that major theatre companies and venues express preference for collaboratively created works that cater to the established aesthetic standards of Western theatre practice and that it becomes harder to market Indigenous works that sound out alternative forms of expression. Dramaturgy In order to find culturally appropriate points of articulation for Indigenous experiences outside of the binaries created by colonial discourses, theatre artists tend to deploy a range of dramaturgical structures that are interwoven into elaborate aesthetics. Since ‘[f]orm is always a message, […] frequently the most significant message any […] cultural product conveys’ (Tapping qtd. in Tompkins 1993, p.13), the development of distinctly Indigenous theatrical languages is a central concern for many contemporary artists working with Indigenous materials. ‘Bridg[ing] ideas, themes and politics and […] communicat[ing] and represent[ing] [these] in and through the medium of performance’ (Eckersall 2018, p.1), dramaturgies provide the central means through which such development is achieved. Seeking to transcend the operational binary structures of colonial storytelling, many artists attempt to express Indigenous cultural identities on terms that are heedful of but not solely defined by the legacy of colonialism. The case studies in this book identify and deconstruct such approaches for the conceptualisation of identity, offering insight into the complexities and challenges of engendering a decolonised poetics. An outstanding characteristic of most contemporary Indigenous ­Australian theatre is thereby its emphasis and valorisation of multiple, simultaneously used modes of expression other than the spoken word (i.e. dance, music, painting, etc.), ‘commingl[ing] intimacy and alterity’ (Eckersall qtd. in Swain 2010, p.108) which the spectator has to navigate in order to make sense of a work. For example, dance enables and relates an experience of embodied subjectivity and can open a space for communication beyond constrictive linguistic codes. In its non-verbal, yet culturally coded form of communication, it can counter the dominance of the spoken (often English) word (Gilbert 2001, p.72). While the expressiveness of the body invites identification and empathising, its lingering otherness continues to engender friction because

Introduction  9 the interpretation of non-linguistic codes remains bound up with arbitrary cultural signification.4 Furthermore, much Indigenous Australian performance breaks with the fourth wall structure of Western theatrical forms, often prefacing shows with adaptations of “Welcome to Country” ceremonies and explicitly inviting the audience in attendance to enter into a narratological pact. Oftentimes, this is done by having actors begin by highlighting their role of storyteller through meta-commentary before stepping into character proper to cater to cultural protocol and to establish personal rapport and to emphasise the role of accountable addressee for the audience. A “Welcome to Country” ceremony is usually performed by representatives of a community for visitors to their traditional homelands, announcing a new presence to the spirits of the Country while concurrently emphasising political claim to the land. In the theatrical context, this dramaturgical feature links into a broader framework of Indigenous Australian cultural practice: In traditional performance settings, the concept of spectator is often levelled out and supplanted by a circular model, which sees people reciprocating stories and associated energies in a personal, binding exchange (Enoch 2001, p.12). Performance, if referring to this special context of sharing through storytelling, must consequently be considered not only in its artistic but also in its implied socio-political import – as entertainment yet also as an event that produces a responsibility to reciprocate. In terms of theatrical aesthetics, the dramaturgical approach of breaking the fourth wall here relates to the epic theatre tradition as theorised by Berthold Brecht (1965; 1999). In Indigenous Australian theatre, reference to the extra-theatrical reality is often especially marked and integral to the conceptualisation of many plays: By way of alienating effects (i.e. a narrator who comments on the action via direct audience address), the spectator is repeatedly reminded that s/he is witnessing a construction of fictional reality that relates to a historical context that s/he is directly implicated in due to her/his own emplacement in the Australian space. As in Brecht’s conception of theatre, audience members are actively encouraged to develop an attitude toward the action shown on stage (be it rejection, approval or curiosity) and to critically reflect on the analogies drawn. While a contentious aspect in Brechtian political theatre, the seductive power of identification with characters on the stage is extensively exploited in Indigenous Australian theatre to elicit empathy and to prime audiences toward social change. Brecht himself rejected the notion of empathetic identification because for him identification with characters leads to a kind of immersion that may cloud the viewer’s critical judgement (1965, p.57). Scholars like David Krasner, however, have since vindicated identification as a central pillar for the elicitation of empathy in the theatrical context (2006, pp.258–71), formulating the nexus between identification (assuming the other’s perspective), compassion (considering the other’s plight in light of judgements of value), sympathy (allowing emotional synchrony with the actors) and understanding (despite empathetic identification the spectator

10  Introduction retains her/his critical judgement) as a roadmap to configuring empathy as a way of knowing (ibid., p.258). The question of identification and empathising becomes important to the study of Indigenous Australian plays especially with regard to non-­ Indigenous audiences: By interrogating fundamental principles of human experience, a play can work to suspend the alienating racial divide, which characterises the discourse on cultural relations and leads to much complacency in contemporary Australia. It can invite non-Indigenous audiences to perceive Indigenous subjects from an angle that stresses similarities rather than difference and thereby work to balance the oftenone-sided presentation of Indigenous Affairs in the Australian public. The syncretising of Indigenous Australian and Western theatrical forms and the layering of emotional registers with political content assist this agenda by triggering complex feelings in the spectator (Grehan 2009, pp.64/65). For example, once empathy is established, shame is often used as a critical conduit to further introspection: As a response specific to the subject (i.e. audience member), it manifests a process of self-recognition in which suppressed information can be reintegrated into the self-concept, ideally resulting in a heightened feeling of responsibility for the other (ibid., p.65). Theatre makers hereby skirt a fine line between eliciting critical reflection and short-­circuiting to co-opt identification for political persuasion: Many artists deploy techniques of documentary and political theatre, i.e. using historical source material such as documentary film or audio footage, verbatim quotations from historical records, photographic material, providing opportunities for engagement outside of the performance space or having a person on stage who is historically connected to the story told. For example, in Namatjira descendants of famed watercolour artist Albert Namatjira paint live on stage, while in I Am Eora, real-life politician Linda Burney performs as herself, reciting her maiden speech to the New South Wales Parliament. These strategies support an effect of perceived immediacy, authenticity and urgency in the representation of social issues. While to a large extend being used to raise awareness of the pervasiveness and inherent “constructedness” of non-Indigenous historiography and its long tradition of silencing marginalised voices, the dramaturgical arrangement, however, often works in complex ways to once again suppress this reflective mode in order to give more credence to an Indigenous perspective on a given issue. The effect of immediacy, or consciously devised authenticity, here can have a strong seductive power to elicit emotional responses from audience members, clouding the reflection of a work in terms of seeing it as one more (as opposed to “finally the one true”) contribution to a larger discourse on Australian historiography (Brecht 1965, p.57). I argue from my personal experience of talking to audience members after shows and reading through reviews of plays, that the conflicted attitude of many Settler Australian patrons toward the colonial legacy and their frequent lack of direct personal engagement with Indigenous Australian people cultivates a receptive mode in which the strong desire to make amends for the atrocious colonial past

Introduction  11 often leads to an avoidance of critical reflection of Indigenous Australian and intercultural artistic performance works and the representations of history and constructs of Indigeneity therein. Irrespective of the activated emotional register, audiences in Indigenous Australian theatre are constantly drawn into the meaning-making process. Since much theatre forsakes unification of a narrative into a well-formed plot, often favouring fragmentarity and ambiguity, audience members are called upon to bring their personal meaning-making frameworks to the interpretation of the stage action (Swain 2010, pp.69/70). The dominant dramaturgical approaches in Indigenous Australian theatre here intersect with aspects of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s notion of ‘postdramatic theatre’ (2006), giving space to the translation of Indigenous conceptions of time as multilayered and non-linear. An effect of temporal suspension is, for example, created through the use of disjunct vignettes, the framing of everyday events within mythological contexts or open-ended and associative storytelling, which counteract the values of linearity, rationality and objectivity that have long dominated Western theatre and epistemology (Maufort 2003, p.196). The dramaturgical calibration of time in combination with other markers of Indigeneity (e.g. traditional choreography, recurrent allusions to the Dreaming, mythical characters, etc.) additionally invests works with a decidedly Indigenous Australian aesthetic that ruptures the Western theatrical and dialectical format of linear time in favour of asserting Indigenous Australian understandings of being-in-the-world. Temporal and spatial representations in much contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre are often closely coupled: The representation of Country (e.g. through visual images, use of metaphor, repetition of indexical phrases, synesthetic layering, set design or choreography) can effect a blending of the spatial and temporal matrix, which may evoke a sense of Indigenous Australian assertion of being and remaining in place. For example, by recasting time as a property of place, Rankin in Ngapartji Ngapartji (2006) privileges an Indigenous Australian cosmology, deriving an ethical call on the audience from a shift of focus to lateral spatial connection rather than linear temporal progression (Gilbert 2013, pp.204ff) – a strategy that Enoch and Heiss similarly adapt in I Am Eora for their conceptualisation of the Eora Nation. This dramaturgical approach instates place as the centre from which energy radiates in a cyclical movement – a concept, which reflects the seemingly paradoxical Western Aranda belief of the ‘simultaneous presence of an Ancestor’ (Muecke 2004, pp.16/17). In light of this implication of place as the paramount touchstone for identity practice, it is of critical importance to closely consider the representation of “place” in any reading of Indigenous artistic practice. Reception Theatre provides a powerful platform for explorations of identity because its strength resides in a capability of performative subject-constitution.

12  Introduction As  researchers like Elizabeth Ferrier highlight ‘[performing on stage] allows the colonized to position themselves as speaking, moving subjects rather than as manipulable objects’ (qtd. in Gilbert 2001, pp.66/67). The presentation of the body and the spoken word on stage therefore always constitutes an act of power in which a subject asserts itself in the moment of physical expression. Irrespective of the lack of control in terms of audience reception, the act of assuming a voice in a public forum creates a dialogical context where formerly the monologism of mainstream culture prevailed. This opportunity is used in plays to rewrite history from a marginalised perspective, to affirm and celebrate Indigenous cultures and survival, to provide a public platform for Indigenous knowledges, and to imbue the slowmoving reconciliation process with new vigour on Indigenous terms. In the performing arts, audience members are forced to face the difference of the other on stage – as opposed to the private, subjective encounter facilitated through written texts that a reader navigates on his or her own terms (Gilbert 2001, p.85). Theatre therefore provides a fertile ground for studying the active constitution of Indigeneity in that it is always already embedded in a communicative, social context in the moment of its performance, different from the contemplative, private encounter established in the visual arts or in literature. Due to its ephemeral nature, the medium further lends itself as a test-bed for the decolonial project because it can provide a strategic platform for oral cultures to become visible on adequate terms in a public realm usually dominated by the written word (ibid., pp.82/92). The performance context restores the topology of Indigenous Australian texts as performance pieces and enables their appreciation as rich and complex entities (ibid., p.82). The analysis of the plays and their concepts of Indigeneity in this book provides insights on a meta-textual level into how identity is negotiated in a specific context – namely in particular artistic instances, in a particular place, at a particular point in time. What it does not intend to do (and cannot do) is draw inferences about the constitution of Indigenous identity in contemporary Australia. For once, such a global notion would resist description and unification because it would have to account for every expression of every person identifying as Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander today. On the other hand, it would reinforce a colonial notion of Indigeneity that wrongly assumes homogeneity of culture and experience, which has never existed on Australian soil. Before the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and the onset of colonisation, over 250 different language groups (or “nations”) inhabited the Australian continent (McKay 2011, p.297) – groups that did not conceive of themselves as “Indigenous” but as distinct people such as “Gadigal”, “Wiradjuri”, “Pitjantjatjara”, “Ngarluma”, “Meriam”, etc. These nations were recognised within the social and political realm as distinct from one another with their own languages, customs and laws (Casey 2012a, pp.8–10). Only as a result of the European invasion and the suffering caused by it, did these nations develop something remotely

Introduction  13 akin to a pan-Indigenous Australian identity (Mudrooroo 1995, p.17). The extensively documented rift in Australian society between Indigenous and Settler Australians – perpetuated by lack of open and direct engagement with one another – has become a breeding ground for constructions of the other that have often reflected idiosyncratic desires and fears rather than shared lived experience (Langton 2003, p.119). The colonial structure has for the past 230+ years privileged non-Indigenous discourses over Indigenous expressions of identity and effectively marginalised, silenced and attempted to erase alternative knowledges (Morrissey 2007, pp.65/66). The plays studied here were created with an acute awareness of this context and work to assert Indigenous identities against the established discourses which have rendered Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders often voiceless and object of non-Indigenous inquiry in mainstream discourses. In today’s Australia, the asymmetrical (post)colonial distribution of power is only beginning to dismantle which makes the study of Indigenous Australian theatre as an active agent in this shifting discourse an especially interesting object of study. Representing subjectivities that explore idiosyncratic forms of Indigenous Australian expression, all discussed plays work toward (re)defining what Indigenous Australian identity (and theatre) was, is and might be. Historically, Indigenous Australian performing arts in mainstream critical imaginations have been narrowly defined and circumscribed by arbitrary notions of authenticity, which extended only to traditional ceremonial formats, expected to be presented by a cast conforming to the severely limited stereotype created by early anthropology of a “real” Indigenous Australian person as being of very dark skin colour, broad-nosed, skinny-legged, etc. Thus, constructs of authenticity and their underlying normative assumptions have been powerful inhibitors to the inclusion of much of the lived reality of Indigenous Australian people on the mainstage (Casey 2012a, pp.11ff). The theatrical works considered in this study directly respond to this history of marginalisation and create positions that break open the narrow, arbitrary binary of “tradition” (supposedly authentic) and “modernity” (supposedly inauthentic). They do so by emphasising their status as cultural practices that provide cultural orientation and by underscoring the genesis of modern cultural expression from traditional systems as well as contemporary influences. Within this framework, Indigenous cultures are conceptualised as adaptive and evolving systems, whose coordinates are also informed by what scholars like Homi Bhabha and Stephen Muecke term “multiple modernities”. These denote culturally particularised discourse formations developed also in relation to and against the Western projects of Enlightenment and colonisation (Bhabha 1994, p.171; Muecke 2004, p.5). Reflecting the particularities and evolving trajectories of specific peoples, this conceptual framing (along with Bhabha’s notion of a ‘third space’; Bhabha qtd. in Rutherford 1990, pp.211–20) enables accounting for the diversity of affiliations and modes of expression for fragmented

14  Introduction contemporary  identities. It  affords the means to push the boundaries of received discourse structures in order to orientate critical approaches toward the present constitution of the (post)colonial space – rather than reflecting an established, normative (i.e. restrictive) understanding of this space along the parameters set for its exploration in the past (Scott 2005, p.385). Broadly speaking, what comes to be known long-term as tradition in this view is mediated on the one hand through the cultural archive; on the other hand, through the practice shaped by contemporary experience and knowledge. Consequently, “authenticity” as a category of reception becomes redundant to an engagement with Indigenous Australian theatre practice because performing arts are understood as a cultural activity that constitutes a de-­ essentialised means for reflection and existential orientation, overriding the colonial conception of Indigenous cultures as monolithic and unchanging. The identification and problematisation of cultural vantage points (i.e. the “positionality” of the spectator) in the reception of and engagement with Indigenous cultural practice has led to a debate about appropriate critical approaches to scholarly analyses of Indigenous performance works. As most scholars in the field have a non-Indigenous background, such work (including this book) is predictably written from a position of amplified cultural difference5 that cannot generate an analysis of identity from within the specific cultural context that the respective theatre works represent. Instead, it engages with works from a critically reflected hermeneutic angle, approaching and elucidating the theatrical work through a crosscultural lens, thereby participating in what Wiradjuri and Bidjara scholar Marcia Langton terms the ‘dialogical, discursive creation of Aboriginality’, which is conceived as ‘a field of intersubjectivity […] remade over and over again in a process of dialogue, of imagination, of representation and interpretation’ (2003, p.119). While informed criticism must be premised on an extended knowledge base,6 a scholar here also has to consider the normative assumptions inherent in any theoretical framework brought to the analysis of a play because these set the parameters for what can become known through examination and what will necessarily remain outside the scholar’s scope of enquiry. Whiteness Studies scholars like Aileen MoretonRobinson (Quandamooka) point out that any theoretical framework used by academics is culturally inflected and can only partially be universalised to generate knowledge about other cultures (2011, p.413). Consequently, Indigenous and non-Indigenous epistemologies need to be taken into account and mediated in an analysis of Indigenous theatre practice (ibid., pp.422/23). An example of a problematic normative assumption, which scholars such as Bhabha identified in the identity discourse as led across Western institutions is its reliance on binaries rather than continua for the conceptualisation of identity (qtd. in Rutherford 1990, pp.220/21). For example, if negotiations of identity on stage are solely analysed with recourse to a sociological model that is premised on the centrality and inherent opposition of the individual to its community, then a scholar is able to account for only a fraction of the

Introduction  15 complexity that characterises contemporary Indigenous Australian identity formations, which are predominantly centred around communal values. Hence, such interpretation would fall short of investigating precisely those aspects of identity practices that bespeak a form of agency in Indigenous contexts. Equally, an analysis of production aesthetics can falter if culturally determined protocols are left out of consideration. For example, the weighting of performance values can differ quite extensively between Western and Indigenous performance contexts and result in an assessment of the performance as falling short of professionalism, when in fact it was trying to give precedence to the emulation of Indigenous performance traditions. To illustrate: Watching Enoch’s Kungkarangkalpa: Seven Sisters Songline (2013) at its premiere at the National Museum in Canberra, the a-synchronicity of dancers and singers considered together with the failing of sound equipment and light provision added to an impression of lack in preparation, when in fact the a-synchronicity was indebted to the style of traditional “inma” ceremonies. The book is structured in the following way: Chapter 1 provides a concise and selective overview of the cultural and historical context often raised in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre practice in order to assist the reader in appreciating the performative interventions staged in the discussed plays. Chapter 2 surveys the history of the contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre sector, concisely reviewing existing studies, yet first and foremost discussing significant developments in the past two decades to close a significant gap in research. Chapter 3 and 4 elaborate these discussions, providing close investigations of two case studies that shed light on some of the major challenges arising in the negotiation of Indigeneity on the contemporary Australian mainstage. The conclusion lastly reflects on the study’s adopted approach, relating it to previous work undertaken in the academic field and discusses the study’s findings in the context of today’s Indigenous Australian theatre sector.

Notes 1 e.g. lack of sustainable funding and mid-career support (Evans 2010, pp.6/8), shortage of trained Indigenous Australian technical staff and producers (ibid., p.9), application of inadequate frames for analysis by non-Indigenous critics (Casey 2004, p.15), etc. 2 Denoting here a position of varying potential identification, ranging from the term extending to audiences from the same community as the artists (hence, a “truly” intracultural relation) to, in its broadest application, audience and cast sharing only their identity as Indigenous people whilst stemming from geographically and culturally heterogeneous backgrounds. In the latter case, the term “intracultural” refers to a pan-Indigenous experience of colonisation, which arguably alters the receptive categories along which an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous person will make sense of a given performance. 3 The spelling of this phrase is to reflect a critical view of Australia’s status as a nation in the process of decolonisation: While reconciliation has been adopted

16  Introduction as an official policy approach since the 1990s, these efforts have thus far not resulted in a significant increase of Indigenous representation in government institutions, nor in a marked improvement of socio-demographic indicators for Indigenous people, such as health, housing, life-expectancy, education, etc. (McLean 1998). 4 The non-universal codification of the body and its expressive repertoire was poignantly highlighted in a post-show Q&A of Lemi Ponifasio’s work Stones in her Mouth (Sydney – Carriageworks, May 2014), when an audience member commented on what she perceived to have been an evocative expression of anger displayed in one of the show’s vignettes – a reading the director instantly rejected as misreading the scene’s emotional quality. 5 In this case, from a position that is female, White, middle-class, German-­ Australian and academically sited within European Literary, Theatre, Performance and Cultural Studies. 6 The research for this book and most of its conceptualisation and writing took place in Australia, wherever possible in dialogical exchange with the artists involved in creating and staging the plays discussed in the case study chapters.

References Australia Council for the Arts (ACA) 2007, Protocols for producing Indigenous Australian performing arts, Australia Council for the Arts, Surry Hills, viewed 13 September 2018, www.australiacouncil.gov.au/symphony/extension/­richtext_ redactor/getfile/?name=42f208904890560b1eb1194724637ee6.pdf Bhabha, H 1994, The location of culture, Routledge, London. Brecht, B 1999, Schriften zum Theater, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. ——— 1965, Messingknauf dialoges, trans. J Willett, Methuen, London. Butler, J 1990, Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity, Routledge, New York. Casey, M 2013, ‘Colonists, settlers and Aboriginal Australian war cries: cultural performance and economic exchange’, Performance Research, vol.18, no.2, pp.56–66. ——— 2012a, Telling stories: Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander performance, Australian Scholarly, North Melbourne. ——— 2012b, Bungaree and the grand corroboree: ‘white fellow sit down all about, black fellow murry miserable’, About Performance, vol.11, pp.185–200. ——— 2009, ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji: telling Aboriginal Australian stories’, in A ­Forsyth & C Megson (eds.), Get real: documentary theatre past and present, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp.122–37. ——— 2004, Creating frames: contemporary Indigenous theatre 1967–1990, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. Clarkson, C, Jacobs, Z, Marwick, B, Fullagar, R, Wallis, L, Smith, M, Roberts, R, Hayes, E, Lowe, K, Carah, X, Florin, A, McNeil, J, Cox, D, Arnold, L, Hua, Q, Huntley, J, Brand, H, Manne, T, Fairbairn, A, Shulmeister, J, Lyle, L, S­ alinas, M, Page,  M, Connell,  K, Park,  G, Norman,  K, Murphy, T & Pardoe, C 2017, ‘Human occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 years ago’, Nature, vol.547, pp.306–10. Eckersall, P 2018, ‘On dramaturgy to make visible’, Performance Research, vol.23, no.4/5, pp.241–43.

Introduction  17 Enoch, W 2001, ‘‘We want hope’: the power of Indigenous arts in Australia today’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.38, pp.4–15. Enoch, W & Heiss, A 2012, I am Eora, unpublished manuscript supplied by arrangement with the Licensor, Anita Heiss, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd, Sydney. Evans, M 2010, ‘The courage to speak out’, in Wilin Centre (ed.), Courageous conversations: national talking circle, Wilin Centre, Melbourne, pp.5–10. Gerig, K 2000, Fragmentarität: Identität und Textualität bei Margaret Atwood, Iris Murdoch und Doris Lessing, Narr, Tübingen. Gilbert, H 2013, ‘Indigeneity, mobility and the cosmopolitics of postcolonial belonging in the atomic age’, Interventions, vol.15, no.2, pp.195–210. ——— 2001, Sightlines: race, gender, and nation in contemporary Australian theatre, 4th edition, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Glomb, S 1997, Erinnerung und Identität im britischen Gegenwartsdrama, Narr, Tübingen. Grehan, H 2010, ‘Aboriginal performance: politics, empathy and the question of reciprocity’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.56, pp.38–52. ——— 2009, Performance, ethics and spectatorship in a global age, Palgrave ­Macmillan, New York. Horatschek, AM 2004, ‘Persönliche Identität’, in A Nünning (ed.), Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie, 3rd edition, Metzler, Stuttgart, pp.276/77. Kerwin, D 2010, Aboriginal Dreaming paths and trading routes, Sussex Academic, Toronto. Krasner, D 2006, ‘Empathy and theater’, in D Krasner & D Saltz (eds.), Staging philosophy: intersections of theater, performance and philosophy, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, pp.255–76. Langton, M 2003, ‘Aboriginal art and film:  the politics of representation’, in M  Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, pp.109–24. Lehmann, HT 2006, Postdramatic theatre, Routledge, London. Link, J & Link-Heer, U 1990, ‘Diskurs/Interdiskurs und Literaturanalyse’, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, vol.20, no.77, pp.88–99. Maddox, G 2018, ‘Indigenous playwright: Australian theatre is ‘whitesplaining’ stories’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2018, viewed 2 April 2019, www. smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/indigenous-playwright-australian-­theatre-iswhitesplaining-stories-20180726-p4zttw.html Maufort, M 2003, Transgressive itineraries. Postcolonial hybridizations of dramatic realism, Peter Lang, Brussels. Maza, R, Milroy, D, Morrison, K, Harvey, J, Harvey, M, Maza, L, Mullaley, E, Drandic, I, Hart, C, Schnaars, M, West, A, Watson, T, Lui, N, James, A, Kinchela, C, Copperwaite, F, Dallas Law, S, Sainsbury, L, Tamiru, J & Enoch, W 2013, RECOMMENDATION for need to develop a best practice model in the making of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander work, discussion paper produced at the Australian Theatre Forum, 31 May 2013, viewed 3 June 2016, www.australiantheatreforum.com.au/wpcontent/uploads/2014/05/ATF_­ RECOMMENDATION_Best_Practice_Model.pdf McKay, G 2011, ‘Policy and Indigenous languages in Australia’, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, vol.34, no.3, pp.297–319.

18  Introduction McLean, I 1998, ‘Post-colonial: return to sender’, Australian Humanities ­Review, vol.12, viewed 13 September 2018, http://australianhumanitiesreview. org/1998/12/01/post-colonial-return-to-sender/ Moreton-Robinson, A 2011, ‘The White man’s burden: patriarchal White epistemic violence and Aboriginal women’s knowledges within the academy’, A ­ ustralian Feminist Studies, vol.26, no.70, pp.413–31. Morrissey, P 2007, ‘Dancing with shadows: erasing Aboriginal self and sovereignty’, in A Moreton-Robinson (ed.), Sovereign subjects: Indigenous sovereignty matters, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, pp.65–74. Mudrooroo 1995, Us Mob. History, culture, struggle: an introduction to Indigenous Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney. Muecke, S 2004, Ancient and modern: time, culture and Indigenous philosophy, UNSW Press, Sydney. Rankin, S 2018, Cultural justice and the right to thrive, Currency House, ­Strawberry Hills. ——— 2012, Namatjira: written for the Namatjira family (Aranda) & Ngapartji Ngapartji: written for Trevor Jamieson (Pitjantjatjara), Currency Press, ­Strawberry Hills. Rutherford, J 1990, Identity. community, culture, difference, Lawrence & ­Wishart, London. Scott, D 2005, ‘The social construction of postcolonial studies’, in A Loomba (ed.), Postcolonial studies and beyond, Duke University Press, Durham, pp.385–400. Swain, R 2010, Ways of listening, doctoral thesis, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne. Tompkins, J 1993, ‘History/history/histories:  resisting the binary in Aboriginal drama’, Kunapipi, vol. 15, no.1, pp.6–14. Zima, PV 2010, Theorie des Subjekts, 3rd edition, A Francke, Tübingen.

1 Cultural and historical context

The following chapter outlines some of the historical context that continues to impact on cultural relations in Australia to this day. Contemporary Indigenous Australian and intercultural theatre, in part an offspring form of political protest and social justice movements, intricately engages with this history by promoting Indigenous historiographies. It gives room to and creates avenues to reflect on Indigenous experiences within the larger Australian space, modelling identities that allow for new visions of the country’s past, present and future.

Cultural relations in Australia The historiography concerning cultural relations in Australia has especially over the past 30 years become a highly contested, polarising discourse that continues to hold a very prominent position in the Australian public domain. As an interdiscourse, the theatre practice discussed in this book taps deeply into these ongoing discussions (Link & Link-Heer 1990, p.97). It makes express reference to events of the national past and centres on their repercussions for individuals and communities in the present. Familiarity with cornerstones of the history of cultural relations in Australia enables a deeper appreciation of this dimension of contemporary Indigenous ­Australian theatre practice and the identity work developed therein. Naturally, the portrayal of the historical context here is limited in its scope and depth. Readers interested in more comprehensive representations of Australian history may want to refer to the work of historians like Paul Carter (1987) for more extensive discussions of the historical and political context surrounding cultural relations in Australia. Engagement with the past links concepts of nationhood and national identity to questions of accountability and ethics. Under colonial rule, Australian historiography has been characterised by a strong tendency to ameliorate the colonisation of the continent and to forge a sense of belonging for the young nation by way of promoting national unity and fraternity of British description, leaving out other (e.g. Indigenous) experiences of living on Australian land (Attwood 2005, pp.1/4). The anthropologist

20  Cultural and historical context W.E.H. Stanner in turn coined the phrase ‘the Great Australian Silence’ to refer to the lack of reflection of what the settling of the land has meant for the Indigenous population (1991, p.25). Their image, if at all present, was functionalised in the national narrative to heighten a notion of White moral supremacy and Western forms of civilisation (Anderson 2003, p.45). Stanner pointed out that the dispossession and continued marginalisation of Indigenous Australian people, however, have continuously disrupted the national narrative and need to be addressed in order to build a strong foundation for an Australian national identity (1991, pp.27–29). This claim is confirmed by the continuous resurgence of “reconciliation” as a prime topic in contemporary Australian public debates. As a process that cannot fall back on ready-made templates, reconciliation is now being defined through negotiations between multiple interest groups and stakeholders who advocate for very different concepts and visions of what was and what is to be intended and achieved (e.g. Liddle 2014; Pearson 1999; Windschuttle 2000). The conceptualisation of the categories “Indigenous” and “Settler Australian” are powerful instruments in this discourse because they function as tools for inclusion or exclusion of certain people, which can either increase or diminish Indigenous political agency. As Michael Dodson (Yawuru) outlines, Indigenous Australian identity has always been subject to changing definitions, which are intimately linked to their historical context and to the intentions of the people who have used them (2003, pp.32/33) – be it the definitions employed by Indigenous communities themselves to determine who is eligible to claim belonging, those by successive governments to justify policies and treatment of Indigenous people, or those drawn on by critics to assess Indigenous arts practice. The power to define, however, has not been equally distributed: Over the past 230+ years, Settler Australian stakeholders have been invested with substantial power to distribute ideas about Indigenous Australian identity on national as well as international platforms. Their definitions and ideas significantly shaped cultural relations on the continent, contributing to the creation of stereotypes and prejudices among the Australian population that continue to pervade much of the lived realities and discourse surrounding Indigenous Affairs today. Images that have been circulated range from the dark-skinned, half-naked noble savage and primeval child of humanity (ibid., pp.34/36) to the stigmatisation of Indigenous Australian people as passive or violent drunkards living on the outskirts of urban centres (Anderson 2003, p.49; Sumner qtd. in Maddox 2018), among other misleading, homogenising and essentialising narratives. In tandem with a range of severe regulatory structures imposed on the Indigenous population throughout colonisation, those popular representations have had a devastating impact on self-images among many Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and, in a self-reinforcing cycle, have worked to undermine pride in Indigenous heritage (ibid., pp.49–51). As a result of colonisation, a lot of Indigenous

Cultural and historical context  21 cultural capital has been lost over the years, with ritualistic practices discontinued, many Indigenous languages extinct or critically endangered (Walsh 2005, p.2) and many cultural artefacts scattered across the globe (Langton 2003a, p.81). Contemporary Indigenous arts practice works in and against this context, aiming to recuperate, reinvigorate and develop cultural resources. It provides a platform to Indigenous voices that coarticulate heritage, contemporary experience and visions for a better future (Casey 2012, p.7). The arts are used as an empowering tool that can boost self-esteem and engagement as well as initiate interaction among different groups in a space that is both political but due to its communicative structures also to a degree sheltered from the forceful debates in the public sphere. In the arts as well as in other sectors, multiple images of Indigenous identity and Indigenous voices have been emerging which open up the former homogenising narratives. As Marcia Langton (Wiradjuri, Bidjara) points out, “the creation of ‘Aboriginality’1 is not a fixed thing, it is created from our histories. It arises from the intersubjectivity of black and white in a dialogue” (2003b, p.118) – ­emphasising the shared production of knowledge in the public sphere. Langton and others stress that it is of utmost importance in this intercultural process that the heterogeneity of Indigenous Australia is foregrounded and that essentialising definitions are abandoned in favour of flexible notions that remain conscious of the dynamic social fabrication of identities (e.g. Langton 2003b, p.116; Casey 2005, pp.204/05; Paradies 2006, pp.361–63). A  strong concern voiced by many Indigenous people in light of measures designed to open the discourse on national identity to more inclusion and heterogeneity is that such endeavours may not be actual indicators of an earnest engagement with reconciliation but instead only manifest a temporary stage in a neo-colonial discourse formation that eventually will curtail Indigenous participation and agency once again (i.e. merely allowing for a symbolical but essentially tokenistic inclusion). Apprehension is expressed that the emerging self-representations of Indigenous people will again be utilised in a fossilising manner to invest only a certain definition of Aboriginality with legitimacy (Dodson 2003, pp.39/40). With this concern in mind, the strong focus on identity in most Indigenously-led discourse can be read as an active antidote to such tendencies. It marks a shift in power relations as Indigenous people increasingly create, promote and regulate the market of their representations in the mainstream public sphere – effectively creating a counterweight to the dominant historiographic frames.

Indigenous Australian ontologies and cultural practice Historians estimate that Aboriginal people have lived on the Australian mainland for over 65,000 years – making Aboriginal Australian cultures the longest continuing cultures in the world (Clarkson et al. 2017, p.306). The peoples indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands in the far North of

22  Cultural and historical context the continent are of Melanesian descent and are believed to have settled there for centuries before British colonisation (Bourke 1998, p.175). Their cultures are distinct from mainland ones and bear commonalities with Papuan and South-East Asian as well as Australian Aboriginal cultures. Because of those differences, the two groups are commonly referred to separately. With regard to the terminology used in this study, “Indigenous Australian” is used as a cover term for both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ­people, while “Indigenous” is used when an international context is entailed. I opt to use the term “Indigenous” rather than “First Nation People” or “Blackfella” because in my interpretation “Indigenous” seems the most open term, whereas the other two, even though politically more feasible and used by Indigenous people for self-reference (Pascoe 2008, p.6), highlight particular aspects of discourses surrounding political issues in ­Australia (e.g. land rights) that in their particularised focus feel too limiting to leverage the broader scope needed for this study. Before the arrival of the first European settlers in 1788, about 250 different nations existed on the continent (Walsh 2005, p.1). The adoption of the concept of “nation” here may be read as a reflection of the crosscultural negotiation of Indigenous rights under the state of colonisation, seeking to achieve recognition of sovereignty by articulating Indigenous identity within available political frameworks. Pre-colonial Indigenous identifications have been structured in culturally distinctive ways and under colonialism have been translated (with the attendant loss and distortion of particularity) into Western concepts in order to gain political traction in the fight for land rights and recognition of sovereignty. Scholars and activists like Irene Watson (Tanganekald, Meintangk Boandik) problematise such a formulation and negotiation of Indigenous causes in Western conceptual domains (e.g. 1997, pp.54ff – for further discussion see Chapter 4). Keeping these contextual connotations in mind, I will nevertheless deploy the term “nation” in this study for ease of signification. Demographically, Australia’s pre-colonial Indigenous nations had been made up of approximately 600 to 1.500 people (Bonner 1997, p.1), who in turn lived in smaller sub-groups, with clans in more arid regions moving across their country in sync with the seasons, while those in fertile lands often led sedentary lives and practiced forms of agriculture (Pascoe 2014). Linguists estimate that Indigenous Australian people spoke approximately 250 distinct languages with many dialects differentiating those (Walsh 2005, p.1). Evidence can be found that, despite territorial division, communication was frequent between nations with people speaking several languages, often marrying outside their clans and maintaining cultural and economic links to neighbouring groups (Rumsey 1993, p.195). Trade and exchange with visitors from Asia and Europe were also common and speak against a falsely assumed seclusion, which has underpinned arguments that interpret cultural developments and adaptation since the onset of colonisation as progressive cultural disintegration of Indigenous Australian cultures (Pascoe 2008, p.6).

Cultural and historical context  23 Over the course of millennia, Indigenous Australian peoples have adapted to their environment in intricate ways, surviving large-scale climate change and forging a distinctive relationship with the land (Cane 2002, p.157; Hamacher & Norris 2011, p.282). The history and nature of this relationship with the land are captured in stories of what came to be known in the English language as the “Dreaming”. The term was first coined by anthropologists as a translation from Indigenous words such as Western Aranda ‘Altyerrenge’ (Morton 2000, p.10) or Warlpiri ‘Jukurrpa’ (Wierzbicka & Goddard 2015, p.44), which integrate semantic features of Western concepts such as ‘dreaming’, ‘story’ and ‘law’ (Stanner qtd. in Morton 2000, p.10; Sometimes 2008, p.41). All these ideas are important for a translation of the underpinning concept: The Dreaming encapsulates an ontological framework that is based on a non-linear notion of time in which past, present and future are spliced (Hume 2002, p.38), prompting Stanner to offer the alternative term ‘everywhen’ to elucidate some of the ideas expressed in accounts of the Dreaming (2009, p.57): The past is not envisioned as something final and closed but as something live and pervasive (Hume 2002, p.27). The present is also assigned a different quality than in Western notions of time because it is conceived as firmly integrated with the course of the universe (Muecke qtd. in Swain 2010, p.61), which is conceptualised as a harmonious whole that is maintained through ritualistic practice in the present for the future to come (Rose, James & Watson 2003, p.3). The future is seen as guaranteed and provided for through an intricate kinship system that binds people into a close relationship with creation and in particular to designated areas of the land (Muecke qtd. in Swain 2010, p.61). People are invested with rights to and responsibilities for particular stretches of land – hence the lawsemantics in concepts of the Dreaming (Morton 1992, pp.28/29; Swain 2010, pp.64/65). These duties are oriented toward maintaining the cycle of nature and its healthy status quo that is sustained by ceremonial practice (Rose 2007, pp.41/42). Hence in being on the land, people have generally not sought to radically alter or invasively manipulate creation but rather to adapt sustainably to the environment. Different from biblical exegesis, traditional Indigenous Australian mythologies do not call on humanity to attain dominion over creation (Paulson 1996, pp.89/90), which in turn has wide-ranging repercussions for the overall way of relating to the world and for concepts of man with regard to agency and subject status. As all the time layers are believed to be accessible in ritualistic practice through an altered state of perception (Hume 2002, p.40), the term Dreaming resonated most strongly with anthropologists interested in the spiritual practices of Indigenous Australian peoples. Influential researchers like Stanner or Carl Strehlow dedicated themselves particularly to the study of social customs and spiritual beliefs of Central Desert peoples like the Western Aranda, Pitjantjatjara or Warlpiri (e.g. Stanner 2009; Strehlow 1907). Their works, even though steeped in the paternalistic mentality of the early to mid-20th century and written from a decidedly colonial perspective,

24  Cultural and historical context are still accepted as standard academic reference regarding Indigenous Australian cultures – albeit now approached through a lens that critically considers the positionality of the non-Indigenous authors. Key criticism is, for example, directed at the unreflected cultural assumptions that lead to distorted representations of Indigenous people as othered (Rose, James & Watson 2003, p.13). A result of such representation was that Indigenous knowledges have been colonised: They were made accessible only through Western conceptual and epistemological frameworks, which restricted and over-determined how Indigenous knowledges could be appraised (Moreton-­Robinson 2003, p.127). However, despite anthropology’s role in the creation and perpetuation of detrimental imagery of Indigenous people, it also significantly assisted in documenting and preserving cultural knowledge and assets (albeit in a displaced and artificial way) when the social structures that had done so for generations started to break away under the impact of colonialism (Radford 1992, p.67). Therefore, many Indigenous people – arts practitioners included – today draw on and critically reflect anthropological resources to work toward cultural recuperation and reinvigoration (Rose, James & Watson 2003, p.15). A major problem, however, exists with the form of preservation of intangible cultural heritage (Taylor 2008, p.91): Academic disciplines produce written texts that can be consumed anywhere – whereas Indigenous knowledges and practices are still maintained mostly as oral cultures, bound to particular geographical and social contexts (Rose 1996, p.13). That means they cannot be easily transposed and are diminished in their signification if cut off from their place of origin (Benterrak, Muecke & Roe 1984, p.54). The challenge of cultural recuperation and reinvigoration therefore is not a straightforward one: It has to re-situate Indigenous subjects and ontologies on the land as well as negotiate a place in an intercultural space that increasingly depends on flexibility and the ability for geographic transposition to communicate the validity of Indigenous claims. The profound Indigenous relations to land spring from spiritual beliefs and are structured through intricate social systems. It is a pan-Aboriginal Australian concept that ancestral mythical beings emerged from a formless mass of land and created the world and all its features by traversing the Country – before either returning to the land where they still lie dormant or alternatively having left the earth after creation (Bourke, Bourke & ­Edwards 1998, p.79; Pascoe 2008, pp.8/9). On their travels, they continuously left part of their essence behind which still imbues the land with power and vitality (Rose 2007, p.39). This essence is thought to lessen if not sustained by ritualistic practice that ensures the ongoing harmonious course of the universe (Rose 2000, p.44). As first ordained Indigenous ­Australian Baptist minister Graham Paulson points out, the mythological accounts expressed in Dreaming stories cast people as stewards of creation who stand in a close relationship with all matter on earth (1996, p.89). In ceremony, a performer is not seen to just symbolically represent an ancestral creator but

Cultural and historical context  25 rather to transubstantiate into him or her (Morton 1992, p.32). Therefore, the moment of ritualistic performance in Indigenous Australian cultures is understood to be a reconfiguration and extension of personal identity (Hume 2002, p.40) as the performer reunites with his or her lineage (the past) to ensure the maintenance and continued balance of the universe in the present and the future to come. Sacred sites are places that are believed to retain heightened amounts of ancestral essence (i.e. due to a special action performed there by the ancestor) and are therefore the locus for rituals (Rose 2000, p.41). Consequently, contestations over sacred sites have become particularly sensitive issues in disputes over land (Gelder & Jacobs 1997). In Aboriginal conceptions, the Australian continent is crisscrossed with the tracks of ancestors, which spiritually, socially and politically connect communities across the continent, resulting in a dense conceptual mapping that leaves no speck of land unaccounted for (­Mowaljarlai & Malnic 2015, pp.190–92). An important vehicle for this mapping has been music: Any feature of the land is connected to a song and certain rhythmic structure that in turn express the story of the place and provide navigational guidance (Hume 2002, p.48). Hence, even though a concept of dramatic theatre akin to European models2 might not have existed in pre-colonial Indigenous Australian cultures, the contemporary interweaving of music, dance and storytelling in Indigenous Australian theatre practice is an integral feature of an age-old traditional performance culture. The organisation of territories in Indigenous Australian cultures, however, decrees that a person can only perform that part of a song, story, dance or execute a certain visual design which is connected to the land that s/he has title to (Muecke 2005, p.73). This title stems from clan affiliations and parental lineage (Rumsey 1993, p.200). Depending on the nation, either the line of the father or mother is followed, which means that people have responsibilities of care to specific sites within their clanestates according to biological descent (Morton 1992, pp.28/29). These responsibilities and duties are expressly not connected to a concept of personal property in traditional Indigenous Australian cultures (Watson 1997, p.49). Rather, such concepts are actively forestalled by investing a number of people with title to the same stretch of land (Morton 1992, pp.28/29). This is to actively ensure collaboration as well as active relationship-maintenance and that caring for the land is guaranteed even if clan members pass away without having left children behind who can take on their responsibilities. This idea of collaboration is part of a broader concept of close social relations, which the Pitjantjatjara people call ‘ngapartji ngapartji’ (Palmer 2010, p.4). An approximate English translation is ‘you give me something – I give you something’ (ibid., p.64). As Dave Palmer explains, “ngapartji ngapartji” creates an economy of reciprocal exchange that connects and binds people together by creating mutual obligations (ibid., p.4). These exceed a simple one-on-one relation but rather extend into the whole social world through recursiveness

26  Cultural and historical context (Morphy 2000, p.66), i.e. the benefit awarded may support one person or being, which in turn will create a benefit to another, creating a looped chain of benefit. On the basis of this concept of connectivity, relationality and collaboration, it is often stated that Indigenous Australian social values privilege “sharing and caring” over individual gain, often causing friction with Western capitalist notions of economic development (Winroe 1988, p.17). Paulson elaborates that these traditional values account for a relational society in which personal identity is achieved by maintaining harmonious relationships to the community, through direct interaction and community consensus (1996, pp.85/88). Competition, the driving force at the root of Western lifestyles, is largely forestalled by granting everyone a share in the community’s material wealth (ibid., p.89). 3 To productively negotiate such differing social values and ontologies is one of the most challenging tasks for ameliorating cultural relations in Australia. The worldview expressed in many traditional Indigenous Australian cultures is not based on clear dichotomies as advanced, for example, in a Christian framework that posits the existence of good and evil forces in the world. Colin Bourke (Wolithiga) finds that many Indigenous Australian peoples, although they might believe in a higher creative being, have not had a concept of inherited sin or salvation (1998, p.182). Rather, the relationship to the world has been of a non-alienated quality and no clear distinction between nature and culture has been drawn (Rose 2000, p.41). Since the onset of colonisation, Western philosophies and lifestyles have introduced competing conceptual frameworks, which have been adapted by Indigenous Australian people to varying degrees (compare e.g. Nakata 2010 or French 2002). An interpretive approach applied to artistic outputs created from contemporary Indigenous positions therefore has to be heedful of the possibility of multiple philosophical frameworks at work in a given work of art. What needs to be avoided is restricting the analysis to the received categories of Western interpretive paradigms (of which the dichotomy of “nature vs. culture” is but one instance) and instead to appreciate the fluidity of identity constructions in the heterogenic ­Australian space. Social structures in Indigenous Australia have been determined by an intricate totemic kinship system that binds all of the land and all organic and inorganic matter into a holistic, animist ecology. For example, upon birth a person is assigned a totem, usually an animal, which he or she will henceforth be identified with and which is conceived as part of their identity (extending personal into collective identity; compare Rose, James & Watson 2003, p.3). Through kinship, everything in the world is interconnected and each being is assigned its place and significance within creation (Rose 2005, pp.302/03). Kinship expresses both autonomy and connectedness of human and non-human beings that stand in an interdependent relationship, caring for each other. This ecology is founded

Cultural and historical context  27 in a concept of Country that is central to Indigenous Australian ontologies. As Deborah Bird Rose explains, Country is defined as: […] a territorial unit that is small enough to be known intimately and large enough to support the living things who inhabit it; it is separate from and autonomous with respect to other countries, and at the same time is interdependent with other countries, connected through Dreaming tracks, and the tracks of human and other living beings who come and go. The Indigenous re-shaping of the term “country” shifts it from a common noun to a proper noun. […] Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. (2008, pp.110/11) “Country” emerges in this conception as an entity with subject status that binds people and all elements of creation into an intricate web of connections and responsibilities. It configures relations in ways that are notably different from Western conceptions that are premised on traditions of thought informed by Christian and capitalist ideals. For example, concepts of kinship form part of a relatively predetermined worldview in which a person’s general place in society is set by birth and which does not advocate for a teleological development of creation. Social standing, however, does change over the course of life through initiation and life-long learning (rather than through heroic deeds or lobbying; Rose 2000, p.41). Consequently, elders have been the most respected and powerful members of a clan as they have accrued knowledge and wisdom over time.4 In terms of clan organisation, it shall be sufficient for the purpose of this study to state that kinship functions as a social mechanism. A clan is divided into smaller ‘moieties’ (Morphy 2000, p.65). These allow people to relate to each other, even if they are from geographically different regions. As actor Derik Lynch (Eastern Arrernte, Yankunytjatjara) stated in a personal conversation in Roebourne in July 2011, moieties instantly create a sense of belonging among strangers, which can counter feelings of alienation in unknown territory by the insertion of newcomers into the extant social order. Kinship is still a very powerful regulator in Indigenous Australia and lays down the rules for social interaction: It determines who is eligible to marry whom, and on the basis of one’s moiety, a person can call on others to fulfil certain duties, and in turn can be called upon to reciprocate specific actions (Morphy 2000, p.60). In his article Kinship, Family and Art, Howard Morphy elucidates the kinship system by loosely basing social connections on the Western model of familial relations (2000, pp.60–65). Depending on the specific nation, there have been four to eight moieties, which determine the relationship of a newborn to other members of the clan (ibid. 2000, p.63). Different from the model of the nuclear family (which also exists as a concept in Indigenous Australian cultures), kinship extends the

28  Cultural and historical context notion of family to the whole of society: A child is born into the world by its biological mother, yet all women belonging to her moiety – irrespective of their age – will also be cast and related to in this role. The same applies to all other family roles. A child therefore has many fathers, mothers, aunties and uncles who care for its social upbringing (Mudrooroo 1995, pp.24/25).5 Through the web of kinship and associated responsibilities and ceremonial obligations, Indigenous Australian people are connected to their Country and integrate themselves and their forbears into a collectivised concept of identity. Traditionally, knowledge is imparted by elders often while spending time on Country, engaging with the natural environment and fellow clan members. The major vehicles for such teachings are story, song, dance and visual arts: By retracing the tracks of the ancestors and imparting stories of the Dreaming, the young generations learn from their elders about the history and all features of the land and the law associated with them. Religious belief, practical knowledge and the performing arts have thus been integrated in traditional teaching, making a clear distinction between religion and other areas of culture in traditional Indigenous ways of life non-instructive (Edwards 2002, p.20). Any teaching and ritual practice in traditional Indigenous Australian cultures has followed a strict gender division which accounts for separate ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s business’ (Rose 2007, pp.36/37). In general, there exist areas of knowledge that are reserved to either male or female initiates. Men and women have usually not shared their cultural practices and knowledges with each other, and today people to a large extent still respect this strict intracultural division. The societal division along gendered lines is reflected in both Namatjira and I Am Eora. It is a subject of enquiry in the case study analyses as to how this traditionally motivated structure is integrated into the representation of the larger issues negotiated in the plays, interrogating how the playwrights’ engagement facilitates or impedes an appreciation of social complexity. Knowledge has been imparted on the basis of gender as well as on the basis of age. Not all members of a clan have been privy to the same ­knowledge – rather, knowledge has been a marker of social standing, status and privilege (Cane 2002, p.85). In cultures that often had not developed a materially based concept of wealth, stories, songs, dances and designs (i.e. art) developed into a currency for social exchange (Kerwin 2010, p.104). To ensure that all members of a clan learn as much as possible about their lands and also to provide forms of entertainment, every Dreaming story has several versions: sacred and secret ones that are reserved to initiates, and profane and public ones for general performance (Casey 2012, p.20). The secrecy surrounding traditional Indigenous Australian knowledge and its importance in staking land claims (Gelder & Jacobs 1997) make it a thorny tool in asserting Indigenous sovereignty in the intercultural space: On the one hand, it clearly marks difference by creating a taboo and in doing so

Cultural and historical context  29 invests Indigenous Australian cultures with an aura long since absent from (and covertly desired by) secularised Western spaces; but on the other hand, it commands respect for something unknowable to mainstream audiences – audiences that have come to award respect mostly only to things they have come to know and understand. Hence, Indigenous Australian art in its reception proposes a pact based on trust and desire in a political space never quite fully removed from the artistic space. It can thus put the willingness to reconcile to the test by challenging dominant Western power structures and ways of engaging with the world.

A brief overview of Australian colonial history The non-Indigenous settlement of Australia has been a continuing process since 1788. The colonisation of the vast Australian landmass was a slow, non-straightforward, non-centralised process, which was dictated by multiple factors, such as accessibility, availability of freshwater, agricultural potential and relations to local Indigenous clans (Attwood 2005, p.39; Bonner 1997, p.1; Morton 1992, p.51). However, the expansion of nonIndigenous settlements generally went hand in hand with the decimation and dislocation of Indigenous peoples and set in motion a process under which Indigenous lives became subject to wide-ranging government regulation and control (Bonner 1997, p.1). The arrival of the first settlers sparked diverse reactions among the Indigenous population, ranging from friendly curiosity and economic interest to scepticism, open hostility and fear (Smith 2009, pp.11/13). Naturally, the written accounts of early settlers offer only a one-sided perspective on those encounters and are underpinned by Western epistemologies, structured according to culturally specific aesthetic conventions.6 Contemporary Indigenous perspectives, perceptions and interpretations of ­Europeans were hardly reflected in written form, as Indigenous Australian cultures have relied on oral and embodied ways of storing and passing on knowledge (Attenbrow 2010, p.2). Official historiography has hence generally tended ­ ustralian national to whitewash colonial history, pushing a narrative of A identity as unanimously inspired by the pioneering spirit (Maddison 2011, p.58). However, it is estimated that within the first 100 years of European settlement the Indigenous population was reduced from 300,000 to 65,000, either by acts of violence, due to imported infectious diseases, poor living conditions and other consequences of dislocation (Bonner ­ ustralian historiography long upheld the myth of a relatively 1997, p.3). A peaceful colonisation that had not been met with much Indigenous ­ ttwood & Foster 2003, p.11; Moreton-Robinson 2003, resistance (e.g. A p.128; Windschuttle 2000). In the past 20 years, this assumption has been dismantled especially by research into local histories (Attwood 2005; Tatz 1999). Those studies have started to shed light on the dark side of the

30  Cultural and historical context Australian nation’s genesis, uncovering atrocities such as planned attacks on Indigenous ­peoples (e.g. Statham 2003; Wood 2009), forced dispossession (Keating qtd. in Attwood  & Foster 2003, p.13; Winroe 1988, p.19) and large-scale removal of children from their families (HREOC 1997). Some of those practices had been sanctioned by state governments as part of Indigenous Affairs policy, others had been enacted outside the law, yet often bore only relatively mild consequences (Attwood & Foster 2003, p.35). As outlined above, Indigenous Australian relations to land differ vastly from European conceptions of ownership. Inability and unwillingness to grasp local ontologies, paired with the overriding objective to stake a claim to the newfound colony ahead of other imperial nations, prompted the ­British to seize the land for the Crown under the doctrine of “terra nullius”7 (Winroe 1988, p.19). Under this principle, Indigenous people were not deemed lawful citizens of the Australian nation (McGregor 2011, p.xviii), being instead declared “wards of the state” on whose behalf the state and territory governments developed specific policy measures that were to regulate Indigenous Australian lives up until 1967. Government policies in regard to Indigenous Affairs in Australia are generally discussed as having developed through four consecutive phases: protection, assimilation, selfdetermination and reconciliation. Protection policies were adopted in the wake of the expanding European acquisition of land, which dislocated an ever-increasing number of Indigenous peoples from their traditional homelands (Wood 2009, p.67.4). To respond to the ensuing dire socio-economic circumstances and to be able to gain control of demographic development, the state governments began to establish special reserves for Indigenous people (NSW Gov 2012)  – ­mirroring and complementing the model that various churches had established with their “missions”, which had already begun to shelter Indigenous people in need – in exchange for manual labour and adoption of the Christian faith (Radford 1992, p.71). These segregated communities were tightly controlled by the authorities, who regulated every aspect of communal life, with people needing to seek approval for marriage, travel, employment, rations, etc. (Find & Connect n.d.). While historiographic accounts often acknowledge and detail the injustices and oppressive living conditions on reserves and missions; recent engagements have markedly shifted their focus toward investigating stories of Indigenous resistance and cross-­cultural collaboration throughout colonialisation (such as, for example, attempts at self-governance on the Coranderrk Reserve in the 1880s, or the Cummeragunja Mission walk-off in 1939;8 compare Nanni 2014) in order to help grow an archive from which to build capacity for the advancement of cultural relations in Australia today. Key to such advancement is found in Indigenous agency and alternative ways of nonIndigenous engagement that channel the shame for actions perpetrated in the past into momentum for the creation of reflected and equitable relations in the present (Attenbrow 2010; Nanni 2014).

Cultural and historical context  31 Initially, the segregation of the Indigenous population onto these designated areas had been conceived as a temporary arrangement born from charitable spirit, to ‘soothe the dying pillow’ for a race doomed to be superseded by Western civilisation (A. Mee in Bates 1947, p.xiv). Over the years, however, Indigenous population numbers stabilised, and the authorities had to reconsider their approach that proved unfit for long-term management of the increasingly overcrowded and poorly equipped reserves (Shannon 2002, p.S577). Consequently, policies of assimilation replaced the approach of protection, aiming for the gradual integration of Indigenous people into mainstream society, promoting the adoption of Western lifestyles and values with the aim of ultimately dissolving Indigenous identifications. This approach was backed by a racial blood quantum theory that classified people according to the percentage of Indigenous ancestry, deeming people of mixed ancestry or lighter skin colour as better capable of assimilation (Anderson 2003, p.47). Hence, authorities began targeting especially those segments of the Indigenous Australian populace, seeking to “breed out” Indigeneity in Australia (Gardiner-Garden 2003). While accounts of forced sterilisations are mentioned but disputed in historiographical research (Buchanan qtd. in Moody 1988, pp.323/24), the large-scale practice of removing fair-skinned children from their families and placing them into far-away orphanages or non-Indigenous foster families has been the subject of a Royal Commission inquiry and is acknowledged as a well-documented historical fact (HREOC 1997). It forms part of the wider attempt to undermine Indigenous community relations and cultural practice, forestalling pride and resilience to the colonial project. Without connection to their communities, the “Stolen Generations” had no way of embracing Indigenous cultures, instead being raised in non-Indigenous families or institutional settings that only provided them with a volatile place at the fringes of society (Heiss 2012, p.31) – turning identity into a key theme in artistic enquiries to this day. Naturally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities were drastically impacted by the removal of whole generations of children, often spiralling into grief and trauma, which compounded the pressures that colonisation had already wrought on the Indigenous nations (Grehan 2010, p.50). After World War II, with Australia having lost a large percentage of its soldiers yet needing to grow its domestic economy, the Federal Government lifted many restrictions on immigration. Consequently, mainstream society became markedly more multicultural, making inclusivity a key discourse. As a result, civil rights movements gained increasing momentum, raising public awareness and concern also over the situation of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Under public pressure exerted, for example, through civil rights campaigns and street protests, policy approaches veered toward self-determination and many of the restrictive laws that curtailed the rights and liberties of Indigenous people were repealed. However, this shift was subject to complex dynamics that also heralded new challenges.

32  Cultural and historical context For example, the introduction of equal pay legislation in the cattle industry in the late 1960s inadvertently led to many Indigenous workers losing their jobs as they no longer represented cheap labour (Grehan 2001, p.83). This compounded extant social pressures such as ill health, lateral violence and alienation as many people began to exacerbate the unhealthy drinking patterns that had developed under (the now lifted) prohibition (Wilson et al. 2010, pp.7/8). Activism in the 1960s formed especially around the issues of segregation, land rights and representation, eventually channelling into the conferral of citizenship to Indigenous people, the 1967 Referendum,9 first progress in the return of land rights to Indigenous peoples in the 1970s (­Maddison 2011, pp.125–27; Strohscheidt 1997, p.15), and revised legislation for federal arts funding that ‘opened up the potential for [professional] theatre production by Indigenous Australian artists’ (Casey 2000, p.86).10 The Indigenous activists who pushed these causes did so in overtly theatrical modes to maximise public profile and exposure, taking protests to the streets as well as to the stage, thereby also strengthening the foundation for the contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre sector. The Sydney suburb of Redfern, long since established as a hub for displaced Indigenous people from around Australia (Shaw 2013, p.257), became a focal point for political activism, hosting the first Indigenously-led medical and legal services that today operate all across Australia, providing culturally appropriate service delivery (Casey 2004, p.44). The need specifically for strong legal representation was sadly confirmed through the findings of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987–91), which investigated the alarming statistics that saw 99 Indigenous people die in police custody between 1980 and 1989 and which also confirmed the significant (and enduring) overrepresentation of Indigenous people in prisons around Australia (NAA n.d.).11 The increasing public discussion of the impacts of colonisation especially in the arts and historiography provided the much-needed handle to critically interrogate the dominant notion of Australia as a fair and inclusive society, paving the way for policies of reconciliation to gain traction in broad segments of Australian mainstream society. A watershed moment in this process was the High Court’s famed “Mabo Decision” (1992), which overruled the doctrine of “terra nullius”, recognising the continuing claim of the Meriam People to their traditional homelands. This ruling led to the 1995 Native Title Act that created the possibility of land rights recognition on a national scale (AIATSIS n.d.). Even though this ruling and the associated legislation have been problematic in that they are strongly informed by Western concepts of personal ownership and cultural ­practice – hardly leaving scope to recognise the particular relations to land and community underpinning Indigenous ontologies –, they have formed an important avenue for the Government to actively deal with the question of unceded Indigenous sovereignty in Australia (Nicoll 1993,

Cultural and historical context  33 p.711; Tehan 2003, p.562). As a tentative step, however, it has only begun to address the injustices committed under colonial rule, throwing up many challenges for reconciliation and fair compensation to Indigenous peoples (Tehan 2003, p.571). Especially the Howard Administration (1996–2007) is seen as having slowed down this process by specifying details of Native Title legislation in ways that make it very hard for Indigenous people to successfully take their claims to court. In addition to this, the federal government under Prime Minister John Howard also struggled to formulate a response to the findings of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Bringing Them Home report on the Stolen Generations in 1997, triggering a groundswell of solidarity in the Australian population (Enoch 2001, p.14; Gilbert & Lo 2007, p.71). The federal government only issued a formal apology under subsequent Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 (Maddison 2011, p.137), who picked up the reconciliation agenda from previous PM Paul Keating, famous for his speech delivered in Redfern Park in 1993 that for the first time openly acknowledged the onus on nonIndigenous Australia to come to terms with its complex history: It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was us who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. (Keating 2007, pp.15/16) Despite the general trajectory toward reconciliation, the comprehensive reflection of the history and impacts of colonialism, as well as formulating adequate responses, remain tasks to be achieved. In the recent past, especially the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act, commonly known as the “Intervention”, has sparked heated controversy in Indigenous and Settler Australia alike (Calma 2008). Passed in 2007 and prolonged under the name Stronger Futures in 2012 for another ten years (DSS 2012), the “Intervention” represents a policy package that was legislated in response to contested interpretations of research data that found neglect, violence and substance abuse to be rife amid remote Indigenous Australian communities. Responding to sensationalist media coverage, the federal government subjected remote communities to a blanket approach that included: […] compulsory acquisition of townships held under the Native Title Act without [the requirement of] compensation […], the removal of a permit system that allowed Aboriginal control over who accessed their land, imposed restrictions on alcohol and kava, pornography filters on publicly funded computers, the partial quarantining of welfare benefits

34  Cultural and historical context to all recipients in designated communities and the quarantining of all welfare benefits for those who were deemed to be neglecting their children. (Heiss 2012, p.341) While community members, scholars and other stakeholders do not deny the existence of grave social issues facing especially remote-living Indigenous Australian people, intense disputes are led over the forms of governance deployed to combat the problems, interpretation of the outcomes so far and the values informing current debates (e.g. Langton 2007, p.15). Although community consultations took place, many criticise that these were not sufficient in numbers, scale or depth in order to justify the harsh laws (Watson 2011, p.154). That Indigenous people are again subject to extraordinary discriminatory policies inevitably conjures memories of a not too distant past and incites an interrogation of the present status of Indigenous rights in Australia, which adds fuel to debates revolving around Australia’s path (or the lack thereof) to reconciliation. What is new about the discourse that is forming through current political debates is that they are also to a large degree informed and led by strong Indigenous voices who in their stances represent the heterogeneity of Indigenous Australia that thwarts appropriation by a dominant nonIndigenous power structure. This publicly performed diversity in the political realm finds its likewise expression in contemporary theatrical performance.

Notes 1 The term “Aboriginality” is here used interchangeably with “Indigeneity” – both are referring to constructions of identity by/for Indigenous Australian people (i.e. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people). 2 i.e. constituted by a cast representing a fictional narrative on stage to a merely intellectually involved audience. 3 The clash between such differing social values is a central topic in Albert Namatjira’s biography and will be explored in the analysis of Scott Rankin’s Namatjira (see Chapter 3). 4 The case study on Enoch & Heiss’ I Am Eora focuses in part on the representation of this social structure and enquires into the forms of social cohesion advocated in the play. 5 The Namatjira case study traces this communal concept of extended family, highlighting the difficulty of affirming this notion within a narrative matrix that draws on Western Aranda as well as Western conceptual frameworks. 6 Similarly, the dominance of Western aesthetics and established norms of decoding are creating challenges for Indigenous Australian performing artists who seek to communicate cultural specificity and complexity to heterogenic audiences. 7 Translating into “land belonging to no one”. 8 Which formed the focus of the first Indigenous Australian opera Pecan Summer (2010), penned by Yorta Yorta composer Deborah Cheetham. 9 Which made Indigenous Affairs a responsibility of the Federal Government and legislated that Indigenous people were henceforth to be counted in the national census.

Cultural and historical context  35 10 For a concise overview of developments in Australian arts funding and its availability to Indigenous Australian theatre artists, refer to Roma Greer 2013. 11 The issue since having lost nothing of its urgency with statistics reporting 60 deaths in corrective institutions and police custody between 2009 and 2013 alone (Haughton 2016).

References Anderson, I 2003, ‘Black bit, white bit’, in M Grossmann (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, University of Melbourne Press, Carlton, pp.43–51. Attenbrow, V 2010, Sydney’s Aboriginal past, 2nd edition, UNSW Press, Sydney. Attwood, B 2005, Telling the truth about Aboriginal history, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest. Attwood, B & Foster, S 2003, Frontier conflict: the Australian experience, National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) n.d., Mabo case, viewed 27 March 2019, http://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/ mabo-case Bates, D 1947, The passing of the Aborigines, 2nd edition, Murray, London. Benterrak, K, Muecke, S & Roe, P 1984, Reading the country, Freemantle Arts Centre, Freemantle. Bonner AON 1997, ‘Arantjara. Opening address’, in G Davis & D ­R iemenschneider (eds.), Aratjara. Aboriginal culture and literature in Australia. Rodopi, ­A msterdam, pp.1–7. Bourke, C 1998, ‘Contemporary Australian Aboriginal identity’, in D Day (ed.), Australian identities, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne, pp.175–85. Bourke, C, Bourke, E & Edwards, B 1998, Aboriginal Australia: an introductory reader in Aboriginal studies, 2nd edition, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia. Calma, T 2008, Social justice report 2007, Australian Human Rights Commission, Sydney, viewed 27 March 2019, www.humanrights.gov.au/ our-work/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-social-justice/publications/ social-justice-report-2 Cane, S 2002, Pila nguru: the Spinifex people, Fremantle Art Centre, North Fremantle. Carter, P 1987, The road to Botany Bay: an essay in spatial history, Faber & Faber, London. Casey, M 2012, Telling stories: Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander performance, Australian Scholarly, North Melbourne. ——— 2005, ‘A compelling force: Indigenous women playwrights’, in R Fensham, D Varney, M Casey & L Ginters (eds.), The doll’s revolution. Australian theatre and cultural imagination, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne, pp.199–237. ——— 2004, Creating frames: contemporary Indigenous theatre 1967–1990, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. ——— 2000, ‘From the wings to centre stage: a production chronology of theatre and drama texts by Indigenous Australian writers’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.37, pp.85–98. Clarkson, C, Jacobs, Z, Marwick, B, Fullagar, R, Wallis, L, Smith, M, Roberts, R, Hayes, E, Lowe, K, Carah, X, Florin, A, McNeil, J, Cox, D, Arnold, L, Hua, Q,

36  Cultural and historical context Huntley, J, Brand, H, Manne, T, Fairbairn, A, Shulmeister, J, Lyle, L, Salinas, M, Page,  M, Connell,  K, Park,  G, Norman,  K, Murphy, T & Pardoe, C 2017, ‘Human occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 years ago’, Nature, vol.547, pp.306–10. Department of Social Services (DSS) 2012, Stronger futures in the Northern Territory, DSS, Greenway, viewed 27 March 2019, www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/ files/documents/09_2012/stronger-futures-booklet-jul2012.pdf Dodson, M 2003, ‘The end in the beginning: re(de)fining Aboriginality’, in M  Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, University of Melbourne Press, Carlton, pp.25–42. Edwards, W 2002, Recovering spirit: exploring Aboriginal spirituality, Charles Strong Memorial Trust, Adelaide. Enoch, W 2001, ‘‘We want hope’: the power of Indigenous arts in Australia today’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.38, pp.4–15. Find & Connect n.d., Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines (1901– 1957), viewed 27 March 2019, www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/vic/biogs/ E000489b.htm French, A 2002, Seeing the centre, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Gardiner-Garden, J 2003, ‘Defining Aboriginality in Australia’, Parliament of Australia, viewed 27 March 2019, www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/­ Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/ cib0203/03Cib10#blood Gelder, K & Jacobs, J 1997, ‘Promiscuous sacred sites’, Australian Humanities Review, vol.6, pp.71–87. Gilbert, H & Lo, J 2007, Performance and cosmopolitics: cross-cultural transactions in Australasia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Grehan, H 2010, ‘Aboriginal performance: politics, empathy and the question of reciprocity’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.56, pp.38–52. ——— 2001, Mapping cultural identity in contemporary Australian performance, Peter Lang, Brussels. Hamacher, D & Norris, R 2011, ‘‘Bridging the gap’ through Australian cultural astronomy’, in P Benvenuti (ed.), Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 7th Symposium S278, January, pp.282–90. Haughton, J 2016, ‘The 25th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody’, Australian Parliament, 15 April, viewed 27 March 2019, www. aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_ Library/FlagPost/2016/April/RCADIC-25 Heiss, A 2012, Am I Black enough for you? Bantam, Sydney. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) 1997, Bringing them home. National inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, Commonwealth of Australia, Sydney, viewed 27 March 2019, www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/ social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf Hume, L 2002, Ancestral power: the Dreaming, consciousness, and Aboriginal Australians, University of Melbourne Press, Carlton South. Keating, P 2007, ‘Redfern Park speech: speech at the Australian launch of the United Nations International Year for the World’s Indigenous People, International Human Rights Day, Redfern, New South Wales, 10 December 1992’, I­ ndigenous Law Bulletin, vol.6, no.26, pp.15–17.

Cultural and historical context  37 Kerwin, D 2010, Aboriginal Dreaming paths and trading routes, Sussex Academic, Toronto. Langton, M 2007, ‘Trapped in the Aboriginal reality show’, Griffith Review, vol.19, pp.1–17. ——— 2003a, ‘Introduction: culture wars’, in M Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, pp.81–108. ——— 2003b, ‘Aboriginal art and film:  the politics of representation’, in M  ­Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, pp.109–24. Liddle, C 2014, ‘A rightful place: correspondence’, in G Rundle (ed.), Clivosaurus: the politics of Clive Palmer, Quarterly Essay, no.56, Black Inc, Collingwood, pp.87–90. Link, J & Link-Heer, U 1990, ‘Diskurs/Interdiskurs und Literaturanalyse’, Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, vol.20, no.77, pp.88–99. Maddison, S 2011, Beyond white guilt, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest. Maddox, G 2018, ‘Indigenous playwright: Australian theatre is ‘whitesplaining’ stories’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2018, viewed 2 April 2019, www. smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/indigenous-playwright-australian-­theatre-iswhitesplaining-stories-20180726-p4zttw.html McGregor, R 2011, Indifferent inclusion. Aboriginal people and the Australian nation, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra. Moody, R (ed.) 1988, The Indigenous voice: visions and realities, vol. 1, Zed Books, New Jersey. Moreton-Robinson, A 2003, ‘Introduction: resistance, recovery and revitalisation’, in M Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, University of Melbourne Press, Carlton, pp.127–31. Morphy, H 2000, ‘Kinship, family and art’, in S Kleinert & M Neale (eds.), The Oxford companion to Aboriginal art and culture, Oxford University Press, ­Oxford, pp.60–67. Morton, J 2000, ‘Aboriginal religion today’, in S Kleinert & M Neale (eds.), The Oxford companion to Aboriginal art and culture, Oxford University Press, ­Oxford, pp.9–16. ——— 1992, ‘Country, people, art: the Western Aranda 1870–1990’, in J Megaw, R Megaw & J Hardy (eds.), The heritage of Namatjira, William Heinemann, Port Melbourne, pp.23–62. Mowaljarlai, D & Malnic, J (2015), Yorro Yorro: everything standing up alive, reprint, Magabala Books, Broome. Mudrooroo 1995, Us Mob. History, culture, struggle: an introduction to Indigenous Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney. Muecke, S 2005, Textual spaces. Aboriginality and cultural studies, API Network, Perth. Nakata, M 2010, ‘The cultural interface of Islander and scientific knowledge’, ­Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, vol.39, pp.53–57. Nanni, G 2014, ‘Corranderk: we will show the country’, Ethos, vol.22, no.4, pp.15–19. National Archives of Australia (NAA) n.d., Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody – fact sheet 112, viewed 27 March 2019, www.naa.gov.au/ collection/fact-sheets/fs112.aspx

38  Cultural and historical context New South Wales Government (NSW Gov) 2012, ‘Living on Aboriginal reserves and stations’, Office of Environment and Heritage, viewed 27 March 2019, www.environment.nsw.gov.au/chresearch/ReserveStation.htm Nicoll, F 1993, ‘The art of reconciliation: art, Aboriginality and the state’, M ­ eanjin, vol.52, no.4, pp.705–17. Palmer, D 2010, Ngapartji Ngapartji:  the consequences of kindness, Big hART Inc., Alice Springs. Paradies, Y 2006, ‘Beyond Black and White: essentialism, hybridity and Indigeneity’, Journal of Sociology, vol.42, no.4, pp.355–67. Pascoe, B 2014, Dark emu, Magabala Books, Broome. ——— 2008, Little red yellow black book: an introduction to Indigenous ­Australia, 2nd edition, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra. ­ boriginal Paulson, G 1996, ‘The value of Aboriginal culture’, in A Pattel-Gray (ed.), A spirituality: past, present, future, HarperCollinsReligious, ­Blackburn, pp.81–93. Pearson, N 1999, ‘Positive and negative welfare and Australia’s Indigenous communities’, Family Matters, vol.54, pp.30–35. Radford, R 1992, ‘Aspects of the social history of Hermannsburg’, in J Megaw, R  Megaw & J Hardy (eds.), The heritage of Namatjira, William Heinemann, Port Melbourne, pp.63–96. Roma Greer, K 2013, Emerging, urban, Aboriginal theatre-makers, honours thesis, The University of Sydney, Sydney. Rose, DB 2008, ‘Dreaming ecology: beyond the between’, Religion & Literature, vol.40, no.1, pp.109–22. ——— 2007, ‘Gendered substances and objects in ritual’, Material Religion, vol.3, no.1, pp.34–47. ———. 2005, ‘An Indigenous philosophical ecology: situating the human’, ­Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol.16, no.3, pp.294–305. ——— 2000, ‘The power of place’, in S Kleinert & M Neale (eds.), The Oxford companion to Aboriginal art and culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.40–49. ——— 1996, Nourishing terrains, Australian Heritage Commission, Canberra. Rose, D, James, D & Watson, C 2003, Indigenous kinship with the natural world in NSW, New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service, Hurstville, viewed 27 March 2019, www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/­ IndigenousKinship.pdf Rumsey, A 1993, ‘Language and territoriality in Aboriginal Australia’, in C  ­Yallop  & M Walsh (eds.), Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp.191–206. Shannon, C 2002, ‘Acculturation: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nutrition’, Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol.11, supplement 3, pp.S576–78, viewed 27 March 2019, http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/apjcn/11/s6/S576.pdf Shaw, W 2013, ‘Redfern as the heart(h): living (Black) in inner Sydney’, Geographical Research, vol.51, no.3, pp.257–68. Smith, K 2009, ‘Bennelong among his people’, Aboriginal History, vol.33, pp.7–30. Sometimes, B 2008, ‘Dora (Amanyi) Haggie. The provider’, in O Strewe (ed.), Lines of wisdom: young writers, old stories, timeless encounters, Affirm, ­Mulgrave, pp.38–44. Stanner, WEH 2009, The Dreaming and other essays, Black Inc., Melbourne. ——— 1991, After the Dreaming, Boyer Lecture Series, ABC, Crows Nest.

Cultural and historical context  39 Statham, P 2003, ‘James Stirling and Pinjarra: a battle in more ways than one’, Studies in Western Australian History, vol.23, pp.167–94. Strehlow, C 1907, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien, Joseph Baer, Frankfurt a.M. Strohscheidt, E 1997, ‘Land rights for the first Australians’, in G Davis & D  ­Riemenschneider (eds.), Aratjara. Aboriginal culture and literature in ­Australia, Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp.9–37. Swain, R 2010, Ways of listening, doctoral thesis, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne. Tatz, C 1999, Genocide in Australia, research discussion paper, no.8, AIATSIS, Canberra, viewed 27 March 2019, http://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/­ products/discussion_paper/tatzc-dp08-genocide-in-australia.pdf Taylor, D 2008, ‘Performance and intangible cultural heritage’, in T Davis (ed.), The Cambridge companion to performance studies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp.91–105. Tehan, M 2003, ‘A hope disillusioned, an opportunity lost?’, Melbourne University Law Review, vol.27, no.2, pp.523–71. Walsh, M 2005, ‘Languages and their status in Aboriginal Australia’, in C ­Yallop & M Walsh (eds.), Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp.1–15. Watson, N 2011, ‘The Northern Territory emergency response’, Australian Feminist Law Journal, vol.35, pp.147–63. Watson, I 1997, ‘Indigenous peoples’ law-ways: survival against the colonial state’, Feminist Law Journal, vol.8, no.1, pp.39–58. Wierzbicka, A & Goddard, C 2015, ‘What does ‘Jukurrpa’ (‘Dreamtime’, ‘the Dreaming’) mean?’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol.1, June, pp.43–65. Wilson, M, Stearne, A, Gray, D & Saggers, S 2010, ‘The harmful use of alcohol amongst Indigenous Australians’, Australian Indigenous Health ­InfoNet, vol.4, viewed 27 March 2019, https://espace.curtin.edu.au/bitstream/handle/ 20. 50 0.11937/34089/159785_ 26126 _Wilson H a rm f u lUseA I H I N.pd f? sequence=2 Windschuttle, K 2000, The killing of history, Encounter, San Francisco. Winroe, R 1988, ‘A significant day for all Australians’, in ACT Schools Authority (ed.), Aboriginal perspectives of the Bicentenary, ACT Schools Authority, ­Canberra, pp.17–22. Wood, R 2009, ‘Frontier violence and the bush legend’, History Australia, vol.6, no.3, pp.67.1–67.19.

2 Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre

Indigenous theatre practitioners of the 1970s and 1980s helped to publicly define Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and questions of cultural relations as socio-politically relevant for all Australians, and strongly advocated an Indigenously-led discussion of Indigenous Affairs in the public sphere. Contemporary Indigenous Australian and intercultural performance still retains this basic political agenda in educating audiences by creating alternative historiographies and adding stories of Indigenous survival, resilience, assertion and celebration to the wider Australian cultural memory. However, the cultural landscape in Australia has changed over the past 40+ years and with this, the scope of Indigenous Australian theatre has expanded: Despite the lingering issue of Indigenous disadvantage and trauma and the slow-moving reconciliation process, Indigenous Affairs today figure at the forefront of public discussion. In the arts, Indigenous Australians are fiercely asserting their right to selfrepresentation, either through autonomous creative endeavours or in the form of collaborations with non-Indigenous artists that are increasingly characterised by a high degree of Indigenous creative control over artistic representations. In comparison to works of the early stages of Indigenous Australian and intercultural theatre, many plays today reflect this change by negotiating identity in exceedingly elaborated, complex theatrical idioms. They strongly foreground the localised nature of cultural expressions and often elucidate the political frame by way of mapping identity through highly individual, personalised journeys (e.g. Jack Charles v The Crown, 2010; Kill the Messenger, 2015). Today, relevance of Indigenous stories to the broader Australian mainstream society is taken for granted by the creative teams and Indigeneity is explored through the wider prism of individual subjectivity, cultural heterogeneity and political history, delving deeper into the structures and impacts of (de)colonial processes. An interesting aspect with regard to the evolution of contemporary Indigenous Australian performing arts is a pronounced proliferation of theatrical forms encompassing not only forms of documentary theatre reflecting the darker sides of Black and White histories in Australia (e.g. Namatjira,

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  41 2010; Beautiful One Day, 2012; Coranderrk. We Will Show the Country, 2012) but also a strong tradition of cabaret and comedy combining biting commentary with emotional accessibility in the negotiation of communal identity on stage (e.g. Bindjareb Pinjarra, 1994; Blackie Blackie Brown, 2018). Due to Australian demographic and economic structures, mainstage theatrical productions have tended to be developed and staged mostly in the metropolitan centres of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra.1 Hence, the ensuing overview focuses on productions presented in these cities, whilst necessarily eclipsing from view the heterogeneous performance activity having continuously taken place in regional and rural areas. A notable exception from this metropolitan focus in the mainstage sector is a strand of professional Indigenous Australian and intercultural performing arts practice that embraces communal production on Country as a way to explore distinctly Indigenous ontologies that leverage and are strongly indebted to traditional practice. Companies that have committed themselves to such approaches are Marrugeku, Big hART and Bangarra Dance Theatre.

The beginnings In the early 1970s, activists like Gary Foley (Gumbainggir), Charles Perkins (Aranda Kalkadoon), Justine Saunders (Woppaburra), Bob Maza (Meriam Yidinjdji), Kath “Oodgeroo” Walker (Noonuccal) and Gerry Bostock (Bundjalung) began to publicly force the attention of mainstream Australian society onto Indigenous Affairs and to advocate concepts of Indigenous self-determination. They did so by availing themselves of a spectrum of measures which were strongly influenced by theatrical idioms – staging public demonstrations and rallies, which oftentimes contained mini-­performances of guerrilla theatre or agit-prop that aestheticised and foregrounded the human cause of their agenda (Casey 2004, p.15). Apart from the traditional practices that inform contemporary Indigenous Australian performance, it is these political stagings that contemporary artists look to as a founding moment of their practice (a point especially emphasised by Wesley Enoch in a telephone interview on 9 April 2013). For example, the 1965 “freedom ride” is often credited as a key event that put a face to Indigenous Australian people in mainstream media. Starting from Sydney, a group of students from the University of Sydney led by Charles Perkins – the first Aboriginal student to graduate from an Australian university in 1966 – set out to traverse regional towns in New South Wales and Queensland which were known for their entrenched racism (AIATSIS n.d. a). Similar to Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a White passenger on a crowded bus in Alabama (USA) in 1955, Charles Perkins and his companions publicly claimed liberties up until then exclusively enjoyed by Settler Australians (Foley 2009, p.14), filming their actions for

42  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre a documentary intended to be screened by the publicly-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Their actions resonated strongly with Indigenous communities all over the country, generating pride and a sense of possibility, which fed an already present restlessness among the younger generations. Jack Charles (Bunurong Wiradjuri), Bob Maza, Kevin Gilbert (Wiradjuri), Justine Saunders and Jack Davis (Bibbulmun) have been pivotal figures, who advanced Indigenous Affairs at a grassroots level and within mainstream media, pushing for critical inquiries into political issues. 2 All of them were deeply engaged in politics and actively promoted Indigenous performing arts. They ‘explored a range of methods for production, including independent one-off projects, Indigenous-controlled companies and collaborations with non-Indigenous-controlled, government-­subsidised theatre companies’ (Casey 2004, pp.xxii/xxiii). In Melbourne, Jack Charles, Bob Maza and others established the first Aboriginal theatre company Nindethana (ibid., p.24), which created the popular production Jack Charles Is Up and Fighting (1972), staged at various venues across town (ibid., pp.30/31). The show consisted of various sketches that each highlighted aspects of Indigenous Australian experience in colonial Australia and unrelentingly interrogated the political status quo (ibid., p.26). This format has recently been adapted by contemporary theatre makers, with Karla Hart (Nyoongar)’s Fifty Shades of Black (2013), Richard Frankland’s Walking into Bigness (2014) and Stewart, Beckett, Kinchela & Bedford’s This is Your Black Life (2017) relying on the delivery of select vignettes that each relate aspects of contemporary Indigenous experience in a form that packages stories of hardship, racism and discrimination in a comedic envelope. As a fiercely political revue, Jack Charles Is Up and Fighting garnered much attention, and for many non-Indigenous spectators it was the first time they directly heard Aboriginal people convey their ‘political message […] with maximum impact and clarity of stance’ (Balme 1999, p.23). In 1973, Nindethana also produced the first season of Kevin Gilbert’s The Cherry Pickers (1968) – credited as the first full-length play penned by an Aboriginal author (Cook 2010, p.53), which focused on the life and challenges facing Indigenous itinerant farm workers. Around that time, Bob Maza, Jack Charles and Justine Saunders also became the first Indigenous Australian actors to be repeatedly cast in mainstream television productions, opening up career pathways for subsequent generations of artists. Following the success of Jack Charles is Up and Fighting, Bob Maza went on to Sydney, where he was involved in the creation of the National Black Theatre (NBT). The NBT – on a shoestring budget – interrogated contemporary socio-political issues through the prism of agit-prop and political theatre (Casey 2004, p.52). The company was housed in Redfern’s fledgling Black Theatre Arts and Cultural Centre, which operated as an artistic and political hub in the 1970s. In 1972, Bob Maza, Zac Martin (Gubbi Gubbi) and Gary Foley explored contemporary Black urban experiences of racism in the satirical

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  43 revue Basically Black (ibid., p.53) – which was as successful as to warrant a TV adaptation by the ABC in the following year (ibid., p.62). An unsettling feature of the production for non-Indigenous audiences was its reversal of the conventional dynamics of racial framing: In a show like Basically Black, the gaze as an expression of racial objectification is returned; the ‘white’  person is under the gaze and satirised in public, confronting images of Settler Australian social identity  […]. The white mask became an articulation of difference, reversing the process of representation. The fixed nature of the Indigenous person is returned in kind in the fixed nature of the ‘white’ person. (ibid., p.83) Gerry Bostock’s Here Comes the Nigger (1976) continued this form of engagement by putting everyday racism under a magnifying glass, thereby pushing for Indigenous self-representation and assertion in the public domain. Karen Austin elucidates the path-defining comedic approaches deployed by Maza, Bostock and others as a disarming strategy, which has enabled artists to engage the audience with ‘the plight of Indigenous people’ without alienating through ‘sadness, anger, or moral condemnation’ (2015, p.138). While contemporary next generation authors like Nakkiah Lui begin to query the efficacy of this approach, rigorously taking the audience to task in terms of colonial guilt, accountability and legacy without the ‘safety valve’ of comedic amelioration (Grehan 2003, p.119) – as evident in works like Lui’s Kill the Messenger (2015); in the 1970s and 1980s, Austin assesses the “reverse gaze” strategy on the grounds of its novelty as an effective ‘form of rebellion’ and a means for ‘expression of an inner freedom’ from repressive authorities (2015, p.139). Quoting Gary Foley, she supports this estimation by pointing out that theatre artists ‘were able to get away with saying things to whitefellas that might have got [them] shot in other places at the time, but [they] also managed to get people to seriously think about the issues’ (Foley qtd. in Austin 2015, p.139). The first Aboriginal ‘formal drama’ (Casey 2004, p.100) produced in Australia was The Cake Man – a play written by Wiradjuri author Robert Merritt when serving time in prison. Staged for the first time in 1975 under the direction of Bob Maza, it is set on a mission in New South Wales, presenting the daily struggle of an Aboriginal family for survival under assimilation policies. As the play acutely highlights the systematic dependency of Aboriginal people on Settler Australian institutions, the aesthetic choices made in staging the play, their implications and whether or not non-Indigenous actors should be included in the cast, became contentious issues among the involved Redfern community. After ample consultations, Maza opted for a mixed cast in favour of the aesthetic effect rather than the political statement that an all-Indigenous cast would have entailed in terms of Indigenous assertion (ibid., p.102). The show was a

44  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre great success and is regarded as a ‘milestone’ in Indigenous Australian theatre history (ibid., p.105), having played to packed houses at the 1982 World Theatre Festival in Denver, USA (Casey 2000, p.88). It also sits among the very few Indigenous plays to have been restaged for performance after closing of their initial season – the latest production having been at Sydney’s premier Belvoir Street Theatre in 2013 under the direction of Kyle Morrison (Nyoongar). Over the last decade, the geographical accessibility of Indigenous and intercultural theatre works has been improving, with shows like Jack Charles v The Crown, Ngapartji Ngapartji, Namatjira or Coranderrk. We Will Show the Country having toured both nationally and internationally, testifying to a slowly building economic confidence of funding bodies that such works will find an audience and/or that their thematic and artistic scope warrants sustained engagement. With its focus on themes of identity and preoccupation with national narratives, Indigenous Australian theatre of the 1970s shares close links with the “New Wave” movement in the wider Australian performing arts landscape at this time. Labelled as the “Golden Age of Australian Theatre”, the playwrights of the New Wave brought distinctly Australian stories to the stage (Brisbane 2005, p.169) and pitted them successfully against a theatre tradition that awarded critical acclaim mostly to imported international productions, while simultaneously tending to label Australian cultural products as inferior (McCallum 2009, p.139).3 Initially a fringe phenomenon, the writers of the New Wave, such as John Romeril, David Williamson, Alex Buzo and Jack Hibbert,4 interrogated established representations of Australian identity and invested Australian characters with new artistic legitimacy and significance (ibid., p.139). The New Wave playwrights backed a predominantly Anglo-Australian national narrative and only marginally concerned themselves with the Indigenous cause. Their focus on the challenges and issues facing working-class Australia, however, resonated strongly with large sections of the Australian public and their rise within the theatre landscape brought focus and funding objectives back to the independent theatre scene, which also benefited the fledgling Indigenous cooperatives (Casey 2004, pp.15–16/91). Despite the dynamic transformations brought about by Indigenous theatre practitioners on the East coast, it was late Western Australian Nyoongar writer and director Jack Davis, who in the 1980s put Indigenous performance firmly on the map of Australian theatre. A defining element of his body of work has been the committed and aesthetically fruitful marriage of community expectations relating to performance and storytelling with mainstream professional performing arts standards. His original playwriting and direction attracted large audiences, reaped public and critical acclaim as well as international exposure (Casey 2004, pp.144/45). In his plays, 5 Jack Davis brought a wide range of Indigenous experiences of Australian colonial history to the stage. By focussing on the human condition and the colonial imprint upon Indigenous lifeworlds, he managed to bring his diverse audiences to identify and empathise with

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  45 his characters (ibid., p.140). In terms of its theatrical aesthetics, Davis’ work was often read by non-Indigenous reviewers only through the prism of Western naturalistic theatre conventions that were thought to arguably override Indigenous idioms in favour of a broader mainstream appeal (ibid., p.153). Despite the fact that his plays were indeed very straightforward in their structure and staging, leveraging naturalism to ‘emphasise the potential reality of the representations’ (Casey 2000, p.89), many points have been made to redeem his work: For the first time in Australian theatre history, Aboriginal stories were told by an Aboriginal author in mainstream, first-tier venues. Even though his works were mainly written in English, he employed a non-standard, Aboriginal version of English and interspersed his scripts with Nyoongar vocabulary to evoke his distinctive setting and stress Aboriginal survival and resilience. This effects a ‘Brechtian defamiliarization of language’ (Gilbert 2001, p.89), in which the marked use of culturally inflected voices, the ‘appropriation and abrogation’ of the English language through improvisation, humour, irony, tonality, diction, rhythm, and accent as well as the inclusion of Aboriginal languages works to recuperate the decolonising potential of the spoken word (compare ibid., p.84). Today, the use of Aboriginal English is a staple of Indigenous Australian theatre, with productions like Coolwell’s The Battle of Waterloo (2015) and Yovich & Valentine’s Barbara and the Camp Dogs (2017) heavily deploying its linguistic structures and phrases to support the evocation of Aboriginal social worlds. As Marc Maufort points out with reference to Mudrooroo Narogin’s concept of “Aboriginal Realism”, Davis complemented his naturalistic approach with features marked through paradigmatic juxtaposition as “Aboriginal” that counteracted the dominance of Western cosmologies and narrative forms (2006, p.56). The Aboriginal Realism within the plays expresses itself in the inclusion of traditional Aboriginal features (e.g. mythical characters that are embodied on stage, musical elements, props, stage-design, etc.) that generate a parallel frame of reference to the one established through Western stage conventions, positing that everyday life still partakes in the Dreaming and is infused with qualities that supersede Western notions of reality (ibid., p.56). A clear-cut distinction of the real and the symbolical is consequently abandoned in Davis’ works in favour of a hybrid concept of reality, which reaffirms Indigenous spirituality against Western conceptual frameworks based on binary oppositions (ibid., p.61). As Rachael Maza (Meriam Yidinjdji) states, these early productions and engagements with Aboriginality have had a two-fold effect: ‘For non-­I ndigenous audiences, these works have been instrumental in breaking down stereotypes and building understanding and compassion, and for Indigenous audiences they are an affirmation and a celebration’ (qtd. in Maufort 2006, p.27). In an exemplary reading of Davis’ Kullark (1979), Helen Gilbert traces how he asserts the perspective of the marginalised by ‘undermining the coherence, logic, and authority of White discourse’ (2001, p.64) through the strategic use of verbatim material. This assertion also effects a general

46  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre reflection of all historiographical presentation as inherently interest-driven, ‘multiple, ambiguous, partial, [and] relative’ (ibid., p.63). Rather than simply supplanting the imposed coloniser-discourse with a “moralised” Indigenous alternative, Davis creates a meta-level to consider meaningmaking processes and questions of authority in the representation of Indigeneity. By focussing on the subjective, interest-driven and arbitrary nature of historiographical writing (and the identities constituted therein), Davis mapped the ground which much subsequent Indigenous Australian theatre makers have chartered since, embracing positionality as the defining coordinate from which to structure historiographical accounts – expressly foregoing postmodern conceptualisations of political agency as dissolving amid increasingly fragmenting subjectivities (Zima 2010, p.xii). Instead, Indigenous theatre makers interpret subjective markers as endowing personal experience with veracity that can be successfully pitted against colonial constructions of Indigenous identity and history. In the theatrical realm, this strategy can be successful because embodied performance unfolds its own truth effects that can be dynamically leveraged against the objectified representations of Indigeneity in the past. Works like Foley (2011), Beautiful One Day (2012) or Coranderrk. We Will Show the Country (2012) rely on this strategy, combining verbatim material, direct address and close identification of the performer with the historical context presented in order to maximise the political persuasion of the theatrical work. The works of Jack Davis were presented at major national and international festivals, drawing attention to Indigenous causes in Australia and nourishing the growing confidence of Indigenous communities to assert their voices in the political sphere. One of the international touring highlights was a staging of The Dreamers (1982) in Portsmouth, UK: The production served as an ironic counterpoint to the First Fleet re-­enactment staged in Sydney Harbour as part of the lead-up to the Australian bicentenary celebrations in 1988, which commemorated the commencement of permanent nonIndigenous settlement in Australia (Casey 2004, p.146). It thus continued public Indigenous Australian protest against non-­I ndigenous settlement as, for example, staged in the first Day of Mourning (1938) for which a group of Aboriginal leaders congregated at Sydney’s Australia Hall on January 26 to protest the treatment of Indigenous people under 150 years of colonialism (AIATSIS n.d. b). The bicentenary celebrations triggered much political dissent from Indigenous and non-­I ndigenous people, ‘[…] because of its drive toward modes of historicity that were becoming untenable as Indigenous cultural struggles gained public recognition, and other minority groups increasingly demanded an equal place in their officially multicultural nation’ (Gilbert & Lo 2007, p.51). Consequently, issues of colonisation and cultural relations in Australia began to make up a larger proportion of the work produced in mainstream and fringe theatre at that time (Milne 1990, p.43). The upsurge in interest, although noticeably

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  47 declining with the conclusion of the celebrations (ibid., p.42), helped to connect various Indigenous artistic networks and to boost inclusion of Indigenous artists within mainstream creative industries. For example, ­Carole Johnson founded Bangarra Dance Theatre in Sydney, which has since risen to become one of the flagship institutions promoting professional Indigenous performance across Australia and the world; Melbourne-based practitioners initiated Ilbijerri Theatre Co-Operative in 1990, Australia’s longest running Indigenous theatre company; in Brisbane, the Koemba Jdarra company was established to represent Indigenous stories on the stage, while in Perth, Yirra Yaakin was launched by Nyoongar people in 1993 – with many smaller co-operatives beginning to work on a regional scale to foster Indigenous self-representations in the performing arts (Casey 2004, pp.231–43). In 1987, Indigenous theatre practitioners instigated the National Black Playwrights Conference to establish a framework for creative training and exchange between communities across the country (Glow & Johanson 2009, pp.15/16). Their tutelage nurtured many of the emerging playwrights of the 1990s who succeeded in establishing an enduring Indigenous presence in the Australian theatre landscape (ibid., p.17). While the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust, who ran the second instalment of the conference in 1989, folded due to lack of sustainable government support (SLNSW 2018); today, the Yellamundie Playwriting Festival, convened every two years by Moogahlin Performing Arts Inc., continues to nurture Indigenous creatives, regularly presenting work at Sydney’s premier Carriageworks precinct. Playwrights whose work was selected for development include Jada Alberts (Larrakia, Bardi, Wadaman, Yanuwa), Jub Clerc (Nyul Nyul, Yawuru), Jane Harrison (Muruwari), David Milroy (Yindjibarndi, Palku) and Henrietta Baird (Kuku Yalanji, Yidinji) – representing a balanced quota of established writers and young talent. From the late 1980s onwards, works began to show a strong engagement with political issues arising from the Australian history and to respond artistically especially to contemporary public discourses and their disruptive influences on Indigenous communities. Jack Davis’ Barungin. Smell the Wind (1988) and later Richard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead (2002), for example, address the issue of Aboriginal deaths in police custody in unprecedented harsh tones: Identity in these plays is conceptualised by ‘subject positions [which] intersect, overlap and clash’ (Tompkins 2006, p.128) in response to the pressures of the Australian historical and contemporarily experienced social context. Conversations with the Dead (in which the protagonist is a community liaison officer for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody on the verge of suicide)6 performs a crisis of subjectivity, conceptualising it as a task to be negotiated in opposition to demands placed on the individual by the social body (ibid., p.140). Joanne Tompkins interprets the play as ‘enact[ing] a type of personal methexis in which the character[-] work[s] against a mimetic

48  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre relationship with the ‘real’ world and instead establish[es] an imagined world that is at least temporarily more suitable’ (ibid., p.133). Consequently, in opposition to Davis’ early work, the inclusion of supernatural effects (i.e. ghosts of deceased prisoners) here no longer first and foremost indicates an unproblematic assertion of cultural identity but points to subjectivity in crisis. Tompkins reads these effects as expressing the liminality experienced by the character, which acquires literal spatial expression as the moment of crisis approaches (ibid., pp.138/39): The ghosts manifest a space of death, which in the show threatens to eclipse the protagonist’s alternative interpretations of the social world. The stage space is transformed into a liminal world in which neither past from present, nor death from life can be distinguished and in which the self threatens to merge with the other, ultimately resulting in its dissolution and disbandment. Subjectivity, in this case, is thwarted by the overidentification of the individual with the colonially affected Indigenous social body, his inability to establish a psychologically effective differentiation between self and other, without which the individual is cut adrift in the navigation of the social space and cannot create a stable position from which to enunciate. Rather than providing a sense of orientation and emotional grounding, the Indigenous community in Conversations with the Dead is characterised by trauma and cannot provide the individual with positive means for identification. The oppressive regime of colonialism is shown to dominate the present of the protagonist and the Indigenous Australian community as a whole – a force that imminently erodes the foundation of the social world because it annihilates Indigenous bodies and poisons the relations of people to one another. Rather than presenting a post-colonial world in which complexity is negotiated on positive terms, Conversations with the Dead focuses on the ongoing (physical and mental) colonisation of Indigenous people in Australia and the difficulty of subject constitution under siege. As such, Frankland picks up and magnifies the colonial critique developed in the works of the 1970s and early 1980s yet shifts the focus also to intracommunal coping strategies – a cause he would later continue to pursue in his work The Brady Bunch (2013), which explores issues of lateral violence in Indigenous communities.

Coming of age From the 1980s onward, Australia has experienced an immense proliferation of Indigenous arts across all media, including performance, visual arts, literature, music and film. Marcia Langton (Wiradjuri, Bidjara) points out that this proliferation was accompanied in the 1990s by a novel permissiveness which developed in Indigenous arts practice that moved away from the strict protocols of traditional storytelling in order to reflect more flexibly on processes of historiography (2000, p.23). This development benefited theatrical storytelling formats and also broadened the thematic scope of plays, which came to explore more copiously the creative spectrum of storytelling

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  49 approaches and communal production processes. One area that this strongly manifested in was the reflection of belonging, particularly in relation to the Stolen Generations. Two of the most notable productions stemming from such explorations are Jimmi Chi’s Bran Nue Dae (1991) and Jane Harrison’s Stolen, commissioned by Ilbijerri in 1992 (Harrison 1998, p.vii). Despite their commonality in topic, the two plays engage in diametrically opposed ways with the legacy of Australian colonialism. Jimmi Chi (Baada Nyulnyul), a musician from multicultural Broome, created an upbeat, surrealistic musical theatre piece, which like hardly a show since has framed reconciliation as an inevitable result of a national search for belonging. Chi’s melodramatic storyline sees a group of endearing Indigenous stragglers, a German tourist and his girlfriend embarking on an eventful road trip through Western Australia. As dramatic time unfolds and space is traversed, they bond against all odds and learn at the end of their journey that each can lay claim to a collective, shared family history. This revelation breaks down the alterity constructed around the strict dichotomy of racialised identities in the beginning of the play. The heightened, convoluted story in which the transgression committed by a German pastor and an Indigenous woman has created a hybrid sense of belonging for all characters, rearticulates Australian identity as built on Indigenous foundations (Gilbert & Lo 2007, p.59). The coda to a plot based on concealment and revelation, which is flanked by fast-paced witty dialogue, indicates a subverted attitude toward Indigeneity in Australia that runs counter to 230+ years of colonisation, and projects – albeit comically abated – a new pride in and mainstream embrace of Indigenous Australia (ibid., p.59). The production’s light tone and conciliatory stance constituted a radically new approach within Indigenous Australian theatre in that it combined grave historical narrative (e.g. racism, institutional life and splintered communities) with a slapstick comedian style. Catering to a desire for easily digestible Australian stories, it was an instant success with nationwide audiences (ibid., p.58) and served as a career launching pad for prolific actors such as Leah Purcell (Murri), Trevor Jamieson (Pitjantjatjara) and Ursula Yovich (Burarra). Stolen, on the other hand, adopted a much more sombre mode of storytelling: It premiered under the direction of Wesley Enoch (Noonuccal Nuugi) in 1998 and, like hardly a show before or since, enjoyed multiple annual seasons (most recently at Parramatta Riverside Theatres in 2018), toured nationally and internationally, and now forms part of several Australian high school curricula (Harrison 1998, pp.vii/xii). Stolen presents the narrative quest of five Aboriginal teenagers who find themselves converging at various stages in their young lives, grappling with the effects of having been separated from their families. The teenagers each have their own idiosyncratic way of dealing with the emotional aftermath and, taken together, present a compelling image of the insecurities, struggles and approaches to coping with loss and trauma (Gilbert & Lo 2007, pp.65/66). In the portrayal of her characters, Harrison (Muruwari) explores notions of

50  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre hybrid, volatile identities that hover uneasily in between two cultures, fully belonging to neither one nor the other. Her dramatic form underscores this polyphonic expression of Indigenous subjects (Maufort 2002, p.288) by relying on a subtle play between a starkly naturalistic and a soft, abstracted style. This form of staging quietly subverts the oppressive dominance of Western dramatic conventions and discourses, creating a space for Indigenous voices to explore fluid identity concepts. Even though not all of the characters find a productive way to cope with their biographies, the play concludes on a hopeful note, presenting the prospect of belonging as just within reach of the individuals (Harrison 1998, pp.34ff). Stolen is one of the first in a series of plays created in the 1990s by Indigenous Australian women that explore Indigeneities and their entanglement with Australia’s colonial past. Ilbijerri created a season titled Blak Inside in collaboration with mainstream Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, showcasing and publishing amongst others works by Tammy A ­ nderson ­( Palawa), Tracey Rigney (Wotjobaluk Ngarrindjeri),  Maryanne Sam (Meriam Mer) and Jadah Milroy (Palku), articulating diverse experiences and imaginations of Indigenous subjectivity on the city’s stage. For example, in I Don’t Wanna Play House (2000), Anderson reworked experiences of hardship and oppression from her personal life, creating an intimate account in the form of a one-person narrative which she herself performed on stage, employing a minimalist stage design that resonated with the topics of displacement, violence, hope and assertion. With belonging as the focus of all the season’s plays, each woman created a unique take on Indigenous life within the larger Australian sphere. Be it in a self-reflective manner as in Sam’s Casting Doubts (2002) that explores in-group contestations of identity in the setting of an Indigenous casting agency, or in the exploration of adolescent negotiations of identity in Milroy’s Crow Fire (2002) or Rigney’s Belonging (2002). The series relied on the format of the “one-woman-show”, which Ningali Lawford (Wangkatjungka) had helped to pioneer with her awardwinning autobiographical show Ningali (1994), which she had co-developed with Robyn Archer and Angela Chaplin for Deckchair Theatre in Western Australia (Grehan 2001a, p.69). In her intimate narration, Lawford decolonises her stage through the use of a mix of languages (Standard English, Aboriginal English, Nyoongar) and a dramaturgy that juxtaposes moments of joy with those of intense grief, taking the spectator on an emotional rollercoaster ride that elicits reflection and inspires empathy (Glow 2007, p.24). A special feature of the production was the stage-design which resembled both the actress’ body and her birth Country, and which was employed as a major conduit for framing Lawford’s story in terms of a narratological map (Grehan 2001a, p.81). In its aesthetics, Ningali (like most Indigenous Australian theatre pieces) follows Western theatrical conventions yet infuses them with a distinctly syncretic Indigenous style7 that Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo describe as relying on the ‘centrality of the performer-audience relationship […] that includes among its styles

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  51 and forms musical theatre, agitprop, stand-up comedy, dance theatre, naturalism, multi-media performance, docudrama and autobiographical monologue’ (2007, p.48). Helena Grehan traces how nomadic subjectivity8 in Ningali serves as the experimental and interrogating fold, which allows the performer to negotiate and make visible the polysemy of contemporary Indigenous Australian subject positions (2001a, p.73). The performer’s semi-autobiographical, ‘factitious’9 account speaks from multiple positions that range from traditional to urban, stitching the theatrical event into a pastiche of selves, that can be read as not only emblematic of the intimately personal but also of Ningali’s wider community’s story (ibid., p.25). The performer becomes a site of and for inscription, since she occupies the inbetween zone of performing subject and performed personae, always in the position to both mediate as well as manipulate this situation by means of techniques, such as autobiographical narration, degrees of ambiguity, layering and inscription (ibid., p.23). The storyteller in Ningali ‘points to the interweaving of traditional and contemporary aspects of her culture, constantly rejecting marginal positions or imposed hybrid identities […] creat[ing] a space from which to speak as a complex, postmodern, yet, simultaneously traditionally informed Aboriginal woman’ (ibid., p.76). Ningali here figures as an example for Tompkins’ proposed conflation of conceptual approaches in feminist and Indigenous Australian drama, in that both employ a maximum of ‘structural freedom’ (1991, p.14) and foreground the ‘possibilities of knowing the many selves within each [person]’ (Keyssar qtd. in Tompkins 1991, pp.14/15). Ningali here maps the construction and reinforcement of an affirmed, hybrid subjectivity  – making it communicable and intelligible to both Indigenous and nonIndigenous audiences. Ningali’s celebration of Indigenous subjectivity is often contrasted with Wesley Enoch & Deborah Mailman’s The Seven Stages of Grieving (1995): While Ningali strives to maintain subject status for its protagonist at all times (not in the least by the provision for meta-commentary); in The Seven Stages of Grieving, subject and object status frequently fluctuate as this shift is played out visually on the performer’s body as a site of vulnerability and powerlessness that threatens to blanket her voice (­Grehan 2001b, p.111). As one of the nationally and internationally most wellknown Indigenous Australian spoken word performance pieces, the play equally makes use of the dramaturgical concept of emotionally distancing or drawing in its audience yet abstains from recounting the story of loss and trauma in an overtly personalised frame (Glow 2007, p.29). Instead, Enoch and Mailman broaden the scope of their story by depersonalising their narrator and casting her as the mediator of collective experiences abstracted from the authors’ extensive research, community consultations and own knowing (Enoch qtd. in Glow 2006, p.74). These experiences are loosely condensed into the story of a family whose strands are unravelled by a funeral and the homecoming of an estranged family member. The title

52  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre of the play references Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ concept of the five stages of grieving, which Enoch and Mailman (Bidjera) transpose into the context of Indigenous Australian history by letting their character reflect on its seven phases of ‘Dreaming, Invasion, Genocide, Protection, Assimilation, Self-­ Determination, and Reconciliation’ (Austin 2015, p.147). Engaging with the emotional, spiritual, social and political consequences of colonisation, The Seven Stages of Grieving derives its impact from conjuring the possibility of failure to constitute subjectivity that could affirm survival – connecting to Frankland’s concern over the vulnerability of communal ties in Indigenous communities. Whereas in Ningali the physical presence and practice of the autobiographical subject on stage vouchsafes the survival and thriving of the empowered Indigenous subject through colonisation, The Seven Stages of Grieving does not offer the solace of such a personalised voice but only allows ephemeral identification with transient subject/object positions. The destabilising effect ensuing from this constant fluctuation, while making tangible the emotional effects of oppression, also highlights the ambivalent ‘nonfixity of boundaries’ (Braidotti qtd. in Grehan 2001a, p.38), which calls into question the premises on which notions of the self and the other are constructed. In its thrust, The Seven Stages of Grieving mediated the overtly political stance of the Indigenous Australian theatre of the 1980s with the more personalised forms developed over the 1990s, creating a hybrid form that strongly resonated with its heterogeneous audiences. The success of the show put both Enoch and Mailman as creatives firmly on the map of Australian performing arts and offered new avenues for professional engagement within mainstream practice – with Mailman today being one of the household names among Australian TV production and Enoch holding the prestigious position of Artistic Director of the Sydney Festival (2017–19)  – the first Indigenous person to spearhead one of Australia’s foremost international art festivals. The Seven Stages of Grieving was programmed for the Wimmin’s Business season (1997) – a cycle of seven, partly semi-autobiographical solo shows co-written by Indigenous women and non-Indigenous collaborators staged in first-tier venues across Sydney.10 The season formed part of the 1997 Festival of the Dreaming – the first of four annual arts festivals in the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. With its slogan ‘intimate. contemporary.true’ (Milne 2000, p.38), it provided first-time exposure for Indigenous Australian theatre artists within the framework of a major, federally-funded festival in celebration of the world’s Indigenous cultures (Austin 2015, p.150). The Olympics played a substantial role in providing contemporary Indigenous Australian artists with global publicity and expedited the process of negotiating an Australian national identity that expressly takes pride in Indigenous heritage. Even though in most of the Olympic Games’ marketing, the representations of Indigeneity tended to be oriented toward a romanticised notion of “traditional identity”, Bangarra’s

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  53 Artistic Director Stephen Page (Noonuccal) pointed out in a personal interview in Melbourne on 7 May 2013 that Aboriginal and ­Torres Strait Islander artists were given creative licence to co-develop the cultural programme and to contest depictions that were deemed exceptionally inappropriate. Wimmin’s Business examined the intersectional discourses of femininity and Indigeneity in order to interrogat[e the] limits of existing gender stereotypes on the stage (Casey 2004, pp.253/54). The plays challenged the stereotype of Indigenous Australian women traditionally representing ‘the tragic inevitability of encountering violence, unfairness and poverty, the squashing of aspirations, the denial of beauty, ridicule and lack of freedom to determine one’s own fate’ (Narogin qtd. in Casey 2005, p.208). Casey points out that many playwrights, including male Indigenous Australian writers,11 have been complicit in the reproduction and propagation of this stereotype, since they have tended to cast Indigenous women in formulaic roles as the ‘long-suffering, strong, ever resourceful anchor for the family[…] [a] role though strong [yet] inevitably reactive as the women rescue others or try to maintain some sort of economic balance rather than initiate or control situations’ (2005, p.212). The female performers of the Wimmins’ Business cycle, however, while still portraying the same context of poverty, domestic violence, alcoholism etc., shift the perspective of narration to the first person, presenting subjective accounts of lived experience from which the narrations derive their truth-value (ibid., p.257). They are presenting a range of active, strong women as central characters in their own drama; women who are not passive victims of sexism or racism but active agents using whatever resources they can call on to create possibilities and potential futures for themselves and others. (Casey 2005, p.215) Elements associated with traditional Indigenous Australian cultures and spirituality are integral to these representations of contemporary Indigeneity and are presented as a ‘source of strength’ for the characters in the respective works (ibid., p.215).12 In the late 1990s, the shows represent a new phase in the history of Indigenous Australian theatre practice as they are showing ‘indigenous reality [as] more complex, rather than a question of [only] ‘black or white’, [which] demands a more sophisticated response [in return] from its audience’ (ibid., p.207). The ‘compelling force’ which Casey ascribes to the season, is its ability to answer to and challenge negative, generalised conceptions of femininity and Indigeneity (ibid., p.237). Despite these shows’ merits in terms of their ability to elicit empathy and cultural understanding, they have also run the risk of creating a slightly skewed public perception of the progress of cross-cultural negotiations

54  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre in Australia. As Casey points out, ‘[t]he types of monologues that have achieved such success are all performed by and associated with attractive young women who have ‘survived’ and now negotiate successfully within contemporary Australian society’ (2004, p.258). Consequently, these shows bring a very specific form of Indigeneity into view, namely an urban, young, female and “adapted” one. Casey reminds that the affirmative action which makes the mainstage more inclusive of marginalised perspectives must also be critically reflected, since selectiveness is a powerful factor in this process: Postulating that the national socio-political climate and current discourse on Indigeneity determine to a large degree the success of a given show (ibid., p.260), Casey suggests that the success of Wimmins’ Business may be partly due to their propagation and enactment of a concept of reconciliation which in its dramaturgical structure13 closely concurs with policies of the late 1990s Australian political agenda (ibid., p.261) – an agenda that is disavowed by some intellectuals such as Tanganekald, Meintangk Boandik woman Irene Watson (1997, pp.55ff) as covertly serving mainly non-Indigenous desires for closure and maintenance of the status quo of socio-political relations. Casey warns that the unprecedented success of the season must not be interpreted as a transcendence of racial bias in the Australian performing arts industry. As works of art, these shows are representative of certain choices made in the navigation of cross-cultural relations – to make her point very clear, Casey chooses to label them as exemplary stories of ‘successful assimilation’ (2004, p.266). The shows all present attractive women who won their lives’ battles not least by adopting values that ensured their personal wellbeing over a harmfully experienced communal orientation – values that Casey implicitly aligns with nonIndigenous ideologies. While not calling into question the genuineness of the dramas as specific representations of Indigeneity and lived experience, Casey cautions to restrict their overall representativeness in relation to the many cases of unsuccessful cross-cultural navigation (ibid., p.258). She further points out that representations of Indigeneity which challenge or contradict the politically promulgated reconciliation discourse might not make it to the mainstage in the first place because curators work within the boundaries of a marketplace that is dependent on the acceptance by middle-class, moderate non-Indigenous audiences14 (ibid., pp.259/60). The shows of the Wimmins’ Business cycle affirm the reconciliation discourse by naturalising non-Indigenous value systems and insinuating that Indigeneity can be successfully incorporated into those – not programming shows that critically engage with or problematise this model (ibid., pp.265/66). In this regard, for example, the play Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin] (2010) in its rather clandestine, uncompromising affirmation of traditional Yolngu law at the expense of individualistic desire carries a greater alienating potential for audiences because it challenges the comfortable reconciliation of the intercultural space and clearly demarcates the inexorable difference of traditional Yolngu law.

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  55

Maturing practice Since the turn of the millennium, Indigenous Australian performing arts practice has grown and proliferated in manifold ways, which thwarts any attempt to map the contemporary field in absolute terms. Both thematic scope as well as developmental and staging approaches vary to great extent, testifying to the success with which Indigenous Australian theatre makers continue their quest to elide the receptive frames through which their work has been conventionally received and pigeonholed. The following survey draws out identifiable trajectories carried forth from previous practice, seeking to shed light on developments in the mainstage Indigenous Australian theatre sector by grouping and discussing selected plays according to aspects that dominate their aesthetic or thematic scope. Naturally, this choice of presentation is to some degree arbitrary and was compiled to aid orientation but in no way presumes to exhaustively appreciate the complex layering of form and content in the practice discussed. Autobiographical plays The tradition of autobiographical storytelling as promulgated in the 1990s, especially in mono-dramatic form, has been carried forth into the new millennium, having become a staple format especially in the past decade. Among the most well-known plays in this category is Jack Charles v The Crown (2010), co-written by pioneering actor Jack Charles and prolific non-Indigenous Australian playwright John Romeril. It represents the latest iteration of their long-term collaborative work, which already saw them incepting Jack Charles Is Up and Fighting as well as Bastardy (both 1972) and Going Through (1991), which each drew on fragments of Charles’ biography to elucidate the impact of discriminatory institutional structures on individual lives. Jack Charles v The Crown was produced by Ilbijerri under the direction of Rachael Maza (daughter of Bob Maza). It became one of the most widely toured productions in recent Indigenous Australian mainstage theatre history, having played at six major national arts festivals, 27 national venues – including seasons at Sydney’s premier Belvoir Street Theatre and Melbourne’s Arts Centre –, before heading to Canada, New York, London, Dublin and Auckland (Ilbijerri 2018). The play transposes large segments of Charles’ biography already related in the internationally acclaimed documentary Bastardy (2008) by Amiel Courtin-Wilson that detailed Charles’ experiences as a popular performer and member of the Stolen Generations, his institutional upbringing and search for belonging in ­Melbourne’s Fitzroy community and eventual 32-year-long heroin addiction, financed through burgling that landed him repeatedly in prison (Romensky 2015). Same as the film, the theatre play heavily draws on verbatim material and interprets Charles’ biography as a story of resilience, legitimated through the embodied performance of the autobiographical subject that lives to tell

56  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre his story. The combination of performative modes, which include music, video projection, direct address and craft-making on stage, contributes to this construction through rendering the subject as active and vibrant. The play here relies foremost on Charles’ ability for “yarning”, an Indigenous oral storytelling mode that establishes a close relation between storyteller and audience through the informal sharing of personal experience that is related back into a horizon of traditional knowledge (Austin 2015, p.130). The direct address and smooth delivery of the monologues support the activation of truth effects and encourage empathy for Charles’ plight, channelling the story of addiction and conflict with Settler law into a critical reflection of the colonial system that is performatively taken to court on stage – i.e. through structuring Charles’ account on the grounds of a plaintiff’s summons and instating the audience as jury to his case. Tapping into the strong Australian tradition of alluring heroic outlaw tales, the play dramaturgically positions the audience to identify with Charles’ interpretation of events and historical context, inviting them to credence the parallels drawn between the disempowerment of Indigenous people as effected through the Stolen Generations in the past and the refusal of the present-day Australian Government to let Charles share his life’s teachings as an elder to current prison inmates (denied on the grounds of his existing criminal record). The channelling of the narrative through Charles alone, with him setting the parameters along which the colonial system is brought into view, ensures that his values and interpretations remain dominant in the presentation. This reconfigures the engagement with the Australian status quo on Indigenous terms, with Charles refusing to argue his case in reference to the parameters set out by the authorities currently barring him from pursuing his aspirations. Rather than defending himself within a mainstream system that has not known a productive social place for him throughout the years, he asserts his sovereignty as an Indigenous subject by presenting his case on stage directly against the Crown, casting himself as an equitable legal entity by drawing on the conventions of traditional Indigenous storytelling practices, thereby symbolically disrupting the very foundations on which power relations in Australia have been premised. The play thus creatively articulates the subversive politics that have driven Charles and other Indigenous activists throughout the years, providing a space in which these can be played out and communicated without retort from opposing stakeholders. As will be discussed in depth in the following case studies, such selective invocation of the colonial space on the one hand helps to throw into relief a particular Indigenous perspective that can be pitted against mainstream historiographical accounts. However, on the other hand, such emulation of underlying binary structures that govern colonial discourse formations (e.g. victim and perpetrator) results in a flattening of complexity that underpins contemporary dynamics, which prevents a thorough consideration of factors contributing to the formation of realities (Bhabha qtd. in Rutherford 1990, pp.208/09).

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  57 Assertion of sovereignty and the ongoing reverberations of the colonial past in the Australian present, with their institutional entanglements and influences on Indigenous subject constitution, also make up the central focus of Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor & Alana Valentine’s The Fox and the Freedom Fighters (2014) and Gary Foley & John Hawkes’ Foley (2011) – an autobiographical monodrama staged as part of the 2011 Melbourne- and 2012 Sydney Festivals, in which activist, writer and academic Gary Foley provides a passionate account of his life dedicated to Indigenous protest and empowerment. Under Rachael Maza’s direction, the show was largely staged in lecture format, casting Foley as authoritative presenter on recent Indigenous Australian political history who substantiated his direct-­address account with verbatim material, such as film sequences and historic image material. In addition to making first-hand knowledge of events, such as the instigation of Redfern’s Aboriginal Legal Service (1970) or the Canberra Tent Embassy (1972), accessible to a broad audience; the play also expressly indulged the freedom of stage performance to creatively trial a range of identities, with Foley alternately stylising himself as intellectual academic, rebellious street activist or glitzy entertainer. This two-fold thrust awarded space to an Indigenous perspective on Australian history, critically reflecting on the nature of (post)colonialism in Australia. Yet, through oscillation of roles, it also eschewed restrictive categorisations of Foley’s public persona. While the adopted roles may not have been the most surprising or original, they testify to an Indigenous subject constituting itself at will on stage, taking the liberty to embrace or reject any information in its celebration of self. This allows Foley to overtly push the restrictive boundaries of mainstream representations of Indigeneity that still tend to assign only a very limited set of (mostly disempowered) roles to Indigenous characters (Dodson 2003, p.34/36). This unreserved celebration of identity and its grounding in a narratively constituted personal history is a feature that Foley shares with David Page’s one-man show Page 8 (2004), co-written with non-Indigenous playwright Louis Nowra. The play was a nationwide and international hit, having last been restaged in 2014 in Sydney – two years before Page’s premature death at the age of 55. Situating the narrative of early rise and downfall as a child music star in the 1970s within an intimate web of family stories, Page (Noonuccal) takes the audience on a journey that maps his identity through communal connection, familial pride and personal aspiration. As an accomplished performer who had starred in many stage and film productions before committing himself fully as resident composer to Bangarra (working alongside his brother Stephen), Page evokes a multitude of personas, weaving in and out of male and female roles, jumping into drag and switching between spoken word and musical delivery. What manifests in the individual’s empowering narrative is an evocative family portrait, which provides the coordinates for Page’s identity on stage. While the play places its focus onto Page’s early career as child star and celebrates

58  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre his support networks, the narrative of aspirations thwarted15 is contained through the performer’s retrospection and skilled embodied delivery, which – similar to Jack Charles v The Crown – turns the narrative into a celebration of Indigenous community, achievement and resilience – a facet too often still absent from mainstream representations of Indigenous identity (Dodson 2003, pp.34/36). Other recent biographical shows, which celebrate and reflect on the lives, achievements and challenges of accomplished Indigenous performers have been Richard Frankland’s Walking into Bigness (2014); Reg Cribb’s Country Song (2015) – an ode to late Broome-based musician Jimmy Little; Wilma Reading & Jane Bodie’s Lush Life (2016) – a portrayal of internationally celebrated Jazz singer Reading; and Jimi Bani’s My Name is Jimi (2017). The latter continued the exploration of identity as first and foremost defined by communal relation, including Bani’s extended family alongside himself as performers on stage. This supplants the to-be-expected autobiographically centred retrospection with tales of community life in Bani’s Mabuiag (Torres Strait Island) home, interspersed with Dreaming legends and comical interactions with his son, his friends and family. This approach, while still centred around the autobiographical subject as directive force in the storytelling process, intimately identifies the individual with the social order and reformulates agency as vouchsafed by the community alone. This becomes apparent especially in Bani’s futile stage attempts at influencing his son and friends to embrace traditional dress and practice: The young generation largely refuses to comply, yet create their own brand of Mabuiag identity, combining elements of traditional dress with Western clothing, creatively emulating the values and orientations of the traditional system. Through adapting traditional coordinates into contemporary times, they demonstrate the existence of a distinctive Mabuiag modernity that ultimately testifies to cultural resilience in the face of colonial history. Such resilience amid formal innovation is both thematically and aesthetically reflected in the play, with the artists pushing the multi-modal format characteristic of Indigenous Australian performing arts practice to new levels, for example, by staging Dreaming legends through live filming and streaming of animated dioramas, which cleverly articulates and foregrounds the close connection between story and mediating storyteller that shapes and vouchsafes the continuance of knowledge transmission between the generations. In addition to the narrative bonds created on stage that tie the family closer together through performing on stage, the audience too is invited to back the maintenance of Mabuiag culture through involvement in quizzes, song and consultation – requiring both performers and audience to enter into dialogue and to articulate their knowledge to each other. Ghenoa Gela (Koedal Waumer)’s autobiographical show My Urrwai (2018) premiered alongside My Name is Jimi at Sydney Festival, providing a complementary counterpoint to the exploration of contemporary Torres Strait Islander experiences. The play also includes direct audience

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  59 participation yet uses this to provide spectators with an embodied impression of Gela’s lived experience. Inviting audience members onto the stage to act as surrogate performers for Gela herself, she re-enacts moments of discrimination and humiliation lived through in her life. These moments are dramaturgically framed in order to further understanding of experiences of marginalisation and discrimination in contemporary Australia on the basis of race and gender. By poising the audience to reflect on their own implication in this context, the play conceives of reconciliation as a task challenging all Australians to learn and mature in their ideological positions and everyday practice. In its cross-communal depiction of injustice and marginalisation inflicted on the autobiographical subject by both non-Indigenous as well as other Indigenous people, the play brings into view the complexities that undercut identity politics on mainland and Islander territory. As such, Gela connects to a larger trend in recent Indigenous Australian theatre that shifts the focus also to a critical interrogation of intracommunal dynamics, overtly calling on Indigenous audiences to reflect on the discursive and practical navigation of social relations within their communities. While early plays largely eclipsed issues of intracommunal strife and explored first and foremost issues of discrimination and marginalisation at the seam to non-Indigenous Australian society, this development attests to a shift in the way practice is conceived and translated on stage, namely privileging Indigenous audiences and inching away from the concern that the exploration of dysfunctionality in Indigenous contexts will be used to affirm and reinforce negative stereotypes. On the backdrop of colonial impact and legacy, the answer to questions of identification and belonging is now often articulated as a call to reconfigure the values governing social interaction – with Indigeneity being first and foremost defined as a way of cherishing and structuring relation to others. The ensuing detailed case study on Enoch & Heiss’ I Am Eora teases out the implications of such reconfiguration, interrogating its capability as a conduit for facilitating a sense of belonging in the (post)colonial space. Stories of family The bulk of contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre centralises the family as prime site for reflecting on issues of belonging, cultural maintenance and orientation – continuing the trajectory already mapped in early works such as Robert Merritt’s The Cake Man (1976). With the overriding importance ascribed to family in Indigenous societies (Morphy 2000, p.60), this dominant focus is being moulded in manifold ways on the stage to reflect Indigenous lifeworlds, experiences and ontologies. Staging approaches have most often embraced naturalistic conventions in order to lower the threshold for audiences to connect the seen to extra-theatrical contexts, seeking to influence constructions of Indigeneity also in the extra-­ theatrical world (Casey 2000, p.89). Taken together, these representations

60  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre yield an image of Indigenous Australia that resists reductive synthesis, while increasing the identificatory potential for Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences through portrayal of complex and multi-layered characters navigating the challenging circumstances that Indigenous families have often faced in Australia. As Wesley Enoch explained in a phone interview, the focus on family and everyday situations, however, at the same time also allows exploring universal topics of relationship building and maintenance, connecting the specificity of Indigenous stories to a generalised reflection of the human condition, which allows drawing out similarities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous experiences. In Namatjira, for example, Scott Rankin intersperses the historiographical narrative with comical reflections on the challenges of raising children, letting Albert Namatjira’s father Jonathan vent to the audience about the universal challenges of parenthood (2012, p.21), establishing intimate rapport between the storyteller and the audience that breaks down the often stereotypical and romanticised expectations of cultural difference. To inspire their work, many Indigenous Australian playwrights draw on their own family’s stories for this endeavour, interweaving real-life accounts with fictional material to increase the resonance of their creative and intellectual agendas. Trauma and the female role model A recurrent trope in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre is the death of a family member acting as a catalyst for communal realignment, bringing dispersed and estranged families back together to enact a catharsis from long-held resentments and the trauma emanating from buried family secrets. Prominent examples are Wesley Enoch’s The Story of the Miracles at Cookie’s Table (2007) – which won the prestigious Patrick White Playwrights Award in 2005; Jada Albert’s Brothers Wreck (2014); Alana Valentine & Ursula Yovich’s Barbara and the Camp Dogs (2017); and Elena Carapetis & Alexis West’s Sista Girl (2017). While Country tends to be evoked as a grounding backdrop on which the dramatic action unfolds, paralleling the characters’ psychological evolution with their movements toward or across traditional homelands; it is the interpersonal connections forged to stabilise the familial bond that are centralised in these plays. Dramatising the fierce clashes between relatives and portraying the internal struggles in the face of loss, grief and alienation, the playwrights lead their characters to the verge of psychological disintegration from which they are only pulled back through rigorous introspection and committed intervention by family members who help them piece together the story of the past in order to reconnect in the present. In Cookie’s Table, for instance, the death of matriarch Faith brings together estranged mother and son Annie and Nathan, who clash over their claims to the wooden heirloom kitchen table that represents their last tangible connection to both Faith and their ancestral bond to Country. As dramatic time and conflict unfolds, mother

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  61 and son passionately dissect their relationship to each other, to Faith, as well as to the extended community. They take the audience through a haunting flight that repeatedly smashes the bonds between the two, before revealing information about the past that forces the two characters to reassess each other’s choices, setting the family finally onto the track of reconciliation. A similar dramaturgy of conflict and attenuating revelation is deployed in Yovich & Valentine’s musically driven Barbara and the Camp Dogs (2017), which explores the relationship between the unlike sisters Barbara – spirited, charming and emotionally troubled – and René – straightforward, collected and caring. Building the dramatic narrative through a drawnout exposition that canvasses the dynamics between the sisters that see René continually fulfilling a mother’s role to Barbara’s forceful and uncompromising temperament, their relationship is tested in a road trip back to their mother’s country upon the news of her critically declining health. Increasingly shifting the focus from navigating the metropolitan intercultural space to questions of engaging with community on Country, the sisters’ journey gradually reveals their differing understandings of the past and the psychological imprint these have left on their lives. While, same as in Cookie’s Table, surprising new information is revealed in the end that enables Barbara to reconfigure her connection to family, the denouement emphasises that resolution of the trauma of disconnection and alienation will not be achieved through knowledge and physical reunification alone but requires committed self-examination and change of behavioural patterns by the individual. The question of whether or not the characters will successfully accomplish this task and thereby begin to exorcise the demons of the past (that are in the play to equal parts rooted in the colonial system and in the traditional gendered Indigenous social order) is left open, forestalling the smooth resolution of conflict that Cookie’s Table so readily offers its characters and audience. Trauma, its reflection, management and conquest, figures as a recurrent theme in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre. Its root is invariably grounded in the colonial past, contextualising personal experience in the wider political frame. Trauma is often used as a topical conduit to explore the reverberations of oppression and violence on present-day individuals and the resulting (in)ability to form sustainable interpersonal or communal ties. This allows bringing into view the wide-ranging impact of colonialism on Indigenous social and cultural systems, narrativising dysfunctionality (i.e. placing it in a logical structure of cause and effect) and conceptualising strategies for addressing its manifestations. This reverts agency back to Indigenous subjects because emotional struggles are no longer exclusively presented as a psychological instability but mainly as a logical outcome of systemic oppression that continues to undermine Indigenous communal relations, and which forestalls cultural sovereignty. As a combination of personal and political factors, the dealing with trauma is hence configured as a task with a roadmap and possible solution. Playwrights and directors

62  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre articulate this journey most often in the guise of strong female characters who support and guide others through the practical and emotional challenges of navigating the (post)colonial space. Reflecting the extra-­ theatrical dominance of female role models that have acted as anchors to the community (e.g. NCB n.d.), contemporary theatre makers often celebrate female tenacity and resilience as exemplary attributes to aid communal reinvigoration. Amid the flood of plays that present strong female characters, including Merritt’s The Cake Man (1976), Davis’ No Sugar (1982), ­Lawford’s Ningali (1993), Enoch’s Cookie’s Table (2005), Enoch & Heiss’ I am Eora (2012), Albert’s Brothers Wreck (2014) or Gela’s My Urrwai (2018); Moogahlin Performing Arts & Linden Wilkinson’s This Fella, My Memory (2013) and Andrea James (Yorta Yorta)’ Winyanboga Yurringa (2016) stand out for their reflection of “women’s business”. The latter two plays draw on traditional concepts of gender separation, delving into the intricacies of facilitating and maintaining social cohesion, and present complex female characters that expand the catalogue of conventional mainstage representations of Indigenous femininity. Both plays set their dramatic action in a return to Country, with a group of very different female characters using the break from everyday urban life to reassess their self-concepts and to re-negotiate their relationships to each other. While This Fella sees three elderly women embark on a spiritual journey across Country in response to a family member’s funeral, Winyanboga assembles its all-female cast on an intergenerational camping trip. The unaccustomed yet familiar surroundings create challenges for the groups that each woman contributes to overcome. Finding strength in each other’s company and renewed vigour in a different perspective on one’s life and identity, the women channel the tension that results from their clashes into forming a bond that is postulated as providing support and guidance for their future lives – a proposition that, however, is never put to the test on stage. Plays such as Albert’s Brothers Wreck (2014), Kylie Coolwell’s Battle of Waterloo (2015) and Jub Clerc’s The Fever and the Fret (2015) dramatise the evolution of individual female characters maturing into the role of communal supporter. These characters embody and vouchsafe the social values underpinning traditional Indigenous Australian communal identity concepts (Morphy 2000, p.60). However, this celebration of female strength is often developed on the contrastive backdrop of a diametrically opposed representation of problematic Indigenous masculinity. Brothers Wreck, for example, narrates the quest for integrating young adult Ruben back into the family fold after his cousin Joe’s shocking suicide. While his sister Adele and auntie Petra find solace and calling for life in caring for him and each other, Ruben – with his role model gone – is lacking such an emotional anchor, which leads him further down a spiral of self-destruction. Hitting rock bottom in an alcohol-fuelled rampage, he eventually reaches catharsis in recounting and re-enacting the events of the fateful night, saved from self-harm only by the last-minute intervention of his family. The play

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  63 concludes with a scene of domestic harmony, with Ruben, Adele and Petra sharing stories around the kitchen table and looking hopeful into a future delineated by family values and evenly shared responsibilities. Battle of Waterloo mirrors such concern over volatile masculine identities, presenting male characters that are torn between the seductions of precarious urban lifestyles and substance abuse and the triter rhythms of domestic commitment and professional aspiration that are epitomised in and mastered by the leading female characters of Auntie Mavis and Cassie. The play focuses on Cassie’s tribulations, set in motion by the release of her ex-boyfriend from prison and her sister’s abusive relationship, when trying to negotiate between the responsibility she feels toward the people around her and her own professional aspirations. The urban Indigenous community in the play, especially its male members, emerges as charming yet largely dysfunctional backdrop for Cassie’s strong-willed and passionate negotiation of identity politics that see her trying to forge out a productive place in the mainstream Australian space. Her success in this bridging endeavour endorses a concept of Indigeneity that is not constrained by a harmful equation with immurement in low socio-economic circumstances and is positioned as an example for positive intercultural navigation. Yet conspicuously, the success and achievement of Cassie as an individual is presented here (as in many contemporary Indigenous Australian plays) on the backdrop of a community that does not bring forth any positive male role models. A show that was devised in response to this representational trend is Sonny Dallas Law (Waka Waka), Colin Kinchella (Gomaroi) & Bjorn ­Stewart (Kuku-Yalanji/Wemba Wemba)’s experimental work Bully Beef Stew (2011), in which they reflect on their relationships to their fathers, their social roles as well as gendered experiences and the ways these have impacted on their concepts of selfhood. The autobiographical explorations draw on a multi-modal format that enmeshes spoken word with film, music and projection to yield a deeply personal and complex portrayal of Indigenous masculinity in Sydney’s contemporary urban Indigenous communities. The heterogeneous vignettes operate on a stratum of emotional registers, taking the audience through moments of joy, sadness, anger, frustration and love – emulating the verified dramaturgical approach of the earlier Indigenous autobiographical monodramas. This establishes an empathic and identificatory rapport between the subject on stage and its audience, lowering resistance to revisions of stereotypical assumptions about Indigenous masculinities and increasing readiness to engage with more nuanced and contextualised performances by the men on stage. Katie Beckett (Murawarri)’s Which Way Home (2016) represents a continuation of the effort to add to the stage affirmative, positive representations of Indigenous masculinity that provide a counterpoint to the often derogatory ­ ustralian media and prejudice-laden representations in the mainstream A landscape. The play was first staged in the aftermath of a media scandal

64  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre triggered by Bill Leaks’ cartoon published by the popular newspaper The Australian on 4 August 2016, which depicted an Indigenous father as unfit, uncaring and mangy parent.16 In response, the hashtag IndigenousDads was created and became instantly popular as a conduit to counter such representative practice by sharing images of loving, caring Indigenous ­father-figures. Beckett’s play forms part of this intervention, constituting a dramatised reworking of her own upbringing by her single father, delivered in flashback vignettes that intersect with the narrative of a road trip from the city back to Country. Even though the reversal of the parent-child roles sees daughter Tash assuming control of her elderly father, casting her as the topical emerging strong-willed collected female leader; Indigenous masculinity in this play is configured as vitalising and grounding to the family spirit – with age, not gender providing the primary backdrop on which differences in relationship building and management are elucidated between Tash and her dad. Through this light, feel-good iteration of the road trip genre, Which Way Home achieves to strike a balance between the genders in its representation of Indigenous sociality without risking to reinscribe damaging gendered stereotypes. Romance As outlined, contemporary Indigenous theatre often affirms communal identity concepts through stories that centralise family relations or friendships. Romantic love is often largely eclipsed from representation on stage if not sited in outright opposition to the maintenance of Indigenous communal identities. In Namatjira, for example, Albert Namatjira and his partner Rubina’s elopement is cast as a break with traditional law that requires them to embark on an unsustainable existence in the bush that is soon ended with Rubina’s “sensible” verdict of ‘[f]uck dat’ (Rankin 2012, p.22), returning them to the fold of the Ntaria community, where Albert is subsequently able to fulfil his role as family provider. Stephen Page, Wayne Blair, Kathy Balngayngu Marika (Rirratjingu) & Djakapurra Munyarryun (Munyarryun)’s Bloodland (2011), as well as Nigel Jamieson’s Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin] (2010) similarly affirm traditional marital law – here on the backdrop of ill-fated romance. Denise Varney dissects Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu in a deconstructive analysis, in which she examines the complex engagement with the binary of tradition and modernity and its effects on identity formation. Using Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid modernity’ as an interpretive conduit, Varney decodes the multi-layered performance as a specific Yolngu response to (and containment of) the ‘liquefying’ of traditional cultural orientations (2011, p.215). The show dramatises a conflict between a positive, celebratory engagement with “liquid modernity” (exemplified in the integrated performance of the popular Chooky Dancers)17 and a cosmologically motivated narrative of traditional Yolngu law. On the level

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  65 of ‘story’ (Todorov 1980, p.5), Yolngu law in Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu is presented as pervasive and embodied, i.e. two song-men, emblematic of tradition and the longevity and power of Yolngu law, are present on stage throughout the show. The dancers, aside from performing their culturally hybrid choreographies, are cast in the role of conservative cultural guardians who are enlisted by the song-men to restore the customary order based on traditional kinship laws by reigning in the transgressive desire of two eloped lovers (Varney 2011, pp.222/23). Formulaic scripts of the Western genres of romance and tragedy are used to convey the spectrum of elation and desolation caused by individualistic romantic desires that are presented as corroding the fabric of the community. Although the show stops short of resolving the conflict unambiguously, Varney suggests that the privileging of Yolngu law over Western individualism is announced in a shift of dramaturgical patterns, which suspend the trajectory of tragedy and activate a cosmologically motivated narration that reaffirms Yolngu law (ibid., pp.223/24): On the level of story, Yolngu culture is represented mostly as imposing a strict traditional order on the grounds of customary law;18 yet, on the level of ‘discourse’ (Todorov 1980, p.5), the Chooky Dancers break open this conservative narrative as floating signifiers, who unite both tradition and modernity. The show itself, although propagating conservative values, is itself a hybrid, technologically sophisticated artwork, which in itself provides a successful example of traditional culture being brought into dialogue with contemporary mainstream Australian culture through the inclusion of the Chooky Dancers. Varney proposes that the Chooky Dancers achieve what is unavailable to the eloping lovers on the level of story because they are firmly grounded in their culture and as a group lack the individuation that the lovers strive for. This means they enter into the market of cross-­cultural exchange not as distinct individuals but from a position of communal collaboration. Their dual identity as community members and successful intercultural ambassadors allows them to signify as emblems of a Yolngu culture that holds together the apparent stellar opposites of “tradition” and “modernity”. They are able to circumvent the ‘tragedy [that] is contained as much in the enforcement of the [traditional Yolngu] law as in its breaking’ (Varney 2011, p.222) because their aspirations are presented as reconciled without conflict with the traditional order of the community. Consequently, Varney observes that the fundamental conflict between individualistic and communal desires in the play is not solved but only sidestepped. The play does not resolve this conflict on the level of story, it only foreshadows resolution within the mode of its discourse. Community is thus instated as the horizon within which individuals find their grounding and direction in life, while romance is cast as a bond between two people defined by individualistic desire that runs counter to the ideal of broad community relation. Other contemporary Indigenous Australian plays make romantic relationships (or rather often their

66  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre dysfunctional nature) the topic of discussion between characters to bond as a community but same as in the examples discussed, playwrights and directors rarely explore romance between Indigenous characters directly or on positive terms. A notable exception to this is John & Margaret Harvey (Ait Kadal/Saibai)’s Heart Is a Wasteland (2017), which was conceived expressly in response to the absence of Black love stories on the Australian stage (O’Brien 2017). The play portrays the love unfurling between Raye, an itinerant Aboriginal country pub singer and mother to a son she left behind to follow her passion, and Dan, an enigmatic Indigenous man who joins her on her journey home. Rendered through a multi-modal lens that integrates film and live music with the dramatic action, the play combines the story of romance with a sophisticated reflection of family bonds, colonial history and connection to Country, which breaks with the conventional trope of romantic love in Indigenous Australian theatre as a corrupting indulgence of individual desire, and instead emphasises its ability to release subjects from an isolated existence by turning them toward each other. While positively represented love stories between Indigenous characters are rare, romantic relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous characters are slightly more often portrayed in contemporary plays. In addition to the love story between singer Gail and music producer Dave in Tony Briggs’ musical The Sapphires (2004), which was adapted by director Wayne Blair (Batjala Mununjali Wakkawakka) into a nationally popular movie of the same in name in 2012, the works of Nyoongar playwright David Milroy have repeatedly explored the legacies of colonial histories on people’s intimate lives. While Windmill Baby (2005) engages with the history of Indigenous Australian domestic servants on rural cattle stations in the far North, shedding light on the entrenched racism and vulnerability of Indigenous women in this context; Waltzing the Wilarra (2010) turns away from the mono-dramatic format and instead enlists a large cast to evoke a post-war nightclub in whose sheltered haven away from the segregated outside world, relationships bloom and fade in defiance of skin colour or cultural affiliation.19 Channelled through a fast-paced musical score, the play is structured in diptych form, with the first act presenting the audience with witty, energetic banter that underpins the formation of romantic relationships, mediated and sealed by a musical and choreographic score that conveys the attraction between characters who will not be constrained by political or moral ideologies. The second act moves the dramatic action forward by 40 years, reconvening the characters for a final night of reminiscence before the club is to be demolished. Rather than indulging in predictable positions that rehearse the dominant parameters of the reconciliation discourse, Milroy delineates his characters in idiosyncratic fashion, raising yet also continually eliding the stereotypes and pitfalls of cross-cultural interaction, which imbues the play with a playful satirical edge. By making Indigeneity an important, yet not necessarily the central aspect of his characters’ identities, Milroy creates lively personas that resonate beyond the racial frame often applied to the reception of Indigenous Australian theatre practice.

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  67 Nakkiah Lui’s Black is the New White (2017) turns such approaches to the representation of cross-racial relationships around by using protagonist Charlotte’s introduction of her non-Indigenous fiancé Francis to her parents as a conduit to explore the complex and fraught contemporary identity politics governing Indigenous families. By situating the dramatic action in the family’s plush vacation home and keeping the focus on their interactions, Lui (Kamilaroi TSI) instates Indigenous perspectives as the default frame through which identity is discussed and negotiated in the play, orchestrating a close and expertly comedic examination of racial and socio-economic bias that exposes all characters as failing against their own benchmarks. As Charlotte’s father Ray, a successful and wealthy activist-turned-politician, obsesses over her diminishing professional outlook as a Legacy Indigenous Spokeswoman if married to a penniless White poet, relationship politics are instantly enmeshed with the question not only of racial concern but also of socio-economic standing – questions that authors such as Anita Heiss posit as gaining ever greater significance among Indigenous communities in light of a growing middle class (2012, p.213). Ray’s reservations prepare the ground for Lui’s critical exploration of the nexus between communal values, personal aspiration, vanity and physical attraction, querying how these may be deployed henceforth to map the foundation for a concept of Indigeneity that is released from the constrictive shackles of binary colonial discourse structures and instead differentiated through a myriad of complex entanglements. Scott Rankin’s Nyuntu Ngali (2009) elides the often clichéd representation of cross-cultural relationships through another rare approach that centralises first and foremost the engagement with Indigenous values of relationality and accountability: Setting the dramatic action in a distant post-apocalyptic future in which the damage wrought by reckless consumerism has devastatingly caught up with society, Rankin portrays a world in which Indigenous lifestyles and their underpinning ontologies, that privilege relationality over singularity (Uhlmann 1999, p.171), have been embraced by the remaining Australian communities. Lovers Roam and Eva elope into the desert in yet another “Romeo and Juliet” style reworking; yet different to Bloodland or Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu, their navigation of challenges is not leveraged as a means to reaffirm a competing ideal of communal relation but instead births a new relational model of connection. Resonating with Heart Is a Wasteland, this model is premised on duty and care for the other that is inspired by Indigenous values yet also derives its shaping from the challenges encountered in the particular lived-in environment, yielding a contemporary reworking of traditional orientations in light of present-day challenges. In its staging, the play mirrored this ontological project through a hybrid aesthetics that closely enmeshed spoken word, dance, song, projection, weaving and shadow-play on stage – embracing the multi-modal format of traditional Indigenous Australian storytelling and integrating it seamlessly with Western theatrical idioms to draw the audience deeply into its universe in

68  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre which intersubjective mediation is presented as the horizon against which reconciliation finds its performative articulation. Adaptations of classics The bulk of contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre constitutes original writing for the stage. However, in the past two decades, adaptations of canonical texts of European theatre have also appeared alongside these new works, including Wesley Enoch’s Black Medea (2005), Enoch & Paula ­Nazarski’s Mother Courage and Her Children (2013), Tom E. Lewis & ­Michael Kantor’s The Shadow King (2014) and Yirra Yaakin’s The Nyoongar Shakespeare Project (2016/17). While the latter comprises a high school education program that aims at fostering knowledge of the Nyoongar language while reflecting on processes of cultural adaptation by translating Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the other examples are mainstage theatre productions that transpose the dramatic action into distinctly Indigenous Australian contexts. The strength of such endeavours is two-fold: On the one hand, the canonical material in which non-Indigenous identity formation has been traditionally inscribed is appropriated to validate Indigenous stories and lifeworlds. Thereby, this undertaking undermines and repudiates the colonial horizon that for a long time has abjected Indigenous voices as other and inferior (Gilbert & Tompkins 1996, pp.23/24). On the other hand, by inserting and articulating Indigenous stories through the templates of these classical texts, playwrights seek to draw out the fundamentals of human experience contained in these ‘universal stories’ (Freehills n.d.), which allows exploring the shared terrain of Indigenous and non-­Indigenous experiences while side-stepping the risk of pigeon-holing Indigenous stories attendant on the emphasis of particularity and cultural specificity. Enoch’s Black Medea (2005) was among the first Indigenous ­Australian mainstage productions that adapted a canonical European text and reaped widespread critical acclaim. Reimagining the ancient storyline as a conflict between traditional marital law and individualistic desires, Enoch casts Medea and Jason as a modern-day couple swaying their communities to consent to their wrong-way marriage, leaving their homelands to build a life in the city. Tragedy ensues as Medea and Jason run into difficulty sustaining their livelihood off Country and away from their families. With communal support networks unavailable and pressures mounting, the characters turn on each other, succumbing to the destructive dynamics of domestic violence and alienation, which gradually severs their connection to traditional social values. With her love and duty to violent Jason continually trumping her plans to return to her community and Country, Medea is cut adrift in a world that to her no longer provides productive grounding principles, which prompts her to kill their son to spare him the existence therein. Enoch thus transposes the classical template into a modern context, reducing structural complexity while imbuing the characters with psychological motivation

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  69 and making their actions intelligible within a socially determined context (as opposed to flawed character driving the action). This increases the play’s ability to elicit empathetic identification, recuperating Medea into a socially sanctioned fold, which turns the play into an example of what Gilbert and Tompkins call a contribution to ‘canonical counter-discourse’, i.e. ‘alter[ing] […] [the original’s] structures of power’ (1996, p.16). However, by partially reinterpreting Medea’s decision to kill her son as a means to spare him suffering rather than as the best way to punish Jason for his disregard, Enoch significantly contains the emancipatory thrust inherent in the original playtext, sacrificing the subversion of gender conventions for an affirmation of traditional Indigenous ontologies. The implications of such delimiting approaches in the representation of gender on stage will be subject to more detailed critique in the following case studies. Enoch & Nazarski’s Mother Courage and Her Children (2013) and Lewis & Kantor’s The Shadow King (2014) each transpose the dramatic action into rugged outback mining settings, using the primary text to elucidate questions of ownership, greed and survival against the odds that strongly resonate in the Australian context. Staying close to the structure of the original script, Enoch and Nazarski turn Brecht’s play into a parable on human survival in cruel and unforgiving systems, leveraging the figure of the storyteller as a conduit to continuously break the theatrical illusion and offer critical reflection. Developed on Country in close collaboration with Enoch’s Minjeeriba community (Stradbroke Island, QLD), the adaptation incorporated much vocabulary drawn from the local dialect and everyday slang. This firmly grounded the play in the local context, investing it with local relevance and affirming Minjeeriba identity through and alongside the famous classical text, which channels experiences of dispossession, dislocation, loss and grief through a lens that emphasises the human spirit’s strength to prevail. Lewis (Murrungun) & Kantor’s The Shadow King (2014) similarly uses Indigenous languages in adapting Shakespeare’s King Lear, drawing on the classical text in order to reflect on intracommunal divisions that are triggered and exploited by mining companies and their offers of lucrative royalties in exchange for extracting resources from the land. The king’s identity crisis is here compounded by a dissolving sense of cultural identity, resulting from his vanity and need for affirmation, as well as from the community’s avid and reckless turn toward the trappings of Western conceptions of wealth. In its exploration of land rights and clashing ontological positions, The Shadow King contributes a pertinent reflection on the history and enduring legacy of the dispossession and colonisation of the land and brings into view the cost of abandoning Indigenous values at the service of forging a living on the terms of a capitalist system. The classical text is here leveraged to draw out the destructive impact of the introduced economic system and its attendant transformative social and cultural impact, which come into view through the contrast to implied Indigenous systems that are presented

70  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre as waning under colonial pressure. As so often the case with contemporary Indigenous Australian and intercultural theatre, however, the bleak picture sketched on story level is in part balanced by the form of staging, which continually intersperses the presentation with comedic relief and relies on charismatic delivery that contains and reaffirms the enduring presence and vitality of Indigenous subjects in the (post)colonial space. A special place among adaptations of canonical texts is occupied by Leah Purcell’s reworking of Henry Lawson’s seminal Australian short story The Drover’s Wife (2016). Using this classical narrative of an outback worker’s wife left unprotected with her children to the whims of nature and a ruthless social environment, Purcell focalises the story through a disavowed Indigenous perspective, placing the secret of hidden Indigenous identity at the heart of the play’s performative unfolding. By casting the mother as the topical female protector who unflinchingly defends her children against any external threat, Purcell imbues the character with an urgency and purpose that is incrementally strengthened by the historical context. As a staple text culturally encoding the Settler-colonial experience in Australia, Purcell’s re-envisioning of the mother as Aboriginal awards a place to Indigenous people at the heart of seminal Australian narratives leveraged to define national identity. Historiographical intervention While there is hardly a play in the corpus of contemporary Indigenous ­Australian theatre that would not fit in some way or another the description of “historiographical intervention”, some plays are written from an angle and marketed in ways that specifically foreground the artists’ intention of rewriting mainstream accounts of Australian history in order to include Indigenous perspectives and to augment the factual premises from which these are compiled. Such plays often expose practices of institutional oppression in the past and present, emphasising the tenacity and resilience of Indigenous Australian people who have dealt with discriminatory structures and entrenched racism, as well as developing visions for a different future (e.g. Beautiful One Day). Conversely, many plays offer new interpretations of Indigenous Australian public figures, often questioning and converting established narratives of disempowerment through a shift in contextualisation into instructive parables of resistance or pioneering intercultural navigation (e.g. Rankin’s Namatjira). While the content of these plays generally focuses on experiences of injustice, violence, disenfranchisement and discrimination; dramaturgical and staging approaches work to recuperate Indigenous agency and to project an image of resilience and thriving especially through emphasising the live performance of Indigenous actors on stage. Emphasis on the mediatising frame (e.g. through direct address performed by the ever-present storyteller figure) continuously relates the engagement with the past back to the

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  71 present, conceptually integrating the stage performance with the dramatic narrative. By dramaturgically enmeshing performance and narrative in this way, playwrights and directors also undermine Western linear notions of time, giving preference to Indigenous temporal concepts that emphasise the close interconnectedness of past, present and future. Thereby, they validate these concepts on stage and counter the narrative of disenfranchisement in the dramatised past by enclosing it through the frame established via performance in the present. Oppression Trevor Parfitt (Nyoongar), Phil Thomson, Kelton Pell (Nyoongar), Geoff Kelso, Sam Longley, Frank Nannup (Nyoongar) & Isaac Drandic ­(Nyoongar)’s comedy Bindjareb Pinjarra (1994), for example, relates the publicly little known and historiographically contested story of the 1834 Pinjarra massacre on Nyoongar people (Statham 2003, pp.182ff). It does so through a complex dramaturgical structure that mediates the appalling historical events through a predominantly comedic lens, which maintains its focus squarely on present-day implications: The attempts of a young Indigenous man to smoothly manoeuvre through the challenges of everyday life in urban Perth, battling institutional and discriminatory hurdles, are ultimately spoiled by a cheeky elderly Aboriginal man who familiarises him with the story of Pinjarra, enlisting him to attend a memorial at the distant site (not least to siphon a ride off him). Delivered in slapstick comedic vignettes that feed off the stark contrast between the playful style of delivery and the crude racism and ignorance conveyed in the staged situations, the play traces the two men’s journey to Pinjarra. Their story is interspersed with performative re-enactments of historical Settler accounts of the lead-up to and execution of the massacre. Leveraging the conventional trope of storyteller to offer critical reflection on the stage performance, the audience is repeatedly invited to interact directly in response to the seen – including choosing alternate paths for progressing the dramatic action and posing questions to the actors. As such, the play is designed to increase critical engagement with the historiography surrounding Pinjarra, its configuration and mediation, seeking to act as a catalyst for audiences to reflect on their own implication in the (ongoing) story of colonial encounter in Australia. Devised and performed by a cast of Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors, Bindjareb Pinjarra places its major emphasis on reconciliation, exploring questions of guilt and accountability as conduits to move the discourse forward through an accessible and entertaining format. The play is noteworthy especially for its open structure that responds dynamically to audience input: In a personal conversation in Eveleigh on 14 January 2012, Kelton Pell explained that only the opening scenes had been closely scripted, while the rest of the play is merely sketched in loose form to allow for spontaneous adaptation on the night of performance. Consequently, the audience is able to enter

72  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre into a dialogue with the performers, to reflect and at least potentially query the interpretation provided on stage. The risk of open challenge here is mitigated against because objection to the presentation on stage would most likely only be triggered by strong disagreement; yet, audiences attending Indigenous Australian theatre are for the most part already highly sympathetic to decolonising agendas (Shoemaker 2004, p.259). This provision for interaction, however, breaks with the conventional closed structures established in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre, which for the most part include direct address as a strategy to engage and draw audiences into the narrative – yet, if at all, requiring only a nominal response by spectators that is not decisive for the progression of the play. Hence, Bindjareb ­Pinjarra loosens the ideological frame that is established through consciously prioritising Indigenous perspectives, boldly moving beyond the aspiration to commit Indigenous perspectives to the official historiographical record by also striving for a critical dialogue with audiences in which the propositions advanced in the play can be argued and defended on the spot. The collaboratively devised work Beautiful One Day (2012), created and performed by Rachael Maza, Magdalena Blackley, Kylie Doomadgee, Harry Reuben, Paul Dwyer and Jane Phega (with additional support by David Williams, Sean Bacon and Eamon Flack), sketches a historical portrait of the Palm Island (Bwgcolman) Aboriginal Reserve in Q ­ ueensland  – a place of familial connection for many of the people involved in the show. Pivoting on the unatoned death of Mulrunji Cameron Doomadgee in police custody on 19 November 2004 and its aftermath that saw the attending police officer acquitted of charges and members of the community burning down the police station in response; the play draws on a wealth of verbatim and documentary material to contextualise these events within the 100year history of colonial relations on the island (Tan 2015). Seeking to commit stories of colonial violence, oppression and injustice as well as of Indigenous resistance and tenacity to the official record, the play interweaves personal testimony, video and photographic documentation, re-enactment and performance into an affective tapestry that identifies compelling structural parallels between the community’s challenges faced under the draconian Aboriginals Protection Act (1897) and its presentday ordeals. This agenda also characterises Scott Rankin’s expansive work Hipbone Sticking Out (2013), conceived in collaboration with members of the Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi communities in Roebourne (WA), which sites the death of teenager John Pat in police custody in 1983 (that acted as a furnace to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, 1987–91) within a long history of colonial relations that the multi-modal play performatively commits to the historiographical record. By highlighting the unaddressed legacies of colonial dynamics in the distribution and execution of institutionalised power, these plays continue the trajectory established by previous works like Jack Davis’ Barungin (1986) and ­R ichard Frankland’s Conversations with the Dead

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  73 (1993) in their indictment of police brutality  – a trajectory also carried forth in Nakkiah Lui’s powerful This Heaven (2013). This play traces the chilling (fictional) battle of an Indigenous family to gain justice for the unatoned death of the father/husband in police custody. Staged at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre not far from the site where 17-year-old Indigenous boy Thomas Hickey had died impaled on a fence following contact with a police patrol in 2004, the story has had a strong local resonance, offering an intimate entryway into a consideration of the complex entanglements of justice, law and order in Australia and the ways in which these have continuously elided many Indigenous Australian people. The play derives its power from portraying the characters’ tumultuous inner worlds, closely mapping their attempts to cope with the loss and their building frustration with the Australian justice system that cannot acknowledge or engage with the family’s grief and demands for justice. The visceral, fast-paced performance eventually erupts in a riot scene, acting out an Indigenous uprising on stage – manifesting the spectre that earlier plays have only ever raised as a (deferred and contained) menace on stage, to be actuated if hope for reconciliation was to be ultimately extinguished. Lui’s daring script hence pushes the boundaries of previous practice, aiming to disrupt the complacency in the reconciliation process that has grown from the pervasive impression of general contentment with past progress and an ill-informed positive bigger picture assessment of the present status quo. She uses the public platform available to her as a coveted young attractive Aboriginal female voice on the Australian mainstage to draw attention to and deconstruct the lingering colonial discourse formations that continue to impact on Indigenous people and on Australia as a nation. Her vehemence thereby also acts as a shield against attempts at framing and co-opting her public persona as confirmation of successful or fast-progressing reconciliation. As a popular and media-savvy Indigenous writer, radio host and actress with a broad mainstream appeal, Lui is well placed to deliver her disruptive messages to a receptive audience, precisely because her public identity as Indigenous spokesperson does not seem to be overtly defined by the disenfranchisement and marginalisation that she publicly denounces, i.e. her voice cannot be fully construed as articulating from an outsider position whose legitimacy can be easily dismissed through processes of othering. This position enables Lui to deliver narratives that conjure a complete breakdown of the reconciliation process – as for example, in her latest work Blackie Blackie Brown (2018), in which the lead character embarks on a comically framed blood-fuelled rampage collecting the colonial debt in non-Indigenous body parts. Lui never fully loses the audience’s sympathy because, in addition to the comic relief offered by most contemporary Indigenous playwrights (Austin 2015, p.156), her role as playwright (and sometimes performer) on the mainstage represents and vouchsafes an ongoing open communicative channel between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

74  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre In her work Kill the Messenger (2015), Lui specifically centralises the relation to her audience, pushing the limits by refusing to offer them this ‘safety valve’ (Grehan 2003, p.119) of sympathetic complicity in the narrative pact that often implicitly excludes the audience in attendance from the colonial indictments issued on stage. Where usually the storyteller puts spectators at ease through the warm-hearted yarning approach and at least does not contravene their self-concept as allies to the decolonising project, Lui here increasingly confronts and eventually outright accuses her audience as accountable for the discrimination and marginalisation Indigenous people continue to face in Australia. In the play, Lui explores the nexus of racial discrimination and institutional neglect, interweaving the story of her grandmother’s death in neglected public housing with a fictional tale of an Aboriginal man’s struggle to receive attentive medical care for his yet-to-be diagnosed cancer. Implicating herself in the narrative and performing on stage as the storyteller, Lui relates her relentless yet failed attempts at negotiating repairs on her grandmother’s house prior to her fatal accident, conveying the love and warmth of familial relation, which serves as contrasting backdrop to the stark indifference of her housing commission case worker. Rather than fully succumbing to the dynamics of a predictable script indulging in binary oppositions, complexity is regained through the intercut narrative that sees Lui herself initially typecasting the Aboriginal man she encounters outside her nan’s house as a drug addict because he seeks to procure pain medication. Lui locates the key to overcoming the cycle of prejudice in a turn toward the principle of close listening and genuine investment in the other’s story, modelling these qualities in the role of respectful granddaughter and Good Samaritan that, albeit not saving lives, affirms and promotes community spirit through the attempt to intervene in the injustices around her. The passive role assigned to the audience hereby challenges them to critically assess their own implication in the context raised, stirring them to mentally position themselves to the unmitigated accusations levelled at them at the end of the play. While the effect is a starkly alienating one, the force of Lui’s words is allayed by grounding them in the emotional turmoil caused by loss and grief, which maintains identification of the audience with her role on the grounds of shared human dispositions. Agency, tenacity and inclusion Rather than embracing an overtly confrontational approach, many contemporary Indigenous Australian plays follow a conciliatory strategy that affirms Indigenous agency and subjectivity through emphasis on instances of successful intercultural navigation and through a shared exploration of (de)colonial dynamics – often using the biography of popular Indigenous historical figures as a conduit for negotiating identity politics. For example, Nanni Giordano & Andrea James’ Coranderrk. We Will Show the Country (2012) recuperated the little-known history of the

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  75 Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve (founded in 1863), 65km northeast of Melbourne, bringing into view aspects of committed intercultural collaboration and expert Indigenous navigation of non-Indigenous institutional frameworks. The play forms part of the large-scale Minutes of Evidence historiographical research project administered at the University of ­Melbourne (2011–16), which reconstructed the Coranderrk story from colonial archives as well as oral histories. The playscript was entirely compiled from verbatim material, collating a range of archival documents, including the minutes from a Parliamentary Inquiry in 1881 (Nanni 2014, p.15). In this inquiry, Kulin leader William Barak (Wurundjeri) and other members of the clans living at Coranderrk as well as local non-Indigenous supporters sought to resist appropriation of the land by the Government and to advocate for self-governance. They argued their case not only on the grounds of their spiritual connection to Country but first and foremost by hard evidence of successful agricultural cultivation, which they leveraged to make a case for gaining permission to competitively participate in the mainstream economy. Their case was dismissed. The play re-enacts this inquiry, underscoring the dexterity and vigour of the Indigenous petitioners, contravening the stereotypical image of disenfranchised apathy often postulated in colonial imaginations (ibid., p.18). By casting Barak and his associates as savvy entrepreneurs who actively interpret the nonIndigenous law and economic system in order to create a point of productive insertion for Indigenous p ­ eople  – and legitimating this interpretation by drawing entirely from verbatim material – the playwrights decentre conventional Australian historiographies by contributing complexity to the binary structure of non-Indigenous active coloniser and Indigenous apathetic colonised victim. In doing so, the playwrights and research team commit a narrative of Indigenous achievement and thriving to the cultural archive – identifying Indigenous resilience and tenacity as having been operative in the past and the present rather than celebrating present-day empowerment as a relatively impromptu emancipation from a history of unqualified subjection. This constitutes a powerful intervention because it changes, or at least extends, the foundation on which Indigenous identities can be articulated today. Rather than making decolonising Indigenous identity politics only about finding empowering ways of engaging with and undoing colonial oppression, the past is revisited and rewritten to enable positive identification with historical Indigenous role models. Therefore, Indigenous assertion is placed within a continuous historical context, and present-day as well as future trajectories of identity practice can be generated also in light of instructive experiences of the past. While to nonIndigenous audiences, this facet of contemporary Indigenous storytelling can often seem rather tangential, it constitutes a central pillar of practice to many theatre artists because of the scarcity of positive representations of Indigenous Australian people in mainstream arts and media (Dias 2015). The strengths and potential pitfalls of affirming Indigenous Australian agency

76  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre and subjectivity through integration into narratives and epistemological systems predominantly structured by non-Indigenous standards are closely investigated in the detailed case study of Rankin’s Namatjira, which similar to Coranderrk, seeks to affirm Indigenous agency and tenacity on the grounds of historiographical revision of a famous Indigenous Australian biography, namely that of famed watercolour artist Albert Namatjira. A central objective of both Namatjira and Coranderrk is to promote understandings of the past that offer positive points of insertion for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In terms of production, both plays were created with strong emphasis on culturally appropriate consultation processes, ensuring that stakeholders felt respected and included (confirmed by Rankin in a personal interview in Melbourne on 8 August 2011; Nanni 2014, p.18). In terms of dramaturgical structure, this promotion is achieved through reinterpreting biographies of Indigenous historical characters and through splitting the representation of non-Indigenous people along a “good/ally” versus “bad/oppressor” strata. Clare Britton, ­Halcyon Macleod, Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor (Gadigal, Yuin), LeRoy ­Parsons (Dainggatti/Yuin) & Sam Routledge’s Posts in the Paddock (2011) was produced with equal objectives, yet significantly departs from this dramaturgical shaping. The play explores the story of Jimi Governor, an Aboriginal man who in the late 19th century killed non-Indigenous Settlers out of vengeance for the injustices and slights he experienced living in rural New South Wales. While his story has been extensively adapted in the past, for example, in Fred Schepisi’s landmark movie The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972), this theatrical adaptation was devised by descendants of both Governor and one of his victims on the grounds of collaborative “dadirri” practice – which strives for ‘deep listening and understanding of the larger forces that exist in our lives’ (Grieves qtd. in Britton 2013, p.147). The devisors of the play sought to recuperate the story as a conduit for a personal reflection on the enduring legacy of historical trauma and as a means to translate and explore the abstract concept of reconciliation as a lived reality (Britton 2013, p.143). The team performed wide-ranging interviews and consultations amid the communities affected by Governor’s deeds, using the theatrical format as a vehicle for communal bonding and healing. The play moulds the manifold perspectives and resonances of the story into a dramatic arch that maintains a respectful yet inquisitive gaze on the characters, emphasising the human dimension of their decision making and thereby striving for a balanced representation that neither plays to the established trope of Aboriginal victimhood nor co-opts Governor for a glorification of Indigenous militant resistance. By foregoing such definite interpretations of Governor’s role, the play guides the present-day community in the reconciliation of ruptures reverberating from the past. A similar functionalisation of historical personae is operating in Ian Wilkes (Nyoongar), Emmanuel Brown (Bunuba) & Peter Docker’s cross-­ culturally produced So Long Suckers (2016), which draws on stories of

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  77 famous Indigenous Australian resistance fighters Yagan and Jandamarra, as well as legendary non-Indigenous outlaw Ned Kelly. Interspersed into the biographical investigations of three drunk men who find themselves in jail, trying to remember who they are and how they ended up there; the biographical snippets serve as backdrop on which the mismatch between rebellious aspirations and thwarted reality, colonial past and present-day predicament are orchestrated. Centralising the destructive psychological and physical impact of severe alcohol abuse, the play serves a similar educative function as the works of Ilbijerri’s Education Manager Kamarra Bell-Wykes (Yagera Butchulla) (Chopped Liver, 2006; Body Armour, 2010; North West of Nowhere, 2016), which raise awareness around specific medical conditions and their transmission through high-risk behaviour. Yet, So Long Suckers eschews the overtly didactic stance characteristic of Bell-Wykes’ plays through its abstract aesthetic and reliance on elliptical storytelling, which create a multivalent dramatic texture that yields inspiration for novel identity configurations that are playfully embraced and rejected at will. This playfulness dramaturgically ties back to autobiographical works like Foley. Yet, contrary to the dominance of historiographical interventions performed in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre that contain the disenfranchisement experienced in the past through assertive stage-performance in the present (e.g. Page 8; Beautiful One Day), So Long Suckers constructs its vision for Indigenous empowerment from the narrative of the past – offering the tales of Yagan and Jandamarra as inspiration for addressing complex present-day issues, such as severe substance abuse. As such, the play is noteworthy in its bold approach to tackling and investigating alcohol abuse as a communal issue: Previous works have hedged the discussion of substance abuse either through bringing it into view predominantly as an individual problem that stands in somewhat underspecified relation to broader communal pressures (e.g. Jason’s alcoholism in Enoch’s Black Medea); or through containing the representation of dysfunctionality within the narrative of the past, which is channelled through a storyteller who in his sobriety on stage implicitly disavows the problem in the dramatic present for the sake of the play’s political argument (e.g. Namatjira). So Long Suckers openly addresses communal problems, contextualising as well as personalising them on stage, unconstrained by this hedging approach that seeks to avoid a reinforcement of existing colonial stereotypes of Indigenous communities as dysfunctional and disempowered. Wilkes, Brown and Docker trust their audience to engage with the complexity of the contexts they raise. Trevor Jamieson & Scott Rankin’s Ngapartji Ngapartji (2006) occupies a special place among the historiographically revisionist plays of contemporary Indigenous Australian and intercultural theatre. Part of a larger community cultural development project, it was devised through an extensive consultation process as a multi-layered performance piece that makes the Pila Nguru/Spinifex people’s experience of colonialism publicly

78  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre known and integrates it into the context of world history, drawing out the similarities, resonances and connections to non-Indigenous lifeworlds (Gilbert 2013, p.197). In the 1950s, the Spinifex people were displaced off their lands by the Australian Government to make room for nuclear testing at and around Maralinga (Cane 2002). The play relates this historical context through the dominant focus on storyteller/devisor Jamieson’s family story, tracing the plight of the displaced who were relocated to the lands of the Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara (APY) people in Central Australia. The play’s staging approach seeks to affirm foundational principles of Pila Nguru culture within a Western theatrical format by translating the “ngapartji ngapartji” maxim into a dramaturgical structure that facilitates an affective bond between the cast and audience. This is to forge out a space for the appreciation and maintenance of Spinifex cultural values, which in the present-day Pila Nguru communities have lost ground to competing cultural orientations in the face of displacement. The play was subject to extensive academic analysis, with insightful studies having been presented by Helena Grehan (2010), Maryrose Casey (2009, 2012) and Helen Gilbert (2013). Grehan and Casey both investigate the influence of Spinifex epistemologies on the dramaturgical structure and staging of the play. Grehan closely elucidates Ngapartji Ngapartji’s dramaturgical approach. She traces how the dramaturgy draws on the conventional “yarning” style, fluctuating between intimacy and alienation (2010, p.43). In addition to the storyteller’s narrative configuration that calls on spectators to constantly shift their emotional relation, the play includes many instances of direct audience involvement and participation. These range from short Pitjantjatjara language lessons, dance, and direct address to an eventual invitation to enter the stage space and to take part in the dramatic action. Grehan reads this as a ‘targeted process of interaction and participation’ (ibid., p.42), which extends the show’s underlying principle of ngapartji ngapartji, which she translates as ‘reciprocity and cooperation’ (ibid., p.41), to a prerogative for its reception: The points of inclusion demand of the audience to respond and to reconsider their established receptive patterns to Indigenous theatre (ibid., p.43). Therefore, the gift-exchange associated with the ngapartji ngapartji concept can here be deciphered in that stories are gifted to the audience with the expectation of consideration and attitude-change in return (ibid., p.42). According to Grehan, this dramaturgy results in an ‘exchange with the other that does not privilege the subject’ (ibid., p.49), which in the collaboration between audience and cast brings forth an altered subjectivity in the theatrical space that pertains to both the cast and spectators alike (ibid., pp.46/47). However, both Grehan and Alex Kelly (producer of Ngapartji Ngapartji) qualify the capacity for this approach to effect a lasting change in displayed social behaviour beyond the theatre space: Opportunities for long-term engagement (e.g. an online Pitjantjatjara language course) were not taken up significantly by audiences nor in a sustained manner (Kelly qtd. in

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  79 Grehan 2010, p.48). Gilbert, however, qualifies her assessment by arguing that the use of Indigenous epistemologies as structuring principles for a play’s staging effectively discourages audiences from interpreting the play through stereotypical frames because such an approach sites Indigenous subjects in a cultural continuum that expands well beyond colonial rule in Australia (2013, pp.205/06). Hence, same as Coranderrk’s introduction of stories of Indigenous tenacity, Ngapartji Ngapartji’s reliance on Spinifex epistemology works to increase the complexity with which Indigenous stories are presented in the public sphere. Relation to traditional formats Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre draws on multiple theatrical formats and artistic languages. Playwrights and directors nevertheless cite traditional epistemologies and performative languages as among the most significant influences on their practice. A lot of work on the contemporary mainstage, however, translates these into theatrical formats that are easily accessible to urban theatre audiences, seeking to communicate the historiographical revisionist narrative as clearly as possible, not risking its disruption through radical aesthetic innovation. Theatre here lags behind the successful experimentations with traditional choreographic languages in the dance sector, where companies such as Bangarra or Marrugeku have continually pushed the benchmark with works like Ochres (1994), Of Earth and Sky (2010), Ones Country (2017), or Mimi (1996) and Gudirr Gudirr (2013). However, there have been a number of mainstage theatrical productions over the past two decades that strongly privilege traditional aesthetics in their narrative and staging approaches. These include Jamieson & Rankin’s The Career Highlights of the Mamu (2002), Enoch’s Kungkarangkalpa: Seven Sisters Songline (2013), as well as Yirra Yaakin’s trilogy comprising Kaarla Kaatijin (2013), Kep Kaatijin (2013–15) and Boodjar Kaatijin (2016), which revive and make accessible Nyoongar tales and storytelling especially for young audiences, and most recently Lily Shearer (Murrawarri), Liza-Mare Syron (Birripi), Aroha Groves (Wailwan, Worimi), Andrea James & Katie Leslie (Gamilaroi, Mandandanji)’s Broken Glass (2018), which explores commonalities and differences in Indigenous Australian rituals of death as practiced in communities across Victoria and New South Wales. The Career Highlights of the Mamu (2002) has been the outcome of a collaboration between Trevor Jamieson, Scott Rankin, Black Swan Theatre and members of the Spinifex community in South Australia. The play explores the same dramatic material as Ngapartji Ngapartji. However, Mamu relates the Spinifex’ story from a different angle, maintaining the focus squarely on the community’s intracultural negotiation and maintenance of Jukurrpa, i.e. its accumulated archive of knowledge that is expressed through communal storytelling. While the play adopts a

80  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre similar multi-modal staging approach, which intersperses direct address, dance, song and video, the story of the Spinifex people is placed within a larger temporal and spatial context rather than into the intercultural cosmopolitan context that Ngapartji Ngapartji raises (Gilbert 2013, p.204). Gilbert reads the play as leveraging concepts of “deep time”, which reconceive emplacement as a ‘weathering of change’ in place (Clark qtd. in Gilbert 2013, p.198) that resists the quick-paced rhythms of Western historiographical consciousness and ultimately assert Indigenous sovereignty on the grounds of resilience and long-term engagement with the land. In Mamu, the story of displacement is sited within the context of generations of Spinifex people having lived on and with the land, bookending the historiographic presentation of displacement with information on their sustained legal efforts to regain title to their homelands. 20 Gilbert points out that this form of presentation ultimately asserts Spinifex sovereignty by kerbing the significance of the colonial experience as a recent, yet not as the most important cultural yardstick for future developments. The uncompromising use of Pitjantjatjara language in the projected video sequences is thereby understood by Gilbert to contribute to this qualification: She points out that language in the postcolonial performance context has become a mode of action rather than a countersign of thought (2001, p.93) because the use of Indigenous languages can actively signal resistance against and transgression of the colonising system. Their use on stage can help to assert a space of subjectivity that signifies as independent of colonial influence – to great effect also utilised in Blair, Marika & Page’s Bloodland, in which the community communicates solely in Yolngu language with only an outsider approaching in English, heightening the status of Yolngu as insider tongue on stage. The use of Indigenous languages according to Casey also ‘shifts the dynamic between the non-Indigenous audience and the Indigenous performer, creating a new space for dialogue’ (2009, p.127) in which Indigenous audiences are privileged: The non-Indigenous spectators are placed in an outsider’s role which requires them to actively engage with and decipher the messages offered by the production through its dramaturgical structuring (including linguistic/aural, visual, and choreographic registers); while the use of Indigenous languages allows for the adequate, unrestrained transmission of cultural knowledge within its original framework. Casey points out that shows such as Mamu or Ngapartji Ngapartji, which extensively use Pitjantjatjara language, operate from within a culturally specific context and serve a clearly identifiable function within their communities of origin. They are part of a traditional “cultural maintenance” practice  – a process in which non-Indigenous spectators are also implicated but not the primary addressees, and in which language plays a central role of ensuring and maintaining the integrity of the community’s cultural capital (Casey 2009, p.135). Language can thus be utilised as a vehicle to communicate Indigenous epistemologies to an in-group audience as well as, if untranslated, to allude to these to outsiders without compromising

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  81 the integrity of cultural values. To this end, many theatre makers abstain from translating Indigenous languages in surtitles. Even more than Mamu, Enoch’s Kungkarangkalpa: Seven Sisters Songline (2013) embraced ceremonial performance protocols to explore contemporary renditions of an inma ceremony, i.e. traditional multimodal practice that conveys Dreaming stories through musical delivery, dance and storytelling. The show was directed by Enoch and was one of the outcomes of a large-scale collaborative arts research project that investigated the transmission of the Seven Sisters Dreaming Story, through a songline running from the Pilbara region (northern Western Australia) to the APY lands (southern Central Australia). Apart from the live performance staged on the lawn of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra in March 2013, the project also brought forth a curated exhibition (2017/18) that documented artworks from places along the songline. The theatrical work was among the first public outputs of the project, integrating the live performance of a storyteller, a group of traditionally clad dancers and chorus with a cinematic experience that comprised animation, live feed and recorded video material filmed on Country. While the live performance was delivered in language, the video screen on the backdrop of the level-earth stage space carried surtitles that enabled the audience to follow the story. This narrative contextualisation, however, was not accompanied by any dramaturgical orientation, which strongly amplified the experience of cultural difference for audiences unfamiliar with the ceremonial performance and storytelling conventions (including myself). While the dramaturgy, which in keeping with traditional oral storytelling practices heavily relied on repetition, created a perceptible positively connoted friction for me with the expectations born from a socialisation within Western theatrical paradigms; my ignorance of the differing weighting of performance values in inma ceremonies (e.g. strong a-synchronicity of dancers and singers), considered together with the failing of technical equipment, led me to assume a lack in preparation, when in fact most of the performance was in keeping with traditional performance protocols. Hence, culturally encoded expectations of what constitutes a professional and well-executed theatrical performance may also play a significant role in the critical and emotional reception of Indigenous Australian performance works that privilege non-Western aesthetics. As spectators, we are able to identify and relate to whatever is known to us. How much we may empathise with a performer may hence not only be subject to his or her physical presence or the dramatic text as such but may also be affected by the degree in which s/he makes use of theatrical codes in familiar ways. In an analysis of Indigenous Australian and intercultural performance, it is important to become aware of the fact that different protocols may guide the execution of such codes. As illustrated in Kungkarangkalpa, the weighting of performance values can differ quite extensively between Western and traditional Indigenous performance

82  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre contexts and result in an assessment of the performance as falling short of professionalism, when in fact it was giving precedence to the emulation of Indigenous performance traditions. Consequently, the negotiation of Indigeneity in the form of distinctive Indigenous Australian performance languages calls not only for an engagement with content but also with the form of presentation and its framing for an outside audience. The fact that in the case of Kungkarangkalpa such differences in protocol were not made explicit to outsider audiences (in fact, contextualisation was notably absent from the program) could be deemed a missed opportunity in this regard. The challenges of contemporary Indigenous Australian and intercultural theatre practice today therefore lie in the intelligible communication of Indigenous concepts of identity and their underpinning values, while at the same time preserving their integrity upon translating them into complex theatrical aesthetics and narratives. The overriding values of interpersonal connection and relationality as well as connection to Country thereby provide the blueprint for identity conceptions on stage and most often also underpin and inform the production process of plays. The following chapters map dominant challenges that accompany these endeavours. They closely examine two large-scale mainstage productions that in their approaches to exploring intercultural and intracultural reconciliation processes on stage reveal the broader implications and limitations that repeatedly surface in the negotiation of Indigenous identities in Indigenous Australian and intercultural theatre.

Notes 1 Since the writing of this book took place mostly in Melbourne and Sydney, a slight bias exists towards productions presented there. 2 For a comprehensive overview of contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre history refer to Maryrose Casey’s seminal body of work, especially Creating Frames (2004). 3 A phenomenon for which Arthur Phillips coined the phrase ‘cultural cringe’ (1950, p.299). 4 For further information on the historical development of Australian mainstage theatre see McCallum (2009). 5 Such as The Steel and the Stone (1973), Kullark (1979), The Dreamers (1982), Honey Spot (1985), No Sugar (1986), Barungin – Smell the Wind (1988) and In Our Town (1990). 6 The playwright Richard Frankland (Gunditjmara) worked in this role on the actual historical Commission and wrote this play as a creative engagement with and response to his experiences (Frankland 2006, p.19). 7 This term is used in accordance with concepts as developed by Christopher Balme in his seminal work Decolonizing the Stage (1999). 8 Referencing Rosi Braidotti’s theory, which proposes that a sense of self only ever emerges ephemerally in the movement of a subject between spaces; that this sense of self is informed by a layering of the present experience of ‘implacement’ (Grehan 2001a, p.30) and the memory of previous positions held in place. 9 ‘…a work of ‘faction’, meaning a combination of fact and fiction’ (Mailman qtd. in Grehan 2001b, p.106).

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  83 10 These included plays from New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Australia, also including Purcell & Rankin’s Box the Pony, Lawford’s Ningali and Cheetham’s White Baptist Abba Fan. 11 Who had begun to write and stage their own range of dramas that afford insight into male Indigenous Australian experiences, such as Kuuku Ya’u Meriam author John Harding’s Up the Road (1991) or David Milroy & ­G eoffrey ­Narkle (Nyoongar)’s deeply emotional account of Narkle’s life as a tent boxer and member of the Stolen Generations in King Hit (1997). 12 Contrarily, Marc Maufort finds that such pronounced integration of traditional elements cannot be generalised into a unifying trait of contemporary Indigenous Australian performance because different approaches exist alongside it: In the Blak Inside shows, characters achieve to exorcise trauma by narratively investigating their past, yet the playwrights often avoid referencing the Dreaming as a possible pathway to restoring a sense of identity. Rather, they retrace trauma on psychological terms in the realm of the personal to achieve empowerment (2006, pp.58ff). 13 In all shows, the self is healed through revisiting the story of the past and the possibility for a harmonious future emerges (Casey 2004, p.265). 14 In the 2016 census, about 2.8% of the Australian population identified as either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander (ABS 2017) – a small number which, even if a proportional distribution in the theatre-going public was to be assumed, would not suffice to keep a performing arts institution in Australia financially afloat. 15 As his voice changed in puberty, his career as a singer faltered and only later in life picked up again as an accomplished musician and actor. 16 The cartoon is a more recent example of a long discursive tradition that represents Indigenous men in this way, with Louis Nowra’s essay Bad Dreaming (2007) being another widely received, detrimental example of distorted data interpretation (Behrendt & Watson 2008). 17 A group of young Yolngu men, whose adaptation of the iconic Zorba the Greek dance from the namesake movie became a Youtube phenomenon in 2007 since it successfully married traditional Yolngu choreographic languages with internationally sourced movement patterns, demonstrating the vibrancy and integrity of contemporary Yolngu culture. 18 A law to which all characters in the play return to despite their conflicting individual desires. 19 The play’s plot structure and topical emphasis on reconciliation closely resonates with an earlier work by Wesley Enoch and John Rodgers, the musical The Sunshine Club (1999), in which an Aboriginal soldier returned from World War I opens a club in order to sidestep the segregating racial norms of the day, inspiring hope for a more equitable future in which Indigenous and non-­ Indigenous Australians share opportunity and duty for the nation (Riseman 2012, pp.43/44). 20 In between 1984 and 2014, the land right claims of the Spinifex people were successively recognised with all lands affected by nuclear testing now having been regained.

References Austin, K 2015, ‘‘Talkin’ Blak’: humour in Indigenous Australian theatre, 1970– 2000’, Philament, vol.20, pp.129–64. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2017, Australia today, viewed 28 March 2019, www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/2024.0

84  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) n.d. a, Commemorating the Freedom Ride, viewed 28 March 2019, http://aiatsis.gov. au/exhibitions/1965-freedom-ride ——— n.d. b, We hereby make protest: The 1938 Day of Mourning, viewed 28 March 2019, https://aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/day-mourning-26th-january-1938 Balme, C 1999, Decolonizing the stage, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Behrendt, L & Watson, N 2008, ‘A  response  to Louis Nowra’, Alternative Law Journal, vol.33, no.1, pp.45–47. Brisbane, K 2005, Not wrong – just different, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills. Britton, C 2013, ‘Posts in a paddock’, Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia, vol.4, no.1, pp.143–57. Cane, S 2002, Pila nguru: the Spinifex people, Fremantle Art Centre, North Fremantle. Casey, M 2012, Telling stories: Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander performance, Australian Scholarly, North Melbourne. ——— 2009, ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji: telling Aboriginal Australian stories’, in A Forsyth & C Megson (eds.), Get real: documentary theatre past and present, ­Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp.122–37. ——— 2005, ‘A compelling force: Indigenous women playwrights’, in R Fensham, D Varney, M Casey & L Ginters (eds.), The doll’s revolution. Australian theatre and cultural imagination, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne, pp.199–237. ——— 2004, Creating frames: contemporary Indigenous theatre 1967–1990, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. ——— 2000, ‘From the wings to centre stage: a production chronology of theatre and drama texts by Indigenous Australian writers’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.37, pp.85–98. Cook, S 2010, ‘SOS. Save our sector. Save our stories. Save our stages’, in Wilin Centre (ed.), Courageous conversations: national talking circle, Wilin Centre, Melbourne, pp.51–60. Dias, A 2015, Put more people of colour on TV, Logie winner says, video recording, YouTube, viewed 28 March 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVbB9J5eDTw Dodson, M 2003, ‘The end in the beginning: re(de)fining Aboriginality’, in M  Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, University of Melbourne Press, Carlton, pp.25–42. Foley, G 2009, ‘Black power in Redfern 1968–1972’, in Z Begg & K de Souza (eds.), There goes the neighbourhood: Redfern and the politics of urban space, You Are Here, Newtown, pp.12–21, viewed 28 March 2019, www.­ theregoestheneighbourhood.org/TGTN-eBook.pdf Frankland, R 2006, ‘Reconciliation, recognition and responsibility’, Storyline, vol.16, pp.19–21. Freehills n.d., ‘Black Medea. Teacher’s notes’, Unit2drama, viewed 28 March 2019, http://unit2drama2015.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/6/0/12609164/_black 20medea_teachnotes2.pdf Gilbert, H 2013, ‘Indigeneity, mobility and the cosmopolitics of postcolonial belonging in the atomic age’, Interventions, vol.15, no.2, pp.195–210. ——— 2001, Sightlines: race, gender, and nation in contemporary Australian theatre, 4th edition, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Gilbert, H & Lo, J 2007, Performance and cosmopolitics: cross-cultural transactions in Australasia, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre  85 Gilbert, H & Tompkins, J 1996, Post-colonial  drama  theory,  practice,  politics, Routledge, London. Glow, H & Johanson, K 2009, Your genre is Black. Indigenous performing arts and policy, platform paper, no.19, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills. Glow, H 2007, Power plays. Australian theatre and the public agenda, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills. ——— 2006, ‘Recent Indigenous theatre in Australia’, International Journal of the Humanities, vol.4, no.1, pp.71–77. Grehan, H 2010, ‘Aboriginal performance: politics, empathy and the question of reciprocity’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.56, pp.38–52. ——— 2003, ‘Black & Tran: a comedy that laughs in the face of racism?’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.42, pp.112–22. ——— 2001a, Mapping cultural identity in contemporary Australian performance, Peter Lang, Brussels. ——— 2001b. ‘Faction and fiction in ‘The 7 Stages of Grieving’’, Theatre Research International, vol.26, no.1, pp.106–16. Harrison, J 1998, Stolen, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills. Heiss, A 2012, Am I Black enough for you? Bantam, Sydney. Ilbijerri 2018, Jack Charles v The Crown, viewed 28 March 2019, http://ilbijerri. com.au/event/jack-charles-v-crown/ Langton, M 2000, ‘Religion and art from colonial conquest to post-colonial resistance’, in S Kleinert & M Neale (eds.), The Oxford companion to Aboriginal art and culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.16–24. Maufort, M 2006, ‘Listen to them cry out from their Dreaming:  Blak Inside and the search for an Aboriginal stage aesthetic’, Antipodes, vol.20, no.1, pp.56–62. ——— 2002, ‘Jane Harrison’s Stolen and the international postcolonial context’, in M Maufort (ed.), Crucible of cultures, Peter Lang, Brussels, pp.285–94. McCallum, J 2009, Belonging: Australian playwriting in the 20th century, Currency Press, Strawberry Hills. Milne, G 2000, ‘The Festival of the Dreaming: intimate, contemporary, true’, ­Australasian Drama Studies, vol.37, pp.27–39. ——— 1990, ‘Black and White in Australian drama: Melbourne 1988’, Meridian. La Trobe University English Review, vol.9, no.1, pp.33–43. Morphy, H 2000, ‘Kinship, family and art’, in S Kleinert & M Neale (eds.), The Oxford companion to Aboriginal art and culture, Oxford University Press, ­Oxford, pp.60–67. Nanni, G 2014, ‘Coranderrk: we will show the country’, Ethos, vol.22, no.4, pp.15–19. National Centre of Biography (NCB) n.d., ‘Smith, Shirley Coleen (Mum Shirl) (1921–1998)’, Indigenous Australia, viewed 28 March 2019, http://ia.anu.edu. au/biography/smith-shirley-coleen-mum-shirl-17817/text29401 Nowra, L 2007, Bad Dreaming. Aboriginal men’s violence against women and children, Pluto, North Melbourne. O’Brien, K 2017, ‘‘Heart is a Wasteland’ is a Black love story, set in outback ­Australia’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 June, viewed 28 March 2019, www. smh.com.au/entertainment/heart-is-a-wasteland-is-a-black-love-story-set-inoutback-australia-20170623-gwxl1k.html Phillips, A 1950, ‘The cultural cringe’, Meanjin, vol.9, no.4, pp.299–302.

86  Contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre Rankin, S 2012, Namatjira: written for the Namatjira family (Aranda) & Ngapartji Ngapartji: written for Trevor Jamieson (Pitjantjatjara), Currency Press, Strawberry Hills. Riseman, N 2012, ‘Rectifying ‘the Great Australian Silence’? Creative representations of Australian Indigenous Second World War service’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol.1, pp.35–48. Romensky, L 2015, ‘Jack Charles back in jail in Castlemaine’, ABC.com.au, 4 March, viewed 28 March 2019, www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/03/04/4191285.htm Rutherford, J 1990, Identity. community, culture, difference, Lawrence & ­Wishart, London. Shoemaker, A 2004, Black words, white page: Aboriginal literature 1929–1988, Australian National University Press, Canberra. State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW) 2018, Aboriginal National Theatre Trust Limited – records, 1902–1991, viewed 28 March 2019, http://archival. sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110089855 Statham, P 2003, ‘James Stirling and Pinjarra: a battle in more ways than one’, Studies in Western Australian History, vol.23, pp.167–94. Tan, M 2015, ‘Palm Islanders watch in silence as Cameron Doomadgee’s story unfolds on stage’, The Guardian, 22 September, viewed 28 March 2019, www. theguardian.com/culture/2015/sep/22/palm-islanders-watch-in-silence-as-­ cameron-doomadgees-story-unfolds-on-stage Todorov, T 1980, ‘The categories of literary narrative’, Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature, vol.16, pp.3–36. Tompkins, J 2006, Unsettling space: contestations in contemporary Australian theatre, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. ——— 1991, ‘Time passed/time past: the empowerment of women and Blacks in Australian feminist and Aboriginal drama’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.19, pp.13–21. Uhlmann, A 1999, ‘Cultural translation and the work of Albert Namatjira’, Communal/Plural, vol.7, no.2, pp.159–75. Varney, D 2011, ‘New and liquid modernities in the regions of Australia: reading Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin]’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.58, pp.212–27. Watson, I 1997, ‘Indigenous peoples’ law-ways: survival against the colonial state’, Feminist Law Journal, vol.8, no.1, pp.39–58. Zima, PV 2010, Theorie des Subjekts, 3rd edition, A Francke, Tübingen.

3 Case study Scott Rankin’s Namatjira (2010)

Scott rankin’s Namatjira is an interculturally produced biographical theatre work, which was part of a large-scale community cultural development project conducted in Ntaria (Hermannsburg) and Mparntwe (­A lice Springs) (NT). On the backdrop of acclaimed late Western Aranda1 watercolour painter Albert Namatjira’s life story and his relationship to non-Indigenous friend and mentor Rex Battarbee, the play advocates for a processual identity model based on traditional Aranda values of relationality and connectivity. The play develops this identity model, enmeshing it with Christian and entrepreneurial values expressed through Albert and Rex’ friendship, postulating traditional Aranda culture and adaptive capabilities in this hybrid concept as a possible touchstone for a reconfigured contemporary Australian national identity. This underlying appraisal represents the play’s intervention into negatively tinged contemporary public discourses on Indigeneity. It runs counter to the play’s surface narrative, which illustrates the disruption and marginalisation of traditional Aranda culture under colonisation that accounts for the tragic biography of Albert Namatjira (1902–59), who fell victim to the unreconciled cultural differences and racism of his time. The play reframes this story by selectively drawing on positive cross-cultural exchanges between Albert and Rex, and from there advocates an identity model based on close interpersonal relation and connectivity. It presents this model as a prospective basis from which to redress the disintegrating effects of what the play constructs as a Western identity model that arguably has taken hold in Australia in the wake of colonisation. This Western identity model in the play is premised on isolating individualisation and commoditising, resulting in limiting, static and unsatisfactory identifications within the capitalist economy. This form of identification in the play constitutes the foundation for racism, marginalisation and exploitation in Australia. Yet, rather than strictly rejecting the ideas of individuation and commoditising, the play attempts to productively enlist them for the empowerment of Aranda subjects. Namatjira proposes that a personal relation – connecting producer and recipient of a commodity in direct exchange reminiscent of older paradigms of direct trade – could redress the alienating effects of a capitalist system.

88  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira This notion finds its expression in the play’s representation of Albert and Rex’ friendship and their thriving business partnership, as well as in Big hART’s aspiration to commodify their story at the service of the ‘brand Namatjira’ (Rankin 2014), created and marketed to benefit the present-day family by productively connecting them to the contemporary Australian arts market. 2

The Namatjira Project Namatjira was part of an eight-year community cultural development project conducted in Central Australia by descendants of the late Albert Namatjira and the intercultural arts and social change company Big hART. The project was launched in August 2009 and emerged as a legacy to the Ngapartji Ngapartji cultural development and Pitjantjatjara language maintenance project conducted by Big hART in collaboration with Indigenous people across the adjoining APY lands from 2005 to 2008 (Rankin 2018, p.29). In all of its work, Big hART strives to counter the proliferation of negative preconceptions about marginalised communities by tapping into and growing their existing capacities – an approach that Artistic Director Rankin formulates as an ‘articulation of the politics of optimism in a world addicted to the satiating flavour of collective despair’ (2011). In the communication to outsider audiences, this is achieved by presenting an uplifting “good news story” within a discursive space that is mostly reliant on circulating narratives of communal disintegration and hardship. As explained by producer Sophia Marinos in a personal interview in Rotterdam on 31 March 2011, the general approach adopted by Big hART in its project-based work fostering social cohesion through the arts is of a three-tiered nature, consisting of grassroots work with communities, development of a major professional artwork and political advocacy. Elton Wirri, artist involved with the Ngapartji Ngapartji project and the namesake theatre production as well as kinship grandson to Albert Namatjira, introduced the Big hART team to members of the extended Namatjira family. Ms Marinos stated that they voiced an interest in replicating in their community the base structures of the Ngapartji Ngapartji project in terms of community engagement, creative arts training and telling of their stories to the wider Australian and international community. Among the family members involved in the project, a core group emerged who advised, shaped and actively took part in the project, including: Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin, Kumantjai K., Gwenda & Albert Jnr. Namatjira, Gloria Pannaka, Ivy Pareroultja, Mervyn Rubuntja, Peter Tjutjatja ­Taylor, Betty & Marcus Wheeler, Mostyn Kentaltja, Elton & Hilary Wirri and Dougie Kwarlple Abbott (Big hART n.d.). As related by Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin in a personal conversation in Sale on 24 April 2012, their major concern lay in addressing a perceived alienation between the generations and a lack of sustainable income to maintain Albert  Namatjira’s artistic legacy. Many of the mature-aged Namatjira

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  89 family members had already forged relatively successful careers as watercolour artists within the Central Desert arts economy. However, the younger generations had shown only a waning interest in continuing the established landscape painting tradition, in part because little infrastructure had been available to impart the Hermannsburg style as a family legacy. As Ms Marinos related, the extended Namatjira family hoped to improve the family’s financial and professional situation through arts training and sales, as well as to increase the national awareness of Albert’s story in order to leverage the increased public profile to regain the copyright to Albert’s work from Sydney-based Legend Press. 3 The political advocacy component of the Namatjira Project focussed on raising awareness of the integral role played by arts centres across Australia, which (almost exclusively) provide possibilities for economical participation and social service delivery to members of remote Indigenous communities (Rankin 2011). It has been Big hART’s aim to develop a cross-institutional alliance with stakeholders in the field to push for a restructuring of funding models and a marked increase in budgets allocated to social service delivery and artistic development (Big hART 2011). As explained by Ms Marinos, these efforts all tied in with the overarching aspiration to help establish structures that enable remote-­living Indigenous people to build livelihoods in the contemporary Australian economy without a concurrent foregoing of Indigenous cultural values. Albert Namatjira’s late granddaughter Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin explicated this context in relation to her family: I am asking for an art centre because we, the artists, want our own art centre so that no-one can control us – so we can own our own art. We want to be able to support our young ones and keep them strong and proud, so they can show their culture and country in their work. And we want them to start up before the rest of us get too old. We need to keep our art and stories strong – and for that reason I am proud to have met Her Majesty the Queen and to have passed on Albert’s story in London. (Namatjira Lankin 2013) Following extended consultations in the form of ‘facilitated storytelling sessions’ and shared painting activities (AGNSW 2010)4 with the Ntariaand Mparntwe-based family and community members, a multilayered project was developed which has come to encompass workshops in watercolour painting, performing arts, digital literacy, filmmaking and leadership in conjunction with the Iltja Ntjarra Many Hands Arts Centre in Mparntwe, which officially represents the Namatjira family artists, and the Ntaria school (Big hART n.d.). Ms Marinos confirmed that these workshops were collaboratively organised and run by members of the Namatjira family, local community stakeholders and the professional Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists employed by

90  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Big hART. On-Country painting workshops formed an integral part of the project, which saw elders of the Ntaria and Mparntwe communities imparting watercolour-­painting skills to the younger generations on the traditional lands of the Namatjira ­family, thus supporting successfully the project’s major aims of strengthening intergenerational community ties and sustaining the artistic legacy of Albert Namatjira especially for his family – a point emphasised by Kumantjai L. Namatjira Lankin in our personal conversations. She testified to the achievements of the Namatjira Project when stating to the media that ‘[t]hose kids are learning from us. I’ve been watching them working hard and watching their painting get better and better. I’m proud of the kids and what we have done for them’ (qtd. in Rentschler, Bridson & Evans 2015, p.12). While the Namatjira Project overall yielded a significant range of social and financial benefits to the family (e.g. Brash & Haskin 2018; Rankin 2018, pp.30/31), the following analysis of the play highlights some of the complexities inherent in this working model. One observation here is that the play in its form of presentation glosses over many of the complexities, which in the actual work on the Namatjira Project were navigated in a sensitive and arguably exemplary manner, e.g. the respect for and uncompromising adherence to Aranda cultural protocols within the framework of a Western professional arts company. The play foregoes the reflection of these processes in favour of an ideologically shaped narrative that seeks to inspire its audiences by affirming the possibility of productive cross-­cultural dialogue without alerting to the ruptures and controversies accompanying such undertakings. This approach has been lauded for opening up a space on the Australian mainstage to begin to consider both the ongoing history of racism and colonial devastation as well as moments of productive crosscultural exchange, sounding out the possibilities of intercultural engagement that may show a path toward national reconciliation (e.g. Croggon 2011; Finnane 2012). While this discursive intervention has been acclaimed for its expert theatrical adaptation (e.g. Bradford Sykes 2010), the following case study critically examines the conceptual underpinnings of this intervention, interrogating especially how this approach impacts on the communication of Aranda ontologies.

Production history Apart from watercolour artworks and digital material created in conjunction with the Ntaria school (including an iPhone application and numerous webcasts), which were marketed to national and international audiences (Big hART n.d.), the theatre play became the most visible element of the Namatjira Project to outside audiences. As Ms Marinos explained, Namatjira was developed over a comparatively long period5 in close collaboration with descendants of Albert Namatjira as well as Rex Battarbee’s daughter Gail Quarmby and Ruth Burns-Ellis,

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  91 daughter of Hermannsburg Mission’s Pastor Friedrich Albrecht. As non-­ Indigenous professional playwright and director Scott Rankin explained in a personal interview in Melbourne on 8 August 2011, personal conversations that opened windows into local oral histories provided the framework into which he collated material from written historical sources (e.g. diaries of Rex Battarbee, biographical sources on Albert Namatjira and various materials garnered from the Strehlow Research Centre in Mparntwe) to form the baseline of the story. The development of the play was strictly monitored by a group of community consultants (including the mentioned Namatjira family members), who provided content in response to Rankin’s story outline and exercised a veto-right to the inclusion of any material deemed inappropriate for public presentation. The early rough drafts were then further developed in actual stage work with Pitjantjatjara actor Trevor Jamieson and Eastern Arrernte/Yankunytjatjara actor Derik Lynch, community advisors and the wider creative team. After initial community showings in Mparntwe, Namatjira opened in October 2010 at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre under the co-direction of Indigenous director Wayne Blair (Batjala Mununjali Wakkawakka) and completed a sell-out season of eight weeks, before travelling to Rotterdam in March 2011 for the International Community Arts Festival. Later that year, the play was revived for a two-part national tour to metropolitan and regional centres (Big hART n.d.). Part of this tour was also a free full-scale open-air staging of the play for local communities in the Ntaria Heritage Precinct, the location of the mission Albert Namatjira grew up in and lived for most of his life and in whose vicinity many of his family still reside. Taking the play back to the community who holds custodial ownership of Albert’s story was an important and culturally significant undertaking as it provided the opportunity to celebrate the family’s achievements.6 The staging also resonated deeply with the play’s deictic scope because Country was not only evoked through stage performance but actually surrounded the cast and audience as referential horizon. The performance of the play on Country added to its resonance with Indigenous performance traditions, which place a strong emphasis on site-specificity in order to reaffirm the performers’ connection to their Country, i.e. asserting the family’s bond to the land of their ancestors and, by implication, finding a point of culturally significant insertion for the external artistic collaborators. In November 2013, the play travelled to London (UK), completing a sell-out season at Southbank Centre, coinciding with the Royal Academy of Arts’ Australia exhibition, where the cast also met with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philipp. All in all, the show reached an audience of over 50.000 people (Rankin 2018, pp.30/31). Namatjira gained much public and critical acclaim, testifying to its resonance in the mainstream national performing arts landscape. It was awarded two Sydney Theatre Awards (including “Best New Australian Work”), one Helpmann Award, one Critics’ Choice artsHub Award and

92  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira was nominated for two Green Room Awards, and one Indigenous Deadly Award (for “Community Cultural Advancement”) (Big hART n.d.). The play was published in 2012 by Australia’s premier performing arts publisher Currency Press and has been included in the Year 12 syllabus of NSW secondary schools, ensuring ongoing dissemination of the play. The reach and critical acclaim of the play also means that the ideas and concepts advanced in Namatjira have gained a broad audience and will continue to be engaged with. The play was accompanied by a travelling exhibition of watercolour paintings crafted by descendants of Albert Namatjira with some of those paintings hung in the theatre foyers to line the entry into the auditorium. An engagement programme consisting of free-of-charge movement- and storytelling workshops as well as public watercolour masterclasses provided audiences with the opportunity to meet the Namatjira cast and family, while the producers of the project sought to ensure that the Namatjira family artists travelling with the play were given the chance to establish links to the hosting communities through personal meetings and visits to sites of significance to the local Aboriginal communities.7 This set-up was designed to maximise the fostering of relationships between the Namatjira family members, the Big hART team and the hosting communities. Other than for increased public visibility that was hoped to channel into a financial revenue stream (conceptualising the show as a promotional strategy for the family’s arts practice), this relational outreach programme was tailored to Aranda identity conceptions according to which subjectivity is achieved and maintained through a maximising of connections to people and places. Rather than being conceived as an optional “add-on” to the artistic product, the outreach programme formed an integral part of the project geared to introduce the Namatjira artists to the public and to create a space for relational identity models to be appreciated and practiced. However, since the show most often only spent short intervals at any one location, the relationships established at each stop were naturally only of a cursory and mostly symbolic nature. They introduced relation as a parameter for identity construction within the confines of a temporary art event, with the most visible sustainable transfer occurring in the management of a private support fund for the project that was later extended into a trust account eligible for major donations to the family’s arts practice (Brash & Haskin 2018). Consequently, the show – by virtue of its defined temporal and logistic boundaries  – was able to only provide a glimpse into the personal form of relation that it built in its production process and which is advocated in the play itself. By and large, this interpersonal relation is substituted with monetary exchange, which in the overall context of the play is not without its pitfalls. I argue that the personal form of relation (which is conceived in the play as the basis on which transformations of interpersonal interaction can occur) in the Namatjira Project transpires more between the company members

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  93 and the project participants than between the cast and the audience: While the play itself communicates the general idea of a relational identity model, its close adherence to a Western, non-participatory theatre model and aesthetic language creates barriers to its affective potential and delimits the idea of a relational identity model to representation rather than providing an embodied experience of it for the audience. Still, this personal form of relation and its transformative power are aptly realised in the production process, which strives for a reconciliatory (debatably decolonising) form of engagement between people of differing cultural backgrounds negotiating their understandings and positions vis-à-vis the story of Albert Namatjira and Rex Battarbee. While Big hART strives to set up structures that enable inclusive and culturally appropriate development processes, which situate the company arguably at the forefront of intercultural theatre work in Australia, the working model is nevertheless still influenced by the asymmetrical power structures engendered by the contemporary (post) colonial space: While sincere consultations are an integral feature of Big hART’s process, it can be argued that Scott Rankin as Artistic Director and mastermind behind Big hART’s major artistic outputs strongly influences their shape and content by being the one who offers propositions to which consultants (who respect and trust him as a successful arts professional) agree or veto against. Observations of creative developments for both Namatjira and Hipbone Sticking Out (2013) crystallised for me that this working process leads to successful artistic outputs and gains approval from the communities involved – it has so far generated career opportunities for many project participants in terms of acting, film-making, music or production-­managing. Yet, the company has thus far not fostered and trained a director or playwright from the pool of talents it has helped develop. Hence, Big hART stands in critique for overall still keeping the final control over the artistic process in the hands of a non-Indigenous, male professional – a point discussed, for example, in a personal interview with Bangarra’s Artistic Director Stephen Page in Melbourne on 7 May 2013. Even though this control was temporarily shared with co-directors (Wayne Blair for Namatjira; Luke Kernaghan for Hipbone Sticking Out) in the lead-up to the premiere of both shows, these collaborators were involved as strategic assets to fine-tune the almost finished products and to boost publicity, with Rankin conceding that he retained his directive agency in a personal interview in Melbourne on 21 February 2013. Consequently, it can be debated whether Big hART’s work – despite its culturally sensitive working model – should be labelled fully “decolonising”. The recurring question of Indigenous control over artistic products was, for example, insistently raised at the 2013 Australian Theatre Forum in Canberra, where Indigenous Australian artists stressed their demand for self-representation in the arts as well as voicing a preference for the exclusion of non-­I ndigenous artistic control over Indigenous storytelling (Maza et al. 2013) – a demand expressly debated in reference to Big hART’s work.

94  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Conversely, as support worker on tour I was provided some insight into the relationship between the Namatjira family and the company. While I am not privy to the precise details of their arrangements, I can testify to the fact that the family was not an easily compliant or yielding partner in those negotiations but actively represented and defended their interest vis-à-vis Big hART as a professional arts company. In these transactions, both partners seemed keenly aware of their assets and strengths and to be employing them in an exchange which has reflected profound economic reasoning and “ngapartji ngapartji” spirit: Aside from reasoning about money and benefits, the power balance was kept in check by the fact that both parties knew that Big hART can provide unique opportunities to improve conditions for the community (e.g. help to create income) but also that without the family’s support, the company would unavoidably have failed to live up to its own objectives and to the expectations of the Australian arts market, which has by now come to demand Indigenous authorisation to recognise decolonising aspirations (ACA 2007). Indigeneity here emerges as a politically charged and policed concept in a (post)colonial space that, as yet, has not provided an equally accessible and level playing field for artists to explore issues of identity. Hence, the inclusion of the family members in the cast also functions as a way of signalling adherence to these protocols, which are applied and policed especially with intercultural arts companies like Big hART (Rankin 2011). It is also important to keep in mind that this function of the family members in vouchsafing integrity relies on the theatrical construction of reality, i.e. its intentional creation for the purpose of the performance event. As cast members, the Namatjiras are actors who play roles. Yet, these roles are not and cannot be identical to the extra-theatrical subjects they seek to embody. Rather, these roles are construed in order to fit the purpose of the identity politics laid out in the play. They are subject to the selective and reductive creation of signifiers on the stage. As such, the creation of “authenticity” is the aim here but not the essence of this inclusion. Even though the family members take part in the performance to provide a “reality effect” for the audience, to achieve a sense of ‘truthfulness’ (Croggon 2011) and to stake their claim to Albert’s story – the reality they testify to within the frame of the play is fictional. The connection that the audience might establish to the family members relies on the encounter in the fictional space of the theatre alone. Any desire on the part of the audience to support the family resulting from the attendance of the show is born of this “reality effect”, the intentional blurring of the line between fiction and extra-theatrical reality. It is not grounded in the “real” (i.e. non-­fictional) encounter with the Namatjiras and their prospective otherness. The medium of theatre here sets a limit to the concept of direct, interpersonal connection proposed by the play because the audience in the auditorium can only ever encounter the cast as fictionalised characters that defy the idea of reality and authenticity.

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  95

Setting the scene As audiences pass the watercolour paintings in the foyer and enter the auditorium, they hear a recording of the Ntaria Ladies Choir singing Christian hymns translated into Aranda. They find the cast already on stage, engaged in painting activities. The set is framed by tall black slates, onto which a white chalk image of the Central Australian MacDonnell Ranges (designed by Elton Wirri in a pastiche of Albert Namatjira’s landscape style)8 is sketched, which two descendants of Albert Namatjira and supporting actor Derik Lynch complete in minimalist style over the course of the play. The scratching noise of chalk on slate is the only sound audible over the music. Mirroring their action is a male non-Indigenous Australian portrait painter on the right-hand side of the stage, creating an oil painting in vivid colours of leading actor Trevor Jamieson while he delivers the play. A block of layered wood occupies the centre of the stage. A female non-Indigenous Australian musician sits on the left-hand side of the  stage playing a selection of wooden recorders, accompanying many of the popular English songs (most translated into Aranda), which break up the stage action and are performed live by the two actors.

Plot summary9 The two-act play relates the life story of Albert Namatjira in linked, chronological vignettes with interspersed meta-reflections by lead actor Trevor Jamieson as storyteller (indicated in the script as ‘Trevor’), often commenting on the narrative and its possible relation to contemporary Australian affairs. This is most often delivered in a tongue-in-cheek, ironic and humorous yarning style, which lightens the tone of the tragic narrative. Jamieson impersonates all major characters, indicating switches between roles via voice and posture change, while supporting actor Derik Lynch fills in for minor male characters, and adds to the often light and subversive tone of the play by jumping into drag for the representation of all female characters. Act 1 speaks of Albert’s (Aranda names: Elea, Tonanga) birth in the Central Australian desert and his subsequent upbringing on the Lutheran mission of Hermannsburg (Aranda name: Ntaria), his elopement into the wilderness with his partner Rubina (Aranda name: Ilkalita) and the struggle to feed his family upon his return to the mission. Issues of communication and intercultural differences between the Aranda people and the Christian missionaries are playfully touched upon in scenes of Albert’s early years. They eventually crystallise around concepts of art, culture and capitalism as Albert meets watercolour artist and crippled World War I veteran Rex Battarbee. His coming-of-age narrative is, from the start, juxtaposingly interwoven with the presentation of Albert’s story  – effectively paralleling Rex’ experiences of battle in Europe with

96  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Albert’s seemingly peaceful childhood on the mission. As their friendship evolves from a teacher-student relationship into one of equal engagement and artistic exchange, the narrative draws the focus onto social relations in general, expressly inviting the audience to contemplate their own ways of engaging culturally. Act 2 relates Albert’s continued struggle for economic sustenance and his eventual rise to international fame as watercolour artist. The story of achievement and professional recognition is expressed via infatuation with the exotic persona and iconic art of Albert Namatjira by the Settler ­Australian high society (including Queen Elizabeth II, to whom Albert is presented in Sydney) and the eventual increase in financial revenue from his art making. This success story, however, is counterbalanced with instances of racism and exploitation in the form of taxation without the granting of civil rights, his being framed as anthropological curiosity by his admirers and the pressure exerted by his extended family in their relentless humbugging.10 Albert is portrayed as caught between two conflicting cultural systems under the duress of colonisation, which in the play ultimately leads to his economic, physical and mental demise. After a blackout, the performance concludes with a video (spatially substituting the portrait created of Jamieson performing as Albert) of Albert’s present-day descendants talking on Country about the project’s beginnings, structure and benefits for the community.

Analysis Namatjira develops an alternative to what the play posits as Western, “individualistic” identity models. It does so through the biographic account of Albert Namatjira’s life on the backdrop of an emergent colonial transcultural space.11 This alternative model is based on connectivity, relationality and reciprocity. The former two values are posited as foundational to Aranda culture and (together with reciprocity) proposed as a conduit to recalibrate the contemporary transcultural Australian space. Through the act of storytelling and the specific configuration of values in the presentation of Albert’s story, Namatjira attempts to reconcile the transcultural Australian space by responding to colonial discourses and by producing and emphasising an underlying cultural comparability between Aranda and mainstream Australian practices. The recurrent allusions to an “us vs. them” dichotomy may superficially point in the opposite direction, yet this dichotomy is most often only set up to be immediately deconstructed as representing surface variations of an underlying universal human predicament.12 This “comparability approach” hinges on the universalising of a set of ideological positions that are intricately interwoven with the colonial project, like, for example, the avowal of Christianity, the appraisal of the nuclear family as well as of entrepreneurism. For the way these positions are represented in the play, they provide a volatile

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  97 foundation for the modelling of a contemporary notion of Indigeneity: Their representation in the play implies the possibility of an integration of cultural identities in the (post)colonial state, while obscuring the resistances and discontinuities between the two cultures – incommensurabilities that challenge the fraught project of reconciliation on cultural terms and which, according to Homi Bhabha need to be brought into productive dialogue to be adequately approached: Western connoisseurship is the capacity to understand and locate cultures in a universal time-frame that acknowledges their various historical and social contexts only eventually to transcend them and render them transparent. […] although there is always an entertainment and encouragement of cultural diversity, there is always also a corresponding containment of it. A transparent norm is constituted, a norm given by the […] dominant culture that says that ‘these other cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within our own grid.’ (qtd. in Rutherford 1990, p.208) Namatjira reflects this approach by insinuating that Aranda culture can only be affirmed and appreciated by (non-Indigenous) audiences if they are enabled to appreciate it on terms of similarity to Anglo-Australian culture – consequently remaining within an argumentative structure of cultural diversity that reduces an engagement with cultural difference. As outlined, the Namatjira Project approached these ruptures and discontinuities in an exemplary way in terms of its production process. However, the play glosses over inherent challenges in favour of an upbeat story of “possible reconciliation within reach” that ultimately distorts the fundamental prerequisites for reconciliation. While Namatjira’s design is open enough to allow informed audiences to bring their understanding of Indigenous Australian worldviews (e.g. notions of Country) to the interpretation of the play and to complement and differentiate the presentation of Aranda culture mentally, the play itself does not provide sufficient palpable critical engagement with Aranda culture to demarcate it as a sovereign space for audiences that are unfamiliar with its cornerstones. Instead, the play’s focus on posited “crossover terrain” between Aranda and Anglo-Australian culture leads to a selective reduction of both cultural identities that enables (especially for uninformed non-Indigenous audiences, which made up the largest share of spectators)13 an unchallenged reading of Aranda culture in terms of Western frameworks (Nakata 2010, p.56), concealing the negotiation of difference as an ongoing transcultural process (Bhabha qtd. in Rutherford 1990, p.211). While the play highlights certain aspects of this process, it glosses over the ruptures and much of the difficulties and complexities of intercultural negotiation in its form of representation, which prevents the play from engaging deeply and productively with the (post)colonial space.

98  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Colonial space: aesthetic approach Namatjira is a biographical theatre play. It reconstructs the story of ­Albert Namatjira and Rex Battarbee from historical data, deliberately activating and tapping into the Australian public imagination by contributing to the extensive discourse generated around the public persona of Albert ­Namatjira (AGNSW 2010). As a discursive intervention, the play is constructed on the grounds of a particular agenda, namely, appraising Indigenous Australian cultures and achievements as well as developing a vision for a more socially aware Australia. This agenda, characterising most Indigenous Australian theatre, can be furthered in various ways, and the artistic choices adopted in plays each articulate one possible way of trying to realise this agenda. While Wesley Enoch, Big hART and Ilbijerri may share this broadly defined agenda, Big hART approaches it from an angle that is quite different to that of the other two stakeholders: As an intercultural arts company, Big hART presents the stories of marginalised social groups on Australia’s mainstage to reconfigure cross-cultural dialogue and to work toward a more equitable transcultural Australian space. It follows from this interculturally-defined approach that Indigeneity in Big hART’s work is not brought into view as a privileged field to sound out its sovereign terms but always already in coarticulation with non-Indigenous identities, geared toward synthesising a concept of transcultural Australian identity.14 In Namatjira in particular, Aranda culture is configured, functionalised and advocated as a possible touchstone for the transcultural reconfiguration of Australian national identity. This project of positioning Aranda culture as foundational to a functional social, economic and political system emulates colonial discourse formations (i.e. it asserts one culture over others; Bhabha qtd. in Rutherford 1990, p.208) and necessitates a specific representation of Aranda culture, which specifically performs with and against the colonial discourse formations that have cast Indigeneity as the colonial other. This functionalisation in the play works not only to appraise Aranda culture but it limits and distorts its scope and the grounds on which Aranda ontologies can come into view and be appreciated. In Namatjira, cultural interfaces are presented in purported terms of compatibility at the expense of an exploration of difference and complexity of the colonial space – an approach Bhabha labels as “counterproductive” in the aspiration toward an equitable third space (qtd. in Rutherford 1990, p.209). This approach directly responds to prejudiced binary colonial discourse formations centring on Indigenous Australian people. Yet, by doing so in a structure that closely mirrors these formations (by trading in simplified, homogenised and valueladen cultural identities), the play’s argument remains encased and delimited by the colonial binarism it seeks to overcome (Bhabha 1994, p.18) because it predetermines what Indigeneity can “be”. The play proceeds from assumed essentialised identities in order to build its identity model and shuts itself off from the deep exploration and reflection of process and change.

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  99 As with every historiographical account, the play draws on historic data in selective ways to validate an argument that is grounded in contemporary times (Attwood 2005, p.7). Namatjira seeks to perform against the pervasive negative stereotypisation of Indigenous Australian people in mainstream public discourse. With its one-sided, homogenised representations of identity, the play insinuates singularity and Rankin misses the opportunity to position the work in the vibrant field committed to the balanced discursive negotiation of Indigenous issues and instead conveys an image that comes close to negate any previous positive interventions by other stakeholders. It generally defines the obstacle to reconciliation as the empathetic failing of individuals rather than as residing with deeper systemic structures that are not easily overcome with a strengthening of interpersonal ties. Its response takes the shape of an idealisation that results from the due appraisal of Albert Namatjira’s achievements as an artist and entrepreneur, and its concurrent omissions and silences that drown out a representation of the complexities of the colonial space, the relations it engenders and the impact it often has on identity formation: While the play develops a relational identity model that promotes ethics of personal engagement, it explores this concept predominantly at its service to a macro-political context but not by delving into the intricacies of personal development that provide the basis for such an engagement. For example, Trevor often asks the audience to reflect on the implications of a particular part of Albert’s biography and its relation to national sentiments (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.45). Neither Albert nor Rex emerge as rounded characters, their decision-making processes are only rudimentarily sketched without a weighting of arguments providing differentiated insight into their values (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.39 – Albert’s decision to buy a cattle station) nor are their emotional worlds explored in depth (e.g. ibid., p.40 – Albert paraded in Sydney only responding sparsely to the actions unfolding around him). Namatjira abstains from a rigorous exploration of interiority that would allow an approximating glimpse into the processes of personal identity formation as the basis for interpersonal engagement and resultant communal identity formation. In a personal interview in Melbourne in 2011, Rankin explained this choice as a gesture of respect to the historical figures and their descendants, i.e. asserting limits to the artistic exploration of a historical person’s interiority because intimate thoughts and feelings could not be adequately approximated by an outsider; and the assumption to do so would constitute a politically fraught act of appropriation deemed improper especially in the context of a project that seeks to decolonise Indigenous Australian discourses. From this, it follows that the maxim of artistic freedom as an overriding value vouching for the artist’s unrestrained, independent and critical examination of any object as the foundational pillar of contemporary Western arts practice (Langton 2003, p.112) is subject to intentional restraint here on the grounds of political and cultural motivations. While conceding that the Namatjira family’s consent was vital to the production process

100  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira also  on  the grounds of perceived external pressures (i.e. of ensuring Big hART’s reputation as an intercultural arts company working with Indigenous stories), Rankin emphasised that the company strives to not only represent the values of a relational identity model in the artistic product – but rather that the company’s overriding rationale is to emulate these values in all interactions and working processes leading to the creation of this product. Consequently, he distances himself from a concept of art that relies on unrestrained artistic freedom. The shape and scope of the story told is the product of negotiations between Big hART and members of the Namatjira family, representing their collaborative consent on appropriate and necessary content to present in the public domain. While the play seeks to draw out the universal resonances of Albert Namatjira’s story, the elision of interiority in its representation for the above-mentioned reasons highlights that, although the story is framed using a predominantly Western theatrical approach, the Big hART team does not fully subscribe to key tenets of the Western arts paradigm. As a result, Albert’s character is not explored as a representative human being but as a sacrosanct historic individual whose interiority needs protection in the public realm – with the descendants being able to exert their authority over his representation (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.7/33). On the one hand, this reflects a respect for Aranda cultural protocols; on the other hand, it testifies to the team’s perception of the contemporary Australian space as not safe enough yet to openly engage with Indigenous subjectivities in a differentiated way. The communal production process here delimited the exploration of social, cultural and political aspects that did not find a consensual basis. The finding of this basis is subject to multiple factors, such as trust (both in the collaborating partner and the audience), power and knowledge. To circumvent the danger of reifying colonial ways of knowing Aranda people by delving into a representation of interiority, Rankin shifts the focus to the macro-political engagement with identity concerns (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.8 – Trevor immediately placing Albert’s identity within the historical context). From there, he develops the play’s relational identity model by sidestepping a discussion of personal identity as a precondition for communal identity formation processes. Consequently, the play reduces the historical characters of Albert and Rex to relatively flat, Apollonian characters, i.e. idealised role models peopling the (post)colonial stage. Rankin empties them of personal traits and all individualistic desires to maximise their identificatory potential. For example, in all of his professional reasoning, Albert is presented as having solely the provision for his family at heart, whereas other motivating factors are never mentioned (ibid., p.39). The play does not reflect the fraught nature of engagements in the colonial space in light of insights provided by, for example, theories of colonial identity formation as proposed by Spivak (1994) or Bhabha (1994), or new historicist approaches to biographical research (Volkmann 2004, pp.494ff), which can productively be applied to an interpretation

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  101 of historical data about the two men (as demonstrated in Edmond 2014). Instead, it recreates Albert and Rex as essentialised, ready-made crosscultural navigators whose natural dispositions, i.e. curiosity, openness, entrepreneurial instinct, arguably equip them sufficiently for an ad hoc and successful engagement with the other. Indicative of this are their painting excursions to the bush that are related as almost bucolic accounts of collaboration and learning (Rankin 2012, pp.25–27/36). In their friendship and collaboration, the play provides the vision of a harmonious intercultural engagement, situating the two men as role models. The play presents the audience only with situations of their shared history in which these dispositions and values allowed for a relatively unproblematic translation into action – situations in which good intention and reciprocal action were relatively unencumbered by the colonial setting. For example, their painting excursions into the bush removed them from the social world and enabled them to build their friendship without external interference. This representative approach seeks to inspire the audience with their symbolically potent compatibility, not with their actual practical navigation of difference. Martin Edmond, for example, in his biographical account of Rex and Albert highlights disputes over representation on the Aranda Arts Council (2014, p.368). The play omits reference to those decisive moments in their relationship when the complexity of the colonial situation and the asymmetry of the personal relations engendered by it did not allow for undisputed, straightforward management of difference, because this would undermine the unacknowledged idealised representation of the two men on stage. The complexity of the colonial space and its relations are not reflected, bespeaking a stance according to which an acknowledgement of complexity would threaten to delegitimise the political project of the storytelling act (i.e. the affirmation and valorisation of Aranda culture). Instead, the play forms its argument by constructing relatively homogenous cultural spheres that are ascribed particular exclusive and reductive qualities: Aranda space as communal; non-Indigenous Australian space as capitalist; Christian space as ultimately compassionate. In its linear and chronological account, the play orchestrates a meeting of these simplified spheres in ways that make possible a clear and unambiguous answer to today’s inequities – by discussing colonialism as a matter to be solved through personal choice rather than through systemic change. Namatjira’s argumentation can be summed up thusly: Aranda culture has been a fully functional system enabling sustainable life on the Australian continent (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.10 – Aranda families envisioned as always having coped in the Central Australian desert); even with the colonial project established in Australia, Australian politics are still unduly entangled with European imperialist powers (e.g. ibid., pp.11/26 – Rex enlisting in a war taking place on a land he does not know); non-Indigenous Australians have abandoned their proposed shared core Christian values in favour of unrestrained consumerist greed (e.g. ibid., p.39 – Albert’s land grant

102  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira excluding waterholes that are reserved for non-Indigenous graziers), and they have not found positive ways of grounding themselves in Australia (e.g. ibid., p.41 – ­proposition that Albert’s success is based on the unmet desire of a materially saturated but spiritually impoverished Australian public); in the process of colonisation, non-Indigenous Australians have altered the premises on which Aranda culture can flourish (e.g. ibid., p.42 – ‘they’ve lost their past, but haven’t found their future’); and lastly, to build a sustainable contemporary society, Australians should embrace Aranda values of relationality and integrate them with Christian maxims to neutralise the corrosive impact of the capitalist system – maxims, which are argued to also hold the key to rebuilding Aranda communities in the postcolonial nation. The play articulates this argumentation through representing Albert and Rex’ relationship as grounded in the particular context of the historical Ntaria community, while it also springs from the interpretation of their story that was communally derived in the production process of the play. As such, the play represents a particularised discursive intervention into the appropriation of the story of Albert Namatjira in the public domain from a specific identified position. Consequently, its intervention into discourses on Australian national identity – arguing for an adaptation of a particular set of core values – works from specific premises and enacts a series of exclusions that need to be critically reflected. As Casey points out, particularity is an important aspect of Indigenous cultural production and should be reflected in an engagement with artistic products (2012, p.14). While she raises this point in connection to an academic analysis of Indigenous Australian performing arts, I argue that this point is also relevant to an assessment of Namatjira’s tendency to universalise its politics of identity. Unreflected premises that the play proceeds from, and exclusions it enacts include for example: an instating of Christianity as privileged ethical guiding ideology arguably holding relevance to all Indigenous15 and non-­I ndigenous Australians; an uncritical affirmation of Aranda systems (– an astute interrogation of these is not offered); and an appraisal of entrepreneurship as a purportedly universal concept for material provision without a reflection of its entanglement with concepts of a neo-liberalist market economy that is invariably premised on exclusions and a strong tendency to background the value of compassion. Relational identity When stating in his initial direct address ‘[s]o tonight I’ll be playing Albert Namatjira – which is lucky, given the title of the show, and all the posters and everything…’ (Rankin 2012, p.7), Trevor as storyteller invokes the audience’s expectation to learn about the famous painter Albert Namatjira. Yet, he thwarts this desire in the following scenes by relating only stories of Albert’s father Namatjirrtja/Jonathan and mentor Rex Battarbee.

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  103 This narrative strategy evokes a sense of communality, anchoring Albert in a web of meaningful social relations before his “arrival” on stage. It contrasts with the isolationism, which characterises much of the historical, non-­I ndigenously-led discourse surrounding Albert Namatjira (Jones 1992, p.98) – which, in the play arguably lies at the core of the Western, “individualistic” identity concept. Much of Trevor’s meta-commentary works to provide a counterweight to such discourses by presenting the audience with an Indigenously-marked perspective on the events and contexts which shaped Albert Namatjira’s life, enabling them to identify and empathise with Indigenous subjects. Albert’s insertion into a communal context right at the beginning of the play contributes to the communication of an Indigenous Australian value system that places importance on community and place encompassed by the Aboriginal English’s definition of the term “Country” (Rose 2008, pp.110/11). Trevor stresses Albert’s birth into an Aranda world, by citing his name ‘Elea’ and totem ‘carpet snake dreaming’ (Rankin 2012, p.10), thereby endowing him with the quintessential cornerstones of an Aranda identity. While uninformed nonIndigenous audiences might not clearly discern the full implication of this strategy, they are nevertheless confronted with this information and are called on to recognise it as meaningful. From the outset, cultural differences in the conception of identity and subject status16 are hinted at in Namatjira: Whereas Rex is introduced as a prototypical Settler Australian child, namely as a ‘scrawny, white, big-nosed country boy’ (Rankin 2012, p.9), the choice of expression for A ­ lbert’s birth, ‘through them also a baby was born’ (ibid., p.10), alludes to the Central Desert belief in spirit children, who actively seek out their mothers’ womb and choose to enter the physical world (Morton 1992, pp.29/30). The expression further stresses the anchoring of Albert in the Aranda cultural context, while simultaneously adding to the play’s objective of establishing him as an active agent, contravening a historically constructed stereotype of Indigenous people as passive, objectified victims. For example, the behaviour of and decisions by Indigenous people in the show are constantly explained and contextualised in order to stress the rational reasoning informing them (e.g. Rankin 2012, pp.12/38/39). The cultural specificity of subject status awarded by birth is linked without creating a paradox to the universality of the child-object status (becoming apparent in his being “manhandled” by his parents in subsequent scenes). As Trevor points out, within the Aranda social world, subject- and object status are presented as not mutually exclusive but as intertwined, with the subject only holding its position through its intricate embeddedness and ongoing exchange with the (social) environment: ‘Aranda way, he’ll have to buy [alcohol] for others, he’ll have to share it. […] You see, Aranda way, Albert is not allowed to say no’ (Rankin 2012, p.38). The nature of this identity model emphasises process as the site of subject constitution – as opposed to the aspiration toward fixity implied in the play’s Western identity model. This

104  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira juxtaposition emerges, for example, in Albert’s admirers’ infatuation with his artworks that to him hold no personal value as commodities because only the process of creating them articulates his relation to Country (ibid., p.31). In the play, Albert and Rex epitomise the positive effects of this codependent, processual identity model in their ongoing reciprocal exchanges, which see both creating a living by serving the other in entrepreneurial spirit (e.g. ibid., pp.24–25/30  – Albert guides Rex through Country and Rex in turn teaches Albert the technique of water colour painting). The pressures engendered by this relational identity concept are articulated through Albert’s obligation to maintain active relations to the members of his community, i.e. by providing for his extended family (e.g. ibid., pp.35/42). These pressures provide a window into the incommensurability of Aranda values and customs and capitalist economic principles, which in Namatjira continually threaten to disrupt the play’s ideological argument. The Settler Australian social realm is presented in opposition to this concept as an environment which compels to strive for individual distinction and singularity in order to achieve subject status (Rankin 2012, p.38  – ­Government officials lauding Albert as a privileged role model for his people), sanctioning failure to do so with objectification and annihilation (ibid., p.15 – crippled Rex being left for dead on the World War I battlefield). This concept is rejected in the play as volatile because it cannot generate positive communal relations for a sustainable societal space. A fundamental critique of this concept is offered through its alienating effects on Albert and the perverse inability of Settler Australia to forge a sense of belonging that is not premised on the annihilation of the other – as evidenced in Rex’ wartime experiences (Rankin 2012, pp.12–15) and the atmosphere of suspicion permeating World War II Australia (ibid., p.37). It is further epitomised through Rex’ fate as ‘Digger’:17 While Rex aspires to conform to the expectations of his community by enlisting in World War I, the meeting of these expectations culminates in his physical, social and economic annihilation that sees him losing his place in non-Indigenous Australian society. The Western identity model is here rejected by its reduction of humans to commodities in the imperialist project (Rankin 2012, p.13 – Rex’ commanding officer replaces his name with the number 2616) and its proposed inability to provide a sustainable basis for Australian society as a whole (e.g. ibid., p.41 – proposition that Albert’s non-Indigenous admirers use his art to establish relation to the land they have come to claim as home). Aranda culture is presented as being susceptible to the same disintegrating commodification of humans under the pressure of colonisation (ibid., p.42 – Albert exploited by his family as a ‘slave’) yet the relational identity model is recuperated and affirmed in the play through a recursion to the Christian value of compassion. Christian overtones accompany the negotiation of identity politics in the play, for example, they are interwoven into Rex’ symbolical death on the battlefield. While the individualistic identity concept takes him to the

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  105 verge of death, he is “reborn” (i.e. regains his place in society) by entering into relation to various Indigenous people, who help him enter into direct relation to the land: His old friend Wilmot becomes his sole companion in his first attempts at landscape painting (Rankin 2012, pp.18/19), Albert becomes his friend and guide in perfecting his art on Country and in making money (ibid., p.32), while the Aranda elders accept him into their community by assigning him a new name that integrates his present with his past (ibid., p.36). The Christian motif finds its completion in the Indigenous realm: Rex finds salvation in his relation to the Aranda community, with his social rebirth achieved by emulating Indigenous Australian ways of life, i.e. gaining his provision off the land and living ideals of reciprocity and relation. This thematic arrangement in tandem with the previously outlined ways of representation appraise Aranda culture in the play as the repository of resources for a sustainable societal reconfiguration – representing an inversion of colonial hierarchies that have construed solely Indigenous cultures as in need of conversion and external leadership. In Namatjira, it is the ethics ascribed to the corrupted non-Indigenous realm that are presented as problematic. Non-Indigenous Australian ways of social organisation and relation in the play stand in contrast to the ideas of Aranda relationality and connectivity: They are isolating, abstract and disconnected – relying on the fetishising of objects (Albert’s paintings) to string along the process of identity constitution. The political and social elites in Namatjira epitomise this in their racist, ignorant and hurtful actions toward the Aranda: As a social group, Indigenous people are presented as marginalised and discriminated against in the colonial space. Yet, his admirers single Albert out as an exceptional artist through whose work they vicariously try to establish a connection to the land they are living on. The play here sets up a binary of “good” (victimised Aranda) and “bad” (racist non-Indigenous) social groups in Australia, which reformulates the national identity from the margins of society – instating Aranda values of relation as the adequate response to a perceived flaw in the Western individualistic identity concept. This binary representational format, which relies on simplifying, stereotyping reductionism to arrive at an exclusive valorisation of Aranda values of relation, inverts colonial discourses by identifying the margins as the seat of societal merit; yet, it is dependent on ameliorating and, in the case of Settler Australia, demonising a heterogenic group of people at the service of an ideological argument. As a result of this binary representational format, the play is unable to reflect the complexity and contestations of the (post)colonial space, in which exclusive categories of “good” and “bad” hold only limited instructive potential because on both sides heterogeneity prevails and undermines simple solutions such as those proposed in the play. Without striving to absolve the actions of the Australian colonial administration nor the attitudes it actively promoted, it is worthy to note that Namatjira configures the representation of historical non-Indigenous

106  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira characters in ways to concur with the idea of non-Indigenous ignorance and mercilessness: Edmond notes that Lady Huntington was a sophisticated, multilingual patron of the arts (Battarbee qtd. in Edmond 2014, p.160) and that Albert Namatjira had been reprimanded for illegal supply of alcohol leading to violent incidents at this camp prior to the rape and murder case (Edmond 2014, p.258), incidents that had Rubina leaving Albert to live with their daughter Maisie (ibid., p.293). While such information does not necessarily contravene the representation in the play, they add context and allow for a more differentiated contemplation of the complexity of the historical space that the play references. One consequence of the binary representational format is that Indigenous people are cast as victims of colonisation whose actions are continually expounded on the grounds of colonial oppression. Aside from the general problematic implications of this assertion, such as, for example, covertly implying a general loss  of subjectivity as an inevitable result of colonisation; in Namatjira, this assertion leads, inter alia, to preventing the unrestrained condemnation of the rape and murder of a Pitjantjatjara woman by Raberaba, an Aranda man: While the act is narratively disavowed, by dubbing him a ‘good fella’ (Rankin 2012, p.44), the Aranda man is nevertheless narratively absolved from his actions on the grounds that his desire was induced by colonial trauma. The binary format here prevents an engagement with issues of lateral violence in adequate form and instead reformulates Aranda subjectivity, including personal accountability, as largely suspended in the colonial space. Of significance is also that the positive effects of the relational identity model are presented in the show as extending to the non-Indigenous characters alone, which are enabled to solve their identity issues; whereas the Indigenous characters in the play remain encased by the destructive effects of the colonial situation. The expounding of personal accountability on the grounds of colonial oppression in the play figures as a feeble attempt at maintaining societal cohesiveness in the face of colonial genocidal practice. The relational identity concept is applied as an ideology even at a moment when relation has been fatally undermined by its destructive other, i.e. when relation between people is violently severed by rape and murder. The problem arising from the play’s representational format is that it signals the upholding of values of relationality and connectivity expressed in the solidarity with Raberaba but it fails to offer a conclusive argument for adequate policing of transgressions against the relational ideal. The play rightly rejects the historical legal consequences that this rape and murder had for Albert under the rule of Australian law; yet, it neither offers an Aranda perspective on adequate sanction. In its attempt to stress cultural compatibility, the play refrains from alluding to the consequences for this kind of behaviour under Aranda law, which might alert the audience to significant cultural differences. For example, the Australian Law Reform Commission relates that one punishment for violent crimes in Indigenous Australian communities has

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  107 been the public spearing of the perpetrators – after which (if alive), the perpetrator is absolved of his or her crime and reintegrated into society without the life-long stigma commonly extended to criminals in Western societies (ALRC 1986). Aranda law is the foundation on which the social organisation of relationality and connectivity is presented in the play. The invisibility of Aranda sanction of the transgression against the relational value undermines Namatjira’s project of appraising the relational identity model as potential cornerstone of the contemporary transcultural Australian space: Because Aranda law is not shown to be able to respond to violation in productive ways but instead relation is extended indiscriminately and without condition, the resultant community  – while maximally inclusive and absolving of Indigenous people – is prone to disintegration. Only the Christian value of compassion is brought into view against this tendency – ­arguably a volatile fortification because it is presented as external to Aranda culture and its historical impact is shown in the theatrical narrative to not be sufficient. While the attempt to recuperate Raberaba into the social fabric as a ‘good fella’ can be interpreted as signalling an affirmation of Indigenous Australian worldviews which contravene the possibility of an individual losing its place in the cosmological and social order, Namatjira’s insistent absolving of character sits at odds with their conceptual premises: Deborah Bird Rose points out that rather than relying on binary distinctions imbued with expressly moral qualities (i.e. good or bad), Indigenous worldviews are geared to maximise connectivity among people and their living environments in an express foregoing of such categories (2008, p.110). Colin Bourke (­Wolithiga) specifies that a compartmentalisation of creation as expressed in binary conceptions is contravened, and that Indigenous ontologies – as expressed in Dreaming stories – generally refrain from attaching absolute qualitative judgements like “good” or “bad” to agents rather attaching such labels only to actions performed (1998, p.182; see also Strehlow qtd. in Austin-Broos 2010, p.18). Namatjira’s representative approach undermines such concepts: It ascribes qualities to character rather than action in the case of Raberaba, as well as by idealising Albert as a Christ-like figure, and by extending absolute judgements to societal groups as “good” or “bad”. This overrides critical considerations of processes that maintain societal cohesiveness. In its base argument, Namatjira deduces that the solution to the colonial question can be articulated through personal choice – both in the Aranda domain and in non-Indigenous Australia. This representational departure from the basic premises of Indigenous Australian worldviews in favour of essentialising identities articulates a desire to valorise Indigenous people and their cultures within the parameters provided by the colonial space – a space that is perceived as inescapable and in which Indigenous sovereignty is ultimately suspended in the play’s heightened praise. Rather than constituting an accidental departure from culturally defined narrative conventions, Rankin explained his representative approach (of

108  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira highlighting positive aspects of Albert Namatjira’s story and backgrounding complexity) in our personal conversations as indicative of what he and the Namatjira family believed could be a possible, successful intervention into the contemporary Australian discursive space. “Successful” denoting here achieving a public appreciation of Aranda cultural, creative and entrepreneurial capacities that would prove beneficial to today’s Ntaria community. The foregoing of Aranda representational conventions in favour of a culturally atypical idealisation is hence a result of conscious reflection of particular experiences, knowledge and assumptions about the (post)colonial space, which is perceived as being closed – in the sense that it is believed not to be ready for an engagement with Aranda culture in respectful, appropriate, differentiated ways. Considerations regarding the inclusion of content and its way of representation were made both in relation to whether or not something was deemed culturally appropriate to show, e.g. secret/sacred reference or good for public staging, or too private for public dissemination. Ultimately, the adaptation of narrative conventions and styles to conform to assumptions about the (post)colonial space and forms of reception therein, is a pragmatic choice that risks defining Aranda culture solely on the grounds of its adaptive capacities rather than on its sovereign terms. Another aspect strongly informing the concept of relational identity in Indigenous Australian cultures and which is noticeably absent in Namatjira is the complex idea of kinship with the natural world. While the text makes passing reference to Albert spending quality time with his family on his traditional homelands and the beneficial effects on his health (Rankin 2012, p.33), the focus in Namatjira rests predominantly on the social dimension of the relational identity model without extending the concept of relation to non-human dimensions of Aranda belief systems. The reflection of foundational Aranda kinship ideas that encompass all of creation and which provide the basis for an Aranda relational identity concept according to which Albert needs to provide for his extended family, is relegated merely to the practice of painting (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.25 – mention of Albert seeing ‘lizard men’ in the cliffs he is drawing). The spiritual dimensions underpinning the Aranda kinship system remain largely obscured from the narrative and are evacuated to the visual dimension of the play in order to make room for the humanist argument of compatibility of Aranda and Western systems of thought and social organisation. By not engaging verbally with Aranda cultural dimensions, the intracultural Aranda realm remains largely closed off for the audiences’ intellectual contemplation. Namatjira sidesteps a discussion of the differing ways of policing cultural boundaries and of the distinctive spiritual dimensions of Aranda and Christian cosmologies by levelling out difference through offhand comical comments and a condensation of focus onto presumably universal parameters of human existence in order to shape an argument of humanist similarity rather than cultural difference. For example, Jonathan

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  109 offhandedly dismisses the Pastor’s demands when remarking that ‘Pastor has songs, Aranda have songs. They have ancestors, we have ancestors… Sacred things, Aranda also… Pastor is just a bit bossy about his Gott [sic] that’s all, but he doesn’t know…’ (Rankin 2012, p.20). This approach has significant consequences for the identification and communication of culturally determined ontological frameworks in the play. “Country”: Aranda and Western ontologies Country is the touchstone for community- and, hence, identity building in the play. It draws people together into social groupings to ensure survival and creates the need for cultural negotiation. For example, Albert’s family decides to stay at the mission because it offers food rations and shelter during the drought (Rankin 2012, pp.10/12). Expressly avoiding a preoccupation with reflections of spirituality, the play postulates a predominantly biologically grounded concept of culture, defining it as something humans create in order to eschew existential threat and to survive and thrive on the land. Even though this spiritually emptied concept of culture is to provide a “neutral ground” from which to build a decolonised, humanist vision of compatible Australian cultures, the conceptual base and strong abstraction inherent in this concept undermine this project by privileging Western ontologies (Christie 1990, p.62). It obscures vital dimensions of Aranda ontologies that are based on embodiment and that engender a relation to Country beyond considerations of ‘land as resource with use-value’ (Rose 2008, p.110). Although the play employs the term “country” when referencing Albert and Rex’ movements across the land (e.g. Rankin 2012, pp.25/36), it does not imbue the term with the complex meaning it has in Aboriginal English (compare Rose 2008, pp.110/11). While for most Indigenous audiences, this meaning can be assumed to be known – expanding the frame of reference; uninformed audiences are not invited to explore this concept in its culturally specific depth. An audience member unfamiliar with Aranda frameworks is left to attribute to the idea of Country his or her own conception of “home” and “land”, with the play itself privileging an interpretation of the term Country predominantly as the basis for economic sustenance for both Aranda and Settler ­Australians – strongly activating Western ideas of ‘use value’ (Locke 1984, p.138). Instead of sounding out the specificity and the implications of Aranda ontologies and cosmologies, the audience is invited to approximate an understanding of the key concepts of Aranda worldviews by relying on their own culturally derived frameworks. While it can be argued that intercultural understanding can only ever come about through such an approximating transfer of frameworks (Guenther 2011, p.260), Casey and Grehan point out that precisely such isolationist conceptions of intersubjective communication, together with the historic lack of exposure of the mainstream Australian public to Indigenous perspectives, have lain

110  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira at the basis of the marginalisation of Indigenous knowledges in Australian discourse (Casey 2004, p.xvii; Grehan 2001, p.21). Thus, Namatjira adopts a precarious approach when positioning Aranda ontologies at the interface of subjective understandings of philosophical frameworks, as this increases the chance of Aranda ontologies being obscured and marginalised in a play that is otherwise preoccupied with the “explanation” of Aranda social organisation to an ill-informed audience. Furthermore, in its derivation of cultural organisation from the biological foundation of human-environment interaction, the play institutes a pervasive binary between nature and culture that is strongly reminiscent of Western ontological frameworks (Rose, James & Watson 2003, p.8): Namatjira presents culture as something external to the person, something actively chosen and negotiated in the engagement with an ambiguous, threatening (Rankin 2012, p.12 – ‘the little family defeated by the drought’) as well as life-giving nature (ibid., p.36 – ‘[b]ig desert rains fall, lush and green, rock pools fill and flow’). For example, answering to his bodily desire, the teenager Albert rejects the demands placed on him by both the Aranda and the Christian social order (ibid., p.21). Eloping into the bushland, Albert and Rubina are shown to be able to cope on their own, bringing children into the world and providing for them by drawing on traditional Aranda knowledge (ibid., p.22). While Albert is able to assert himself as procreating subject in this isolated state, the desire for a more comfortable life, described in the vocabulary of amenities supplied by Western materialism  – ‘no babysitter, no Huggies, no help’ (ibid., p.22), turns the couple back to the mission and provides the grounds for their voluntary subjection under the social order. By citing only these considerations as the key motivation and casting them in the form of a joke, the show circumvents a reflection of the complexity that may underpin a decision in favour of a particular social order by privileging a purportedly universal value of material convenience – validating contemporary consumerist attitudes and extending them to apply in the 1920s Central Australian desert. Furthermore, the representation of nature does not privilege Aranda conceptions of Country as a sentient entity with subject status with whom humans stand in collaborative, reciprocal relation but is cast as an almost hostile backdrop to the efforts of the ‘the little family defeated by the drought’ (Rankin 2012, p.12), which is strongly reminiscent of non-­ Indigenous Australian conceptions of the “wild and inhospitable” Australian landscape (compare Muecke 2004, p.72). This form of representing lifeworlds of the Central Desert, splitting the human and the flora/fauna into opposing spheres, privileges a Western binary form of conceptualisation. It aids in condensing the focus of Namatjira onto the reflection of social spheres in colonial Australia – yet by doing so, it reinscribes the dominance of Anglo-Australian cultural norms in the (post)colonial space. In addition, the play objectifies Country by narratively instituting its interpretation predominantly as contested foundation for economic sustenance to both Aranda and Settler Australians. Accordingly, if the play is performed to a

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  111 predominantly uninformed non-Indigenous audience, the avoidance of an overt reference to the spiritual dimensions of Aranda relations to Country leads to a dominance of Western “use value” conceptions of land tenure in the representation of the play, inviting a reading that Aranda ontologies are, if not usurped by, then at least not at odds with Western frameworks. For audiences who are familiar with the connotations of the term Country in the Aranda context, this is mitigated: The reference to Aranda frameworks alone (i.e. using the term Country in the play) could be read as acknowledgement of their existence and import, with the pronounced focus on the Western “use value” concept of land being the concept under scrutiny and rejection. Keeping in mind that the play was written by Rankin and the Namatjira family not only for the consumption by non-Indigenous audiences but also for the benefit of the youth of Ntaria, who have been growing up in at least partial awareness of these frameworks and who are to learn about the story of their ancestor, this interpretation instates Aranda frameworks as dominant because they could be assumed as default position from which to read the play. In that case, it is presupposed that the connotations of Country apply and remain stable and visible throughout the play and that Western practices and concepts intervene but due to their lack of positive impact are ultimately overruled. Ironically, the conception of a play resonating “naturally” for Indigenous audiences here has the effect of marginalising Indigenous worldviews in the communication to non-Indigenous audiences because the hermeneutic horizons are not made to meet. While the verbal representation of Country is predominantly tied to Western frameworks, the play articulates Aranda conceptions through the visual domain: In their painting action, Albert’s descendants provide a visual expression of Aranda connection to Country, providing the audience with a sensual experience of claiming and holding country that is quite different from that of the materialist connection engendered by the Western “use value” concept (Morton 1992, p.55). The creative act of painting on stage represents an active relation between the Namatjira family artists (in their roles as such) and the Country they are depicting. In this way, they are meant to manifest and symbolically affirm their spiritual connection to their ancestral lands and articulate their subject status within Aranda social and cultural frameworks. Connectivity and relation are further extended across the Indigenous – non-Indigenous divide through the portrait painter’s sketching of Jamieson. Painting on stage here articulates the play’s politics of identity by drawing Country and people of all backgrounds together in the creative act. Yet, this process is not presented as seamless because the artists work in different modes on stage: The family artists complete a template of the landscape in simplistic chalk drawings, which can be read as their relation being conceived as stable and preordained, only to be unfolded through time, resonant with conceptions of the Dreaming. That the template’s creation process is not being shown to the audience means that the process of establishing relation to Country here is hidden from

112  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira the audience’s contemplation. This contrasts with the presentation of the non-Indigenous portrait painter’s process: He creates his image of Jamieson from a blank canvas, clearly revealing his technique and approach to establishing relation to the Indigenous person being depicted – ­suggesting that the process of establishing relation from a non-Indigenous position here is under scrutiny and subject to critical investigation. However, both acts of painting figure as processual expressions of relation and, consequently, articulate the alternative identity model that is being advocated in the narrative rendition of Albert’s story. This reading is substantiated by the play’s use of art as a point of articulation for the commodifying tendency of the Western identity model: Albert is bewildered by people buying rather than creating their own art (Rankin 2012, p.31), which indicates that only the process of painting recreates and reaffirms relation to Country and holds identificatory value. This contrasts with Albert’s non-Indigenous admirers only using his artefacts to attempt to establish a sense of belonging in the Australian space, as revealed by Trevor when asking ‘[w]hat was it about ourselves, that we saw as we stared through our little Namatjira windows’ (ibid., p.41). Theirs is an indirect, passive form of relation to finished and fixed products that, according to the play’s argument, cannot achieve the same degree of grounding as the active, dynamic engagement with the land and people. To his admirers, Albert and his art remain arbitrary identificatory tools in the process of belonging that is premised on the subjection of an object for the process of identity constitution. In contrast to the “horizontally relational” Aranda concept proposed in the show, the “vertically relational” Western identity model is premised on the process of substitution that revolves around enchantment, disenchantment and replacement of objects of identification (ibid., p.46  – Albert having been ‘used, abused and then abandoned’). It requires maintaining an infinite momentum in attaching to and detaching from ever-changing objects in order to propel the process of identity constitution onward. These objects are necessarily conceived of as fixed as otherwise they would not be able to create a sense of stable (if ever so fleeting) identification. An orientation toward fixity sets in motion a power dynamic that relies on the subjection of an object at the service of a subject in the process of identity constitution. While the Aranda conception of identity in the play is arguably conceived as more equitable for its “horizontal”, dynamic form of relation (corruption only setting in under the influence of colonialism), the play struggles to instate this identity model as a pervasive normative horizon: As an arts product that is closely structured according to a Western theatre aesthetic reliant on the clear distinction between active cast and passive audience, the play’s ideology of personal relation remains circumscribed by the fixed frame of representation. A transcendence of this frame of representation is achieved in the accompanying outreach programme but not in the play itself. The show’s use of intermediality, i.e. its “evacuation” of the spiritual dimension of Aranda conceptions of relation to Country into the visual

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  113 domain is helpful in avoiding a convolution of the play’s dramatic arch. It further appropriately reflects Indigenous Australian educational practice that relies on exposure and immersion as much as on verbal explication. However, the visual frame competes with the verbal communication and runs the risk, especially in a metropolitan, predominantly non-Indigenous theatre space, to be lost in translation. In order to appreciate both ontological frameworks in the play, a non-Indigenous audience member unfamiliar with Aranda frameworks has to emulate Albert’s readjustment of perspective, to adopt ‘this strange new magic way of seeing […] a different way, a new way, a clever way, a strange way, an easy way, a hard way, a money way’ (Rankin 2012, p.25) but he or she has to do so without the play explicating the terms on which to achieve this repositioning. In fact, the play communicates that one of the extraordinary accomplishments of Albert Namatjira would have to be his achievement to fuse two ways of “seeing” in his art – an accomplishment that provides the grounds for his role model status afforded to him in the play. Accordingly, Namatjira calls on the audience to emulate his navigation of the intercultural terrain but sets it up to fail and to contemplate his achievement in light of this experience. The price for this contrived failure, however, is the foregoing of imparting knowledge about Aranda culture and ontologies. While the play provides an intriguing challenge based on identificatory practice to the audience, it is implied too covertly: It does not provide enough knowledge about (and does not create enough gaps in the integration of) the two ontological frameworks to inspire the audience to contemplate the processes of their cross-cultural negotiation. The focus on comparability rather than difference permits a sufficiently conclusive reading of the play in terms of Western liberal economic and Christian frameworks, allowing non-­I ndigenous audiences too easily to read Aranda frameworks from within their own culturally determined positions without challenging the dominance of non-Indigenous interpretative paradigms. While there is no need for a play dealing with Indigenous stories to explain Indigenous ontologies to an uninformed audience, Namatjira sets itself up in a vein to educate outsiders about Aranda culture. Hence, Namatjira needs to be assessed in light of how it communicates Aranda identity to uninformed audiences. Christianity The play proposes Christianity as an interface through which to establish a transcultural Australian space: Albert is stylised as a Christ-like figure through pervasive intertextual reference to biblical scenes, as, for example, apparent in Namatjirrtja, Ljukuta and Elea paralleling the plight of the holy family in distress finding shelter with a stranger (Rankin 2012, pp.10/12); or Albert having his feet washed in Sydney with thematic overtones of guilt and redemption setting the interpretive frame for the scene (ibid., p.40). This instates Christian interpretive frames as significant in the play.

114  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Especially the closing scene consolidates the activation of Christian values for the interpretation of Albert’s life when proposing compassion as the antidote to Albert’s exploitation by both Aranda and non-Indigenous communities (ibid., pp.45/46). Because compassion as a Christian value is proposed as a productive response to both the racist non-Indigenous politics and the Aranda exploitative humbugging practice, Christianity is privileged as an interface through which to tap into a purported universal humanist ethics. In the play, this privileging depends on a wilful reconfiguration of Christianity with a double-edged effect for the politics of Aranda identity: On the one hand, the representation of Christianity in the play provides insight into the complex processes engendered in the navigation of the intercultural terrain that Bhabha deems necessary for a productive, decolonising engagement with hybridity (1994, p.178). This complexity is expressed in the differentiated representation of Christianity in multiple contexts: as a colonial instrument – evident in the Pastor’s regulation of Aranda presence and economic activities on the mission, and their mirroring activities in war, such as Albert’s counting lesson on the mission and Rex’ counting to determine the explosion of bombs (Rankin 2012, pp.14/15). Furthermore, Christianity is styled as a hotbed for human rights advocacy – expressed in the Pastor’s advocacy to the Government on behalf of the Ntaria community (ibid., pp.21/22); as well as lastly, as an interface mediating two systems of belief – for example, expressed in Jonathan’s comments about Aranda and Christian ‘ancestors’ to be the same (ibid., p.20), a notion given sensual expression through the Ntaria Ladies Choir’s Christian hymns sung in Aranda language. This highlighting of complexity in the representation of Christianity mainly serves to assert and highlight Aranda adaptive capacities and agency in the Ntaria context – with the problematic proposition that colonial structures can be resolved by privileging Christianity as positive mediating interface. On the other hand, this activation of Christian interpretive paradigms especially in the closing scene works to frame Albert as object, as victim of the colonial system and of his own community, onto whom the audience is to project compassion – activating the emotional trajectory on which the audience shall take to heart the play’s reconciliatory message. This move transfers agency away from Albert and his descendants on stage as Indigenous subjects onto the audience, tendentiously reifying the powerdynamic of binary colonial identifications especially in the case of nonIndigenous reception. While theatre as a medium is constituted by the dynamics of objectification of content and cast in the subjection to the viewers’ gaze (Fischer-Lichte 2008, pp.12/13), Namatjira’s closing scene in its conceptualisation and verbal realisation strongly emphasises and highlights this uneven distribution of power in the conventional theatre space to tie the audience into the relational identity model via an emotional register of compassion and guilt. Yet, the relational identity model in this case, while affirming Aranda values of connectivity, does not affirm

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  115 Aranda subjectivity as a whole: Indigenous subjectivity is cast as dependent on the affirmation by the audience. Given that the play’s audience was made up predominantly of non-Indigenous, metropolitan Australians, this palpable transfer of power in Namatjira – which seeks to engender a sense of responsibility for the shaping of communal relationships – clashes with discourses that seek to articulate Indigeneity as sovereign from the Settler state, i.e. without dependence on non-Indigenous affirmation (Watson 1997, p.57). The compassion with Albert is channelled by the play and its marketing onto his descendants to a double effect: The opportunity to buy paintings is offered strategically to financially support the family artists. While the exhibition’s concurrent integration with the play leverages the emotional power of the narrative by casting the family as victims of colonisation in order to improve financial revenue for the Namatjiras, its most obvious selling pitch is the family members’ artistic skill. Consequently, the exhibition also figures as a counterpoint to the narrative of victimisation and societal disintegration by showcasing the resources that are still present in the extra-theatrical community – countering the show’s closing scene that is overshadowed by Albert’s demise. Nevertheless, even though the audience’s subject status is rendered incomplete in the emotional ecology of Namatjira without the extension of compassion to Albert, the audience is not sufficiently unsettled in their ontological assumptions regarding identity constitution to attenuate the possible reification of a colonial identificatory framework. In terms of unsettlement, the show makes use of light ironic commentary about stereotypical assumptions and discourse structures pertaining to Indigenous Australians to provoke a reflection of their hollowness (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.8) but these remain encased in a nonconfrontational mode very different from, for example, the challenging tone adopted by Nakkiah Lui in Kill the Messenger (2015). The play reflects Christianity’s intertwined relationship with colonialism in the chronological historical narrative, clearly defining it as part and parcel of the colonial project. Just like the representatives of the colonial administration of the Settler state, the Pastor is depersonalised for his lack of a proper name and the identification with the institution he serves. Yet, Christianity as a guiding ethical system is recuperated in the play’s discursive separation of Christian spirituality from the institutional bonds of the church: The church is framed as a historically sited organisational framework complicit in the colonial project with the Pastor breaking up the Namatjira family (Rankin 2012, p.14). However, Christian spirituality and the value of compassion are instated as an interface providing access into the practice of a purported shared universal spirituality. This is made evident in Albert’s funeral service that absorbs him back into the Christian fold on positive terms (ibid., p.45). This separation is effected in the development of the Pastor’s character as well as through Aranda involvement in and practice of Christian ceremonies (including the Ntaria Ladies Choir on a meta level) that reconceal the hybridity of the third space under a mask

116  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira of seamless integration: The Pastor is the only character in the play who is shown to radically revise the grounds on which he builds relationships to Indigenous people – making him a role model for the reconfiguration of the heterogeneous Australian space. While Rex and Albert as characters follow the Biblical intertextual pattern revealing their parallel stylisation as Christ-like figures, the Pastor changes from the oppressing agent of the colonial system to the ‘old friend’ (ibid., p.45) who has come to acknowledge and engage with the Aranda ways of life, and who does not shy away from questioning his own actions in the fraught Australian space, as Trevor highlights when stating that ‘[m]oney starts trouble, mission falling apart. Pastor retiring, now questions it all’ (ibid., p.42). The Pastor’s intellectual reformation and his exile from the mission (ibid., p.37) serve to distance him in the play from the church as oppressive colonial institution and complete the play’s discursive absolution of Christianity from the legacy of colonisation. By symbolically including the Pastor in the ideological community of the play (‘friend’ – ibid., p.45), the path is cleared to instate Christianity as the cipher for ­transculturality – an ordinance that only works on the condition of repressing the reflection of the complex links engendered and maintained by the colonial situation. As migrant, the Pastor shares with the crippled Rex the outsider status in non-Indigenous Australian society and is shown to forge his sense of belonging only in his relation to the Indigenous community at Ntaria. This effectively turns the two men into role models for nonIndigenous identity politics that are developed from the margins of society to address the shortcomings ascribed to racist ­Australian political elites. This form of argumentation is intricately connected to what Catriona Elder defines as a pervasive Australian preoccupation with working class ideologies that explain the corruption of societal values as exclusively tied to socio-political elites rather than reflecting responsibility as a matter of the whole of society (2007, pp.40ff), forestalling a reflection of complexity in its simplistic and reductionist approach. In Namatjira, this line of argumentation is employed to open up a positively connoted position for non-­Indigenous audiences to identify with; yet, the play can only create this space on the condition of discursively obscuring the negative implications of Rex’ identity as soldier invading someone else’s country and absolving the Pastor from his earlier attempts at erasing Aranda culture on the Ntaria mission. Just like Rex, the Pastor is shown to only achieve subject status through his productive relation to Indigenous people in the play. While for the Aranda, subject status is awarded by birth, reaffirmed by bringing forth a new generation and continually maintained by communal relation; non-­ Indigenous people have to gain it in Namatjira through identity work that affirms Indigenous subjectivity – inverting the colonial call to assimilation. In this regard, Namatjira picks up colonial discourse formations and seeks to achieve an affirmation of Indigenous cultures through the process of inverted reinterpretation: Not the Indigenous people are called on to assimilate but non-Indigenous Australians are presented as deficient and

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  117 in need of cultural guidance. Yet, this flawed project is still dependent on reducing social groups to homogenised entities and the instatement of a cultural hierarchy. It does not transcend the binarism engendered through colonial ways of knowing and it does not lead to an unreserved affirmation of Aranda principles: As shown, Aranda identity in Namatjira tends to come into view predominantly on the grounds of Western frameworks and it remains circumscribed by the desire to locate it within a hierarchised spectrum of resources for the forging of a national identity. By elevating Aranda values of relationality as a guiding principle for a reconfigured national identity (but for the most part disconnecting them from a critical exploration in their specific cultural context), the play foregoes the opportunity to reflect the complexity of and challenges facing continually evolving cultural ­identities  – be it Aranda, Settler or pan-Australian identities. Instead, the play engages in ideological work that argues for the appraisal of Aranda cultural identity predominantly on ethical terms derived from the history of colonisation, and only to a very limited extent on terms derived from outside this complex, i.e. on sovereign Aranda cultural terms. Repeatedly, Trevor emphasises that Aranda involvement in and practice of Christian ceremonies – mostly described as a courteous but empty comical gesture (compare Rankin 2012, pp.16ff) – happens on the assumption of compatibility with Aranda belief systems, as evident in Jonathan’s surmising that ‘Pastor has songs, Aranda have songs. They have ancestors, we have ancestors… Sacred things, Aranda also’ (ibid., p.20). Implicit in this form of representation is a suggestion that Aranda belief systems remain fully intact when filtered through the Christian interface. Yet, the play does not explore Aranda adaptation of Christian concepts, values or practice deeply enough to warrant this assertion: In the translation of the gospel and hymns, the audience is alerted to the gaps between English and Aranda languages and conceptual frames. Yet, the play exploits these gaps only for laughter rather than in order to offer insight into the complex intercultural negotiation of differing belief systems. In the historical case of the Western Aranda people, this has yielded a multilayered hybrid form of Christianity intricately interwoven with traditional belief systems (see Austin-Broos 2010), whose representation would have provided a strong basis from which to back up the play’s argument of Aranda adaptive qualities and cultural assertion. Instead, the play orchestrates the meeting of Aranda and Christian frameworks mostly through the comical presentation of Aranda adaptive strategies: Opportunistic assent alternates with efforts at translating a cross-cultural ‘spiritual desire’ (Rankin 2012, pp.16/20), levelling discontinuity of concepts with slapstick comedy. In the use of intermediality, the ethereal voices of the Ntaria Ladies Choir are backing the idea of seamless compatibility by integrating Aranda language and voices harmoniously with Christian lyrics and music. In their fusion of Christian music with Aranda language and bodies, they pose as an

118  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira example of successful navigation of the two cultures. They maintain difference without the reduction necessary in verbal communication and offer an experience of man-made beauty contrasting with the malice of racist action. Music here adds to the concealment of ruptures that indicate the nature of cultural complexity, by eschewing the clarity of verbal language in order to position Christianity as a possible avenue to reconcile the two cultures without intellectually reflecting and problematising the implications of this artistic choice. In regards to verbally reflecting this adaptation, the show does not offer substantial clues as to the intricacies of this intercultural navigation: The comically represented attempts at translating the Lutheran hymns into Aranda, in which the words ‘irintja’ (‘scary ghost’) and ‘etetha’ (‘living person’s spirit’) (ibid., p.16) highlight the discrepancies between the two languages, raise doubts about the act of translation in general and in effect obscure Aranda Christianity as a conceptual domain. The assertion of seamless compatibility comes under attack in Albert’s mourning for his father that sees him rejecting the Christian influence on the Aranda people when claiming that Jonathan ‘died with the wrong name’ (Rankin 2012, p.44). Yet, this attack is quickly mitigated and balance recuperated in its framing as personal crisis in a broader narrative of asserted resilience of communal identity: Namatjirrtja’s death contributes to Albert’s experience of dissolution of the cornerstones of his Aranda identity, i.e. his land and his genealogical connection to his ancestors as a consequence of the pressures of the alien colonial system, whose influence he comes to resent and reject (ibid., pp.43/44). This process of dissolution is signalled by the changing connotations applied to the leitmotif blue in the show: Initially, the Aranda embrace Rex for providing a means to reproduce the colour, which is linked to positive connotations of sky and water (ibid., p.36). As such, blue allows completing a depiction of a cosmos for which the Aranda developed and have known the appropriate ways to ensure survival. That the colour takes on connotations of depression after Albert loses the legal title to the water on his lands (ibid., p.40) provides a symbol for the disruption of the Aranda lifestyle and prefigures the loss of a sense of identity for Albert. The subjective reflection of the impact of colonisation leads Albert to assert his Aranda values and identity, even if this assertion finds its articulation only in the representation of his dying as actively brought about by Aranda means of ‘singing himself to death’ (ibid., p.45). It is further attested to by the physical representation of his descendants and their chalk renditions of his Country on stage. His death provides the image of Aranda assertion and resilience. Yet, the representation of his passing is also flanked by a communally practised Christianity that works to recuperate Albert into a Christian framework: The choir’s rendition of the Lutheran hymn Abide by Me and Albert’s Christian parting celebrated by his ‘old friend, the Pastor’ (ibid., p.45) establish a frame in which Christianity becomes the communally chosen Aranda-approved conduit for a shared Australian space. The interpretation of his fate as ‘used, abused and

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  119 then abandoned’ (ibid., p.46) by both his community and non-Indigenous Australians assigns guilt to the people who arguably engaged in a self-­ centred way with him and logically implies compassion as an atoning value to be embraced in order to reconcile relations in Australia. Christianity is absolved from the historical stain and relation is discursively established as guiding identity. Conversely, the play heightens the contrast between Aranda and Christian belief systems in Albert’s passing for the sake of asserting Aranda culture. This distorts and even comes close to negating the historical Albert’s Christian affiliation through the gaps it creates in the representation. Historically, Albert Namatjira died in hospital praying with Rubina and Pastor Albrecht by his side and was laid to rest in a Christian funeral service at the Alice Springs Cemetery in a ceremony attended by a large number of people ­(Edmond 2014, p.299). What is more, the play’s fabrication of Christianity as the universal solution to the disparities of the colonial space rests on assumptions that reify the image of Australia as a homogenous space. By invoking Christianity as the conduit for all Australians to enter into more equitable social relations, the play falls behind a reflection of the Australian space as heterogeneous – as, for example, achieved in Big hART’s previous work Ngapartji Ngapartji. While the integration of Aranda and Christian systems has been a practice adopted by a large part of the extra-­ theatrical Ntaria community and reflects their particular experience and outlook, the play’s generalising gesture of interpreting their approach as articulating pertinent solutions to the question of reconciling the whole of the colonial Australian space needs to be carefully weighted: The sense of community forged through the narrative pact in the theatrical space18 rests on the acceptance of the Christian framework as adequate interface to access a postulated universal humanist space. It implies firstly a consensus that Christian values provide an unproblematic foundation to the national identity. Such a ­consensus – as is implied through the resolving of hybridity in the play – is critiqued by Bhabha as ‘counterproductive’ (qtd.in Rutherford 1990, p.208) because it obscures rather than investigates the ruptures of the colonial space. Secondly, the play advances the notion that there exists something like a universal human spirituality, which different spiritual practices simply articulate in variant forms. This implication works on the premise that concepts can be separated from their historical foundations and that form does not stand in a determining relation to content. The play’s instating of Christianity as neutral interface may not be experienced as a hindrance by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Christian Australians but overall this assumption is prone to contestation in a culturally heterogeneous space such as contemporary Australia. In a space where politics of representation are inextricably linked to questions of sovereignty, the play’s proposed seamless integration coupled with a generalising tendency and its pervasive implication of Western alongside Aranda ontological frameworks sits at odds with contemporary discourses. As Bhabha cautions, decolonisation can only be achieved through acknowledgement of difference, i.e. the

120  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira exploration of notions of Indigeneity on sovereign terms (as, for example, reflected in Enoch’s Kungkarangkalpa), and by emphasising the particularity of stories as a defining trait of a decolonising approach to representation, foregoing universalisation. Namatjira sits awkwardly with contemporary critical discourses because it excessively simplifies the complexities of the colonial space by relying on idealisation in its representation of Indigeneity and making it too easy to privilege Western ontological frameworks in the contemplation of the play. Its proposition of Christianity as the solution to the problems of the colonial space comes close to supplanting the exclusions effected by the paradigm of “race” with those of “religion” in tying a positive connotation of Indigeneity to the value of compassion, which in the play is reserved for the Christian space and presented as lacking in the depicted Aranda domain. This is especially made a point of in the story of Aranda families leaving their frail elders to die in the desert to ensure survival of the group (Rankin 2012, pp.17/18). The popularity and success of the play, however, of course also require a consideration of its achievements: Despite its limitations and problematic implications as outlined above, the play provides a space where Aranda and Western ontologies can be brought to the understanding of the story due to an open intermedial format where verbal narrative, song and visuality co-articulate a shared space. Visuality is the key conduit for the idea of commensurability in Namatjira: The ability to “see” the landscape and to transpose its image onto paper connects Albert and Rex as human beings and provides the grounds for their intercultural engagement. The verb “to see” is frequently used in direct audience address to consolidate an appreciation of the proposed comparability of the two different cultures (e.g. Rankin 2012, p.38), narratively extending the accord struck between Albert and Rex to encompass storyteller and audience. Irrespective of questions regarding sovereign identity constitution and critical engagement with the complexities of the colonial space, Namatjira delivers a novel reconfiguration of discourses pertaining to Indigenous Australian people in the (post)colonial space that is still mostly structured around negative representations of Indigeneity. While the terms of cultural comparability are constructed from a hybrid conceptual basis and – as demonstrated – do not add up to a decolonisation of the representation of the Australian space, Namatjira nevertheless explores this space as shared: Rather than disconnecting Indigeneity from this space by emphasising its difference through, for example, a new-age romanticisation of Indigenous spirituality, the play creates a narrative in which Indigeneity emerges as productive and positive. Rather than reinterpreting Indigenous spirituality as a historically often preferred site of difference, the play highlights Albert’s entrepreneurial spirit to recalibrate discourses toward a discussion of practical reconciliation  – affirming liberal market ideologies under the auspices of a Christian ethical framework underpinned by an Aranda relational identity concept. Yet, this approach also comes with dense implications that warrant critical analysis.

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  121 Entrepreneurism The play casts Albert as a resourceful entrepreneurial provider for his f­ amily. His identity as a painter is inextricably connected to his role as father, staking the horizon for his artistic endeavours. Namatjira locates Albert in sole relation to his nuclear and extended family without a space for considerations of individualistic desires or meaningful social relation to outsiders. Apart from Rex, who becomes part of his familial circle when Albert entrusts his ‘Tjurrunga’ to him (Rankin 2012, p.36), mainstream Australian society and its standards remain external and of no personal import to Albert in the play. He is shown to be confounded by the celebrity cult created around his public persona (ibid., pp.40ff) and at no time is he tempted by the trappings of the special status awarded to him in non-­I ndigenous Australian society. The play markedly reduces the social networks of the historical Albert Namatjira and limits the representation of Ntaria’s vibrant arts community by focusing on Albert and Rex’ friendship alone. It renders the relationship as singular and as blossoming in isolation from a social infrastructure, epitomised in Albert and Rex’ shared time out bush where they build their friendship in isolation from the community: Trevor: ‘Out painting together…Albert cooks stew and tea and damper, tends camels, and of an evening, in the silence of the bush, for months on end, these two men sit quietly, and they talk art and culture and eat and learn from each other. Over the crackle of burning Mulga, Albert learns English and teaches Rex Aranda…’ (Rankin 2012, pp.31/32) This strategy effectively casts the two men as extraordinary pioneers of crosscultural exploration – leaving out a consideration of the other meaningful historical relationships that underpinned both Albert Namatjira’s and Rex Battarbee’s lives in the hybrid space they inhabited. By emphasising their entrepreneurial creativity, which enables them to overcome their economic marginalisation and to bond across the racial divide, the play turns the two men into role models for a relational identity model that – in its ethical foundation – is presented as arguably at odds with their historical environment. Namatjira, thereby, picks up the constrictive public discourse that has cast Albert Namatjira as an extraordinary singular individual, non-­representative of his people, on the grounds of his artistic skill (Leslie 2008, pp.63ff) and reinterprets his merit in terms of his ability to generate new sources of provision for his family. The focus is shifted from inherent artistic to inherent economic merit. This shift in content and representation undermines the grounds for the racist discourses surrounding Albert Namatjira’s work as purportedly naïve imitation of Western standards (ibid., p.87). However, it does not transcend the pattern of referencing Aranda merit by pitting an

122  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira individual’s achievement against a representation of communal impotence, and assessing Indigenous merit against a Western normative horizon, which Bhabha identifies as detrimental to non-mainstream self-determination efforts (qtd. in Rutherford 1990, p.209). This normative horizon is constituted by the demonstration of entrepreneurial merit in exclusive relation to material provision within a Western economic system. The audience is not presented with a corresponding Aranda alternative to trade as, for example, developed in Big hART’s play Ngapartji Ngapartji. Instead, Aranda people in Namatjira – except for Albert – are presented as not reciprocating in situations of personal exchange. For example, Namatjirrtja arrives at Ntaria and is represented as accepting the help of the Pastor without reflecting on the terms of this exchange (Rankin 2012, p.12). Likewise, Albert’s extended family members humbug him for help without consideration of his own needs (ibid., pp.42/43). This form of representation results in the impression that Aranda concepts of trade would not be culturally regulated but rather that they work on a utopian basis of unrestricted and unconditional provision for everyone.19 The elevation of and prevalent focus on the idea of material provision as the smallest common denominator of human existence in favour of other possible domains (e.g. emotional capacities), alongside the play’s identification of the solution to Aranda marginalisation being found in their inclusion into the mainstream Australian economy, bespeaks a preoccupation with and (ultimately) acceptance of the liberal market-­economy that underpins the Australian economical system. Although the play offers a pertinent, pervasive critique of this system by tracing its impacts on the Australian land and people, it nevertheless accepts it as dictating the terms on which Australian (especially Indigenous) identities need to be developed and discussed in the contemporary public domain in order to work toward reconciliation. To warrant this argumentation, the play draws an arbitrary line between economic transactions governed by greed – illustrated by the Pastor describing the motives of the graziers for displacing the Indigenous peoples from their lands (ibid., p.22), and those governed by the need for genuine provision to ensure survival – ­­exemplified in the extended family members asking Albert for clothes, food and medicine (ibid., p.35). This distinction, however, becomes volatile when contemplated in the larger context of the economic system these transactions are situated in: By definition, the liberal market economy requires the generation of surplus and the creation of an ever-expanding desire for consumption to maintain functionality (Locke 1984, pp.139/40), which is why the distinction made in the play cannot hold under a long-term perspective. In centralising Albert’s merit as entrepreneur, Big hART opens a space in which to appreciate Aranda resourcefulness and agency as compatible with Western ideas of a liberal market economy that is governed by supply and demand. This compatibility is instated as key to reconciliation since it rejects the racist assumption that Aranda (and by implication Indigenous people in general) lack the prerequisites to engage with the fundamentals of Western economic systems. Yet, while providing a

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  123 means toward practical reconciliation that centres on material provision, the approach does not work toward a decolonisation of the transcultural sphere: Namatjira maps a strategy of incorporating Indigenous subjects into the mainstream Australian economic system – exemplified in the project’s focus on generating financial income for the Namatjira family through exhibitions and professional development opportunities, as well as Big hART’s larger advocacy strategy for remote art centres as economic and social service delivery hubs. Yet, in accepting this system as an insurmountable given, Big hART limits its own scope to challenge this system as problematic in itself. Big hART’s approach is part of the larger discourse on measures for ‘practical reconciliation’ (e.g. Pearson 1999): Advocates of practical reconciliation argue for the active inclusion of Indigenous people into the Settler State system with the aim to generate palpable – namely material – ­benefits for the present-day Indigenous communities (Subašic & Reynolds 2009, p.244). It is hoped that this will lead to the creation of capacities for self-­determination in the future. This argument is premised on the assumption that Indigenous sovereignty will not be severely impacted upon if Indigenous people actively engaged with and navigated the Settler State system to their benefit. It asserts that Indigenous cultures can be maintained as fully functional cultural systems even if the economic system, under which these cultures are maintained, opposes a range of values these same cultures are built upon. Opponents to practical reconciliation (e.g. Watson 1997) acknowledge the severe marginalisation and disruption of Indigenous cultures under a Settler State system as requiring a timely response. However, they maintain that solutions to address these issues should not be developed by reifying foundations of the Settler State, such as the demands of a liberal market economy, at the expense of Indigenous ways of engagement and values (Watson 1997, p.58). Consequently, the choice to present Albert Namatjira’s story as one of entrepreneurial achievement can be read in conflicting terms as either denoting an assertion of overall Indigenous compatibility with the system in place, or as representing a compromising of Indigenous sovereignty in the Australian space by not providing alternative groundings for Albert’s identity in the play. However, the conceptualisation of the show and project was an informed choice made by members of the Namatjira family, which – ­irrespective of the implications raised here – constitutes an act of agency in itself, which testifies to the existence and expression of a particular contemporary Aranda subjectivity. As Ms Marinos pointed out in a personal interview in Redfern on 14 May 2015, the play was very successful in helping to increase exposure and arts sales for the Namatjira family, generating both material income and opportunities for professional development, with benefits having been distributed according to Aranda custom to the extended family. Hence, as with Albert in the play, the active navigation of the capitalist economic system has not resulted in an absolute backgrounding of Aranda social values at the expense of participation in the mainstream Australian

124  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira economy. On the other hand, the overt courting of a market ideology in the play itself consciously levels out the differences between Aranda and Western economic models and glosses over resistances that exist between the two. With Rankin at Parliament House in November 2014 talking about the ‘brand Namatjira’ which should greet tourists travelling first-class to Australia on a Qantas jet in the form of postcard-sized prints in order to alert to the lasting vibrancy of Indigenous Australian cultures (Rankin 2014), the question arises as to how much the Aranda concept remains perceptible as offering an alternative grounding to economic transactions in such acts of commodification. Ironically, Rankin implies an answer to this question in the play itself: Large-scale communities in the play, such as the group of Albert’s admirers in the city or the extended family humbugging Albert, are presented as destructive and pathologically ungrounded for their uncompassionate appropriation of Albert. In opposition to these, the play develops an ideology of direct connection as the foundation for productive, sustainable human relationships – as becomes evident in Albert and Rex’ friendship across the colonial divide and the affirmation of the nuclear family as the site for sustainable relation. This ideology of direct connection maps the foundational ground for decolonisation in the play. Accordingly, this ideology stands in opposition to the idea of the ‘brand Namatjira’ unfolding sustainable engagements in the transcultural space because it engenders a kind of “global” relationship too similar to the one being criticised in the play as pathologically destructive. While in its general thrust, the ideology of direct interaction provides positive avenues for a reflection on reconciliation; the concept is contestable in itself because it depends on the same simplification and reduction of colonial and economic complexities characteristic of the play’s overall dramatic approach. It leaves out a consideration of the colonial space as intricately shaped by people interacting directly and indirectly on the grounds of liberal economic principles that have contributed to the othering and marginalisation of Indigenous Australian people. Irrespective of these political implications, the play opts for a representative strategy that engages in contradictory terms with the idea of relationality and Aranda communal connectivity: On the one hand, it asserts the importance and creative force of the communal ideal, instituting it as the foundation for a reconfigured national Australian identity. On the other hand, the play eliminates much of the communal aspects of Albert Namatjira’s life from the dramatic representation. It reduces the focus to Rex, Albert and his nuclear family – with the extended family and Albert’s depersonalised admirers being cast as predominantly negative and destructive influences. In order to reduce the dramatic focus onto Albert and Rex and to bring to the fore their intertextual modelling as Christ-like figures, the show also avoids reference to Ntaria’s and Mparntwe’s vibrant social circles in the early to mid-20th century, which reportedly had significant influence on both Albert Namatjira and Rex Battarbee (Hardy 1992, pp.144ff). Rather than unequivocally adopting the Aranda concept of extended family as the cornerstone for the proposed relational identity model, the play tends to

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  125 ground productive relation predominantly in the idea of the nuclear family and its direct connectivity – emphasised in Trevor’s comment that ‘Rex and Albert are Kngwarra – like brothers’ (Rankin 2012, p.36). The concept of the nuclear family is thereby deeply steeped in European bourgeois ideology and, as McLisky, Russel and Boucher show, was imported to Indigenous Australian communities mostly via the colonial mission and reserve system (2015, p.132). Albeit mitigating this privileging with the argument that Aranda people only begin exploiting the concept of extended family with the external factor of increased pressure of colonisation (compare Rankin 2012, p.35), the play mostly uses the Aranda concept to highlight Albert’s martyr-­ like sacrifice for his people but not once as a positively connoted characteristic of Aranda communities. By representing Namatjirrtja, Ljukuta and Elea from the outset as a nuclear family without reference to their extended familial network, 20 the concept of nuclear family is naturalised and the disparity of this representational format with the Aranda concept of extended family backgrounded. The humbugging invites a critique of extended family as a problem to be solved rather than as an integral part of Aranda culture that could exert positive influences on the Australian transcultural space. The humbugging by extended family members draws a parallel to the negatively connoted functionalisation of Albert’s persona in the metropolitan areas – a parallel that is to point toward their status as symptoms of an ungrounded colonial Australian nation but also to identify them as comparable practices of exploitation. The extended family is contrasted also to Albert, highlighting his forward-thinking entrepreneurial agency on the backdrop of their short-term solutions to symptoms of the greater impacts of colonisation. This highlights the destructive impact of colonialism, which in the play is mapped as gradual communal disintegration on the grounds of material poverty, substance abuse and the sprawling of individual desires. Concurrently, victim status is assigned to the whole of the extended family – in ways that more significantly affect the idea of Aranda subjectivity and agency in comparison to the aforementioned victimisation of Albert in the closing scenes: By emphasising Albert’s status as entrepreneurial subject on the backdrop of a less resourceful community, this same community is inadvertently cast as Albert’s other – as the mass of community who does not possess the extraordinary quality of the singled out protagonist. Namatjira’s reformulation of the “extraordinary artist” discourse into that of “extraordinary entrepreneur” here undermines the argument for a broadly conceived Aranda subjectivity because it cannot escape the ineffectiveness of a concept premised on individual distinction to elevate a communal ideal. Ultimately, the play presents a community lacking entrepreneurial skill and assigns this quality to only one individual. While the status assigned to Albert is important in terms of promoting Indigenous role models in the public sphere (AGNSW 2010), this form of representation also has problematic implications. The community’s shortcoming is accentuated by the conception of ­A lbert’s identity as essentialised: As detailed above, the play fixes his

126  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Aranda identity by birth and unfolds it throughout the course of his life as a symbol of Aranda resilience. We are not presented with insight into Albert’s interiority save for his deliberations of improving his economic trajectory in the colonial Australian space (Rankin 2012, p.39). The play does not develop Albert as a complex character but represents him as a man of inherent integrity, self-efface and single-mindedness – ­character traits that the audience is asked henceforth to identify with Aranda people. Yet, the flatness of Albert as a character, the lack of attempts at representing how he processed his life experiences into his concept of self and how he negotiated outside influences to form his sense of identity – in short, the absence of a representation of the process of constructing a personal identity as would be expected in a biographical drama of Western c­ onventions – ­contributes to an accentuation of the oppositional status of the Aranda community: If ­A lbert’s qualities are presented as inherent and not as learnt, and they provide the basis for his remarkable navigation of the colonial world (which only has to make the adjustment to accommodate him), then – by ­implication – his extended family, who lacks these qualities, cannot acquire them. This implication is conveyed by the statement that the extended family is not able to aspire to Albert’s artistic standards and only fills in the ‘easy bits’, helping Albert to finish his paintings (ibid., p.42). A logical conclusion derived from this form of representation is that the extended Aranda community would be destined to fail in their navigation of the intercultural space because they are by implication not furnished sufficiently with Albert’s entrepreneurial spirit – a problematic implication for a play that seeks to make a positive argument for Indigenous agency. The fact that the descendants on stage demonstrate skill in painting and are represented in the framing of the play as drivers of the Namatjira Project only mitigates this implication to a small degree: The emphasis on their biological connection to Albert confers his role model status to them and still upholds a distinction between the Namatjira family and the wider Aranda community. The play does not bring into view the vibrant arts community that developed in Ntaria out of a conglomerate of Namatjira family members, extended family and other Indigenous people, with which Albert Namatjira strongly identified (Jones 1992, pp.97/98). In its condensing of dramatic focus onto Albert as exceptional singular entrepreneur to make an abstract argument for Aranda achievement, the play foregoes the opportunity of bringing into view the artistic and professional resources that have been developed in the broader extra-theatrical Aranda community and that today provide the basis for nourishing cultural practice. Furthermore, the courting of the idea of entrepreneurism implies that the liberal market economic system can provide a productive organisational structure for the transcultural space by drawing on a simplistic model of economic transaction that in the play has close links to Australian working class ethics: The play asserts an innate human drive to provide for oneself and one’s loved ones and argues that this would be possible under a liberal system if all racist excluding mechanisms were purged. It does not take

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  127 into account that this system relies on excluding mechanisms to function in the first place and that colonialism has engendered complex processes that cannot be resolved easily by cherry-picking the positive implications of concepts while marginalising their negative ones. Gender The play’s engagement with questions of gender reflects this dilemma: Namatjira presents us with an account of male identity formation in the intercultural space. By focussing on Albert and Rex as protagonists, the play traces their challenges and navigational choices in a format, which resonates with the extensive gender division of Aranda society. As scholars such as John Morton or Deborah Bird Rose have documented, gender division is a key characteristic of many Indigenous Australian societies and is extensively reflected in ceremonial practice and the arts more broadly (Morton 1992, p.50; Rose 2007, pp.36/37). The reduction of focus onto male identity formation, understanding Albert Namatjira’s story as predominantly a ‘men’s story with universal identificatory potential’ (as explained by Rankin in a personal interview in Rotterdam on 3 April 2011), bespeaks an attempt to craft the story not only by utilising Western dramatic formats but to also include an acknowledgement of Aranda cultural conventions (i.e. narrating a story as either a men’s or women’s story). This affirmation of cultural inflection, however, again highlights a disparity between traditional Aranda and Western values in a project of decolonisation: Rose broadly explains the gender division of Indigenous Australian societies as a system of complementarity where the male and the female articulate separate spheres that, while not intermingling, constitute foundational pillars of life that are dependent on each other to maintain creation (2007, p.42). While some Indigenous Australian societies may encode this gender division by privileging one gender, displaying either patriarchal or matriarchal structures, the system is nevertheless grounded in the basic assumption that two gendered spheres exist and stand in complementary relation to one another (ibid., p.42). To frame a story with a prevalent focus on one gender consequently does not automatically imply a reification of a power dynamic in favour of one gender but can alternatively be interpreted as articulating within a cultural system that instates the demarcation of male and female genders as a constitutive difference for identity politics. When approached in this light, the insistent focus on male identity and the functionalisation of femininity as a narrative tool in the male quest for identity as reflected in Namatjira poses a strong challenge to the project of deconstructing and critiquing power relations – irrespective of whether they are found in mainstream or marginalised communities. The play’s gendered vision of Indigenous subjectivity articulates male assertion prevalently in tandem with the subjection of women – beginning with Albert’s wooing of Rubina that sees him luring the girl away from her assigned place in society (Rankin 2012, p.21), to the highlighting of a posited inversion of

128  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira gender roles in which Rubina’s role as head of family figures as symbol for Albert’s oppression under the colonial system (ibid., p.29), to – lastly – the narrative framing of the rape and murder of Angela as an example of asserted (albeit discursively abjected) male physical desire (ibid., p.44). The functionalisation of women is also reflected in the positive connotations with femininity in the play as, for example, arising from the disembodied, ethereal voices of the Ntaria Ladies Choir that serve to support the story of male integration: The choir is often heard in scenes of male existential unsettlement – for example, during Rex’ rescue from the French battlefield (ibid., p.15); or when Albert faces his identity crisis after Namatjirrtja’s death (ibid., pp.43/44). The choir thereby signifies a transcendental assurance, which refutes the proposition laid out by the respective scenes. In this sole supporting function, femininity does not emerge as an independent space. Furthermore, this configuration of gendered identities is also reflected in the conferral of skills and deeds historically documented as held by women to the character of Albert, effectively concealing female subjectivity in the play: Edmonds relates that historically it was Rubina who carried Rex’ wedding present through a creek (2014, p.300), while cultural refinement and the capacity to speak three languages was historically noted about Lady Huntingfield (ibid, p.213). In the play, Lady Huntingfield is mocked as epitomising the ignorance of non-Indigenous Australians vis-à-vis intercultural spaces (Rankin 2012, p.33). While knowledge of these details does not invalidate the claims made about Albert’s integrity as loyal friend nor about his cultural refinement, they do raise questions about the politics informing the representation of femininity in the play. The combination of narrative marginalisation, gross distortion of historical information, representation of female characters by a male actor and their functionalisation for the male identity project, represents more than an innocent attempt to accommodate gendered Aranda cultural conventions. Rather, it reflects a reification of problematic gender hierarchies within cross-cultural negotiation. An idea of gender complementarity, as inherent in the concept outlined by Rose, is not reflected in Namatjira where female assertion is framed as the antithesis to male subject constitution. Rather than presenting it as an independent process that could be conceived as having potential productive effects resulting from solidarity, the representation of gendered relationships in the play reflects a space that is hierarchically divided and incommensurable in its differences. Namatjira here again navigates the transcultural space by simplifying and selectively drawing from two cultures without reconnaissance of the force of implications resultant from this collage.

Conclusion Namatjira is a play that engages with colonially shaped discourse. Its central focus lies in making visible and palpable the subject status of Aboriginal people – an effort implied as necessary on the grounds of

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  129 colonialism’s ongoing strategic othering of Indigeneity, which discounts Indigenous peoples’ cultural, social and political sophistication, their achievements and general humanity. This discursive objective encapsulates the play’s volatile argumentation: It centralises the refutation of colonial attitudes by following a strategy of universalisation, simplification and reductionism – ­employing the same strategies on which colonial discourses themselves rely. By trying to use this reductive discursive schema to present an alternative understanding of Indigeneity, Namatjira remains locked within the boundaries of binary discourse formations that severely constrain a sovereign engagement with the complexities of Indigenous Australian cultures and of the challenges facing the reconciliation process in Australia. The engagement with and tapping into cornerstones of colonial processes of identification and othering enable a confrontation of the audience with the usually unreflected and hidden assumptions underlying pervasive colonial discourse. Yet, as effective as that may be in some regards, this strategy also constrains: The play engages with the binary structure established through colonial discourse but cannot conceptualise Aranda identity on sovereign terms nor can it reflect the complexity of cross-cultural engagement (Bhabha 1994, p.178). It relies on the apollinic showcasing of Aranda achievement and resourcefulness bound to masculinity, trading in notions of essentialised identities. Yet, it stops short of exploring and reflecting the complexities of cross-cultural relationships and the facetiousness and progressive nature of identity formation. Namatjira envisions a consensual liberal Australian community on the basis of values of tolerance and r­ elationality – a project depending on the abjection of racist and exploitative traits inherent in every human being and their projection onto a group cast as outside of the “peer group”. In its representation, Namatjira conceptualises these traits exclusively as a matter of personal choice without a reflection of how these can also be created and encouraged by systemic structures and pressures. The play proposes that racism and marginalisation can be tackled by the simple act of listening and relating to the other(’s story). Yet, in its “feel-good” vision of ideal intercultural navigation, the play obscures the effort that such identity work requires – especially in a space in which the complex web of relations (that the play negates in its simplified presentation) interferes with and thwarts its implementation (Bhabha qtd. in Rutherford 1990, p.208). The obfuscating of identity work necessary in the intercultural space in part results from the mediation of Aranda cultural conventions of information disclosure and arrangement through the Western theatrical frame: The negotiation with the Namatjira family about information deemed appropriate for public presentation elides the performative conventions of the Western biographical genre that depends on rounded characters and a certain degree of psychological insight. The different performance conventions here diverge in ways that further emphasise the difficulty of

130  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira mediating cultural difference. In adopting its ameliorating strategy, the play arrives at colonialism’s other. It inverses but remains entrapped by colonialism’s terms rather than devising an alternative to them based on a differentiated exploration of Aranda culture. It represents an attempt at navigating the transcultural space in a spirit of “practical reconciliation” – of drawing on the means and resources available at a given moment in time to intervene into public discourses on behalf of Indigenous communities. Yet, Rankin falls short of expanding these means in his representation of Albert Namatjira’s story because the play foregoes the opportunity to reflect the insights generated in the play’s production process that consciously negotiated intercultural differences and successfully engaged with, affirmed and maintained Aranda sovereignty. Coda Namatjira proposes a blueprint for productive cross-cultural engagement that searches out similarities and shared interest as the basis of interaction rather than emulating approaches that focus on difference and its reconciliation. With the drawbacks of this approach having been extensively discussed in this case study, it is important to note that the representation of this story as exemplary cross-cultural navigation under the auspices of a posited Aranda framework of relationality along with the opportunities this play created for Indigenous actors to display their skills, has been received especially by Indigenous audiences in overwhelmingly positive terms. As part of a growing corpus of contemporary artistic work, the play enables custodians to impart their stories of achievement and cross-cultural engagement from their own perspective, bringing these stories into public awareness. The storytelling proceeds from a place of generosity in sharing the family history with a public that has continually marginalised Aranda subjects, inviting a form of engagement that binds audiences into a personal relation that has the potential to break the apathy which often accompanies public conversations about Indigenous marginalisation and disadvantage (e.g. Grehan 2009). In personal conversations during intervals and postshow, audience members often located their reasons for embracing the play in the fact that it provides positive identificatory spaces for Indigenous people in the public domain – a domain, in which Indigenous role models have been perceived as still too rarely included and represented. 21 Generally, audience members commented that they felt equally inspired by the story of Albert Namatjira, the paintings by his descendants and the performance of the Indigenous actors. Consequently, Namatjira can be seen as constructing a multi-layered communication of Indigenous achievement where the representation of Albert’s story along with its outlined problematic framing constitutes only one layer that co-articulates with its performance on stage and the watercolour exhibition framing the theatre experience. While these are of course intricately interrelated with the outlined conceptual

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  131 narrative framing of Indigeneity in Namatjira, they also provide alternative embodied and visual entryways of expressing and considering Indigenous subjectivities and agency in the transcultural Australian space.

Notes 1 Henceforth abbreviated to “Aranda”. 2 The analysis of Namatjira’s representation of visual arts practice, interspersed throughout the following subchapters, has been succinctly summed up and reflected in light of aesthetics and their capability of asserting cultural identification in a spin-off article published in Australasian Drama Studies (Thurow 2018). 3 In October 2017, the copyright dispute was successfully settled in favour of the family, with a compensation agreement signed in August 2018 (Brash & Haskin 2018). 4 Co-Director Wayne Blair emphasised that the shared painting activity constituted an exercise in cultural communication with the team approximating an understanding and attempting to relate to the Namatjira family’s perspective on their ancestor’s story and their identity as Aranda people (AGNSW 2010). 5 A long period in comparison to most Australian theatre, which conventionally has a quick turnaround in development and production periods. This conventional short-term, project-based theatre production places constraints on the process of creating work in culturally appropriate ways because vital consultations with community members and custodians of stories need to be condensed into short periods of time. Big hART’s approach is noteworthy here because it strives to alleviate such pressures by conceptualising its projects from the outset as long term. 6 For a concise discussion of the play’s aesthetics in light of their significance for communicating Aranda ontology, refer to Thurow (2018). 7 I was generously given the opportunity to join the Big hART team in the capacity of support worker for the Namatjira family artists on tour, where I helped with the implementation of this outreach programme and spent extended periods of time with some of the Namatjira family members, especially Kumantjai L Namatjira Lankin and Kumantjai K Namatjira. 8 A style of painting that is dominated by Central Desert landscapes often framed and balanced by tall Ghost Gum trees. 9 The plot synopsis is adapted from the Wikipedia entry that I penned (Thurow 2012). 10 In the Australian context, “humbugging” denotes the action of begging money and other resources off relatives. 11 Here, “transcultural” denotes a ‘third’ space, i.e. the result of intercultural engagement (Morales Saravia 2004, p.668), with “intercultural” and “cross-­ cultural” describing the process of two cultures being brought together. 12 The play often presents Albert and Rex in parallel situations of archetypical dimensions: We hear about both men growing up as children in intercultural settings, we see them faced with the challenge to provide for themselves and their families at the margins of society, we see them collaborating and bonding on Country, etc. 13 Non-Indigenous audiences are also addressed as main intended audience throughout the play, Why this ovation? What was it we were all yearning for in the cities? What was it about ourselves, that we saw as we stared through our little

132  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Namatjira windows, our cheap prints, over the mantelpiece, in our rows of fibro 50s homes in brand new Kirrawee… who were we then, broken by war, 10-pound Poms, Italians with secret espresso machines, building the Snowy Mountain Scheme, proudly polishing those first FJ Holdens… (Rankin 2012, p.41) 14 While this approach can also be identified in Wesley Enoch’s and Ilbijerri’s work, they emphasise first and foremost the exploration of Indigeneity on sovereign terms. 15 While Christianity has been embraced by many Indigenous residents in Ntaria, there are other places with different histories and trajectories that either resulted in Christianity not being embraced for a perceived lack of relevance or actively opposed due to colonial pressure (Brun & Stephens 1992, p.256; Jones 1992, p.100). 16 Subject status here denotes the ability to conceive of oneself as being able to assume a relatively stable position of power in the individually experienced reality – the power to establish a self-concept that is fundamentally associated with autonomy and agency. 17 For a discussion of the connection between narratives of Australian national identity and the military (see Elder 2007, pp.246–52). 18 Effected in part through the relentless direct address of the audience with the pronominal use of “inclusive we”, as for example in ‘Was he wrong? What would we do? I’m sure, when we see a homeless old blackfella, shuffling past our tastefully renovated, inner city terrace, we welcome him in to break bread…’ (Rankin 2012, p.18). 19 For a differentiated discussion of Western Aranda concepts of economy (see Austin-Broos 2006). 20 Contrasting with a children’s book designed by Kumantjai L Namatjira Lankin that represents Albert as always surrounded by extended family and community (Namatjira Lankin & Kamholtz 2007). 21 In a 2010 interview, Co-Director Wayne Blair singled out the increasing representation of positive Indigenous role models in the (post)colonial space as one of the key strengths of Indigenous and intercultural theatre practice (AGNSW 2010). Namatjira’s power in this regard has been reflected in a webcast filmed in Ntaria on the day after the 2012 community showing, in which a group of Ntaria youth – usually rather camera-shy and taciturn – gleefully prided themselves in being Aranda/Arrernte – same as Derik [Lynch; actor in Namatjira] (Big hART 2012).

References Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) 2010, art.afterhours – Fenella ­Kernebone with Wayne Blair, Trevor Jamieson, Derek Lynch, video recording, ­YouTube, viewed 3 April 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3E60yvI1gU Attwood, B 2005, Telling the truth about Aboriginal history, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest. Austin-Broos, D 2010, ‘Translating Christianity: some keywords, events and sites in Western Aranda conversion’, Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol.21, pp.14–32. ——— 2006, ‘‘Working for’ and ‘working’ among Western Arrernte in Central Australia,’ Oceania, vol.76, no.1, pp.1–15. Australia Council for the Arts (ACA) 2007, Protocols for producing Indigenous Australian performing arts, Australia Council for the Arts, Surry Hills, viewed

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  133 3 April 2019, www.australiacouncil.gov.au/symphony/extension/richtext_ redactor/getfile/?name=42f208904890560b1eb1194724637ee6.pdf Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) 1986, Aboriginal customary laws and sentencing, viewed 3 April 2019, www.alrc.gov.au/­publications/21.% 20Aboriginal%20Customary%20Laws%20and%20Sentencing/aboriginalcustomary-laws-and-sentencing-e Bhabha, H 1994, The location of culture, Routledge, London. Big hART n.d., Namatjira project showcase, viewed 3 April 2019, https://­namatjira. bighart.org/BighART_Namatjira_Project%20Showcase%20Doc.pdf ——— 2012, Ntaria school live webcast from Hermannsburg, NT, video recording, Vimeo, viewed 3 April 2019, https://vimeo.com/43083298 ——— 2011, Indigenous art centres: hubs for innovation, panel discussion with Jane Young, Phillip Watkins, Milyika Carroll, Prof Jon Altman, MP Nigel Scullion and The Hon. Simon Crean, 15 September, Parliament House, Canberra. Bourke, C 1998, ‘Contemporary Australian Aboriginal identity’, in D Day (ed.), Australian identities, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne, pp.175–85. Bradford Sykes, L 2010, ‘REVIEW: Namatjira’, Crickey, 2 October, viewed 3 April 2019, http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2010/10/02/review-namatjira-belvoirst-theatre-sydney/ Brash, S & Haskin, E 2018, ‘Albert Namatjira descendants win copyright compensation after decades of negotiation’, ABC, 12 September, viewed 3 April 2019, http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-28/albert-namatjira-descendants-­ compensation-copyright-fight/10172514?pfmredir=sm Brun, I & Stephen, A 1992, ‘Namatjira’s white mask: a partial interpretation’, in J  Megaw, R Megaw & J Hardy (eds.), The heritage of Namatjira, William ­Heinemann, Port Melbourne, pp.249–83. Casey, M 2012, Telling stories: Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander performance, Australian Scholarly, North Melbourne. ——— 2004, Creating frames: contemporary Indigenous theatre 1967–1990, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. Christie, M 1990, ‘Aboriginal science for the ecologically sustainable future’, Ngoonjook, vol.4, pp.56–68. Croggon, A 2011, ‘Review: Namatjira, Rising Water’, Theatrenotes, theatre blog post, 18 August, viewed 3 April 2019, http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com. au/2011/08/review-namatjira-rising-water.html Edmond, M 2014, Battarbee and Namatjira, Giramondo, Artamon. Elder, C 2007, Being Australian: narratives of national identity, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest. Finnane, K 2012, ‘Two packed houses get shot in the arm from the play, Namatjira’, Alice Springs News, 20 May, viewed 3 April 2019, www.­alicespringsnews. com.au /2012 /05/20/t wo-packed-houses-get-shot-in-the-arm-from-theplay-namatjira/ Fischer-Lichte, E 2008, The transformative power of performance, Routledge, London. Grehan, H 2009, Performance, ethics and spectatorship in a global age, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. ——— 2001, Mapping cultural identity in contemporary Australian performance, Peter Lang, Brussels. Guenther, L 2011, ‘Subjects without a world? An Husserlian analysis of solitary confinement’, Human Studies, vol.34, no.3, pp.257–76.

134  Scott Rankin’s Namatjira Hardy, J 1992, ‘Visitors to Hermannsburg: an essay on cross-cultural learning’, in J Megaw, R Megaw & J Hardy (eds.), The Heritage of Namatjira, William Heinemann, Port Melbourne, pp.137–75. Jones, P 1992, ‘Namatjira: traveller between two worlds’, in J Megaw, R Megaw & J Hardy (eds.), The Heritage of Namatjira, William Heinemann, Port ­Melbourne, pp.97–136. Langton, M 2003, ‘Aboriginal art and film: the politics of representation’, in M  Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, pp.109–24. Leslie, D 2008, Aboriginal art. Creativity and assimilation, Macmillan, Melbourne. Locke, J 1984, Two treatises of government, vol. 2, Dent, London. Maza, R, Milroy, D, Morrison, K, Harvey, J, Harvey, M, Maza, L, ­Mullaley, E, Drandic, I, Hart, C, Schnaars, M, West, A, Watson, T, Lui, N, James, A, Kinchela, C, Copperwaite, F, Dallas Law, S, Sainsbury, L, Tamiru, J & ­Enoch, W 2013, RECOMMENDATION for the need to develop a best practice model in the making of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander work, discussion paper produced at the Australian Theatre Forum, 31 May 2013, viewed 3 April 2019, www.australiantheatreforum.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ATF_ RECOMMENDATION_Best_Practice_Model.pdf McLisky, C, Russell, L & Boucher, L 2015, ‘Managing mission life, 1869–1886’, in L Boucher & L Russell (eds.), Settler colonial governance in 19th Victoria, Australian National University Press, Acton, pp.117–38. Morales Saravia, J 2004, ‘Transkulturation’, in A Nünning (ed.), Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie, 3rd edition, Metzler, Stuttgart, pp.668/69. Morton, J 1992, ‘Country, people, art: the Western Aranda 1870–1990’, in J  Megaw, R Megaw & J Hardy (eds.), The Heritage of Namatjira, William Heinemann, Port Melbourne, pp.23–62. Muecke, S 2004, Ancient and modern: time, culture and Indigenous philosophy, UNSW Press, Sydney. Nakata, M 2010, ‘The cultural interface of Islander and scientific knowledge’, ­Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, vol.39, pp.53–57. Namatjira Lankin, KL 2013, ‘My message to queen Elizabeth II: Aboriginal art needs support’, The Guardian, 28 November, viewed 3 April 2019, www.­ theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/28/my-message-to-queen-elizabethii-aboriginal-art-needs-support Namatjira Lankin, KL & Kamholtz, D 2007, Albert Namatjira and the Hermannsburg watercolour artists, OpenBook Publishers, Cambridge. Pearson, N 1999, ‘Positive and negative welfare and Australia’s Indigenous communities’, Family Matters, vol.54, pp.30–35. Rankin, S 2018, Cultural justice and the right to thrive, Currency House, ­Strawberry Hills. ——— 2014, Namatjira to Now exhibition – opening address, Parliament House, Canberra, 26 November. ——— 2012, Namatjira: written for the Namatjira family (Aranda) & Ngapartji Ngapartji: written for Trevor Jamieson (Pitjantjatjara), Currency Press, ­Strawberry Hills. ——— 2011, ‘Scott Rankin’, Australianstage.com, 27 August, viewed 3 April 2019, www.australianstage.com.au/201108274690/features/melbourne/scottrankin.html

Scott Rankin’s Namatjira  135 Rentschler, R, Bridon, K & Evans, J 2015, The Namatjira Project: the impact of the arts in regional Australia, Deakin University, Melbourne, viewed 3 April 2019, https://staging.regionalarts.com.au/uploads/files/Big-hART-Case-Study.pdf Rose, DB 2008, ‘Dreaming ecology: beyond the between’, Religion & Literature, vol.40, no.1, pp.109–22. ——— 2007, ‘Gendered substances and objects in ritual’, Material Religion, vol.3, no.1, pp.34–47. Rose, D, James, D & Watson, C 2003, Indigenous kinship with the natural world in NSW, New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service, Hurstville, viewed 3 April 2019, www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/ IndigenousKinship.pdf Rutherford, J 1990, Identity. community, culture, difference, Lawrence & ­Wishart, London. Spivak, GC 1994, ‘Can the subaltern speak?, in P Williams & L Chrisman (eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory, Harvester Wheatsheaf, New York, pp.66–105. Subašic, E & Reynolds, K 2009, ‘Beyond “practical” reconciliation’, Political Psychology, vol.30, no.2, pp.243–67. Thurow, S 2018, ‘‘Namatjira’: beyond the script. Visual and performative aesthetics as conduits for the communication of Western Aranda ontology’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.73, pp.130–59. ——— 2012, ‘Namatjira Project’, Wikipedia.org, 23 December 2012, viewed 5 April 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namatjira_Project Volkmann, L 2004, ‘New historicism’, in A Nünning (ed.), Metzler Lexikon ­Literatur- und Kulturtheorie, 3rd edition, Metzler, Stuttgart, pp.494–97. Watson, I 1997, ‘Indigenous peoples’ law-ways: survival against the colonial state’, Feminist Law Journal, vol.8, no.1, pp.39–58.

4 Case study Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora (2012)

The previous case study critically considered a proposition for intercultural reconciliation in the contemporary Australian space. Scott Rankin’s Namatjira places its focus on lines of interaction between mainstream ­Australia and an Aboriginal individual who is presented as part of a community whose constitution is uncontested and whose cultural capital – albeit under pressure from colonialism – is envisioned as cohesive, resilient and derived from an enduring pre-colonial identificatory system. The Western Aranda identity model of relationality and connectivity, extended by an adopted Christian ideology, is proposed as a touchstone for the reformation of an Australian national identity in the attempt to affirm Western Aranda people as an integral and productive part of the nation. The case study analysis traced the play’s problematic attempt of appraising traditional Western Aranda ontologies within a predominantly Western theatre format strongly catered to the communication to non-Indigenous audiences, relying on a narrative structure that largely contains the exploration of Indigenous identity in relation to the past. The following case study of Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora critically examines a proposition for intracultural identity reconciliation of the divided urban Indigenous community on Eora land. The discussion of the playwrights’ adaptation of Aboriginal ontologies and performative traditions examines the foundations of an identity model that invokes Indigenous cultural capital not through a proposed reactivation of what is conceived as an intact pre-colonial identificatory system but through a selective invocation and bricolage of cultural elements that are integrated into what is presented as an engineered Eora philosophy of relationality, connectivity and social responsibility. This politically engaged identity model is proposed as an ideological touchstone for the contemporary Indigenous community on Eora land to re-orient itself toward their commonalities, to achieve cohesion and to unlock their capacities as a united political entity in the intercultural space of contemporary Australia – a task that is to be engaged in especially to redress the effects of Sydney’s traumatic colonial history, which has seen local Indigenous communities and cultural practice disrupted in manifold ways. The analysis critically

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  137 examines the processes employed and the strengths and exclusions enacted to yield this identity model through a theatrical format strongly imbued with Indigenous poetics that continually foreground the exploration of Indigenous identity in contemporary times.

Introduction I Am Eora is a professionally produced mainstage theatre play devised in consultation with members of the Indigenous communities of the Greater Sydney Region – a place known to them as Eora Country. It was commissioned by the 2012 Sydney Festival, one of Australia’s largest and most prestigious showcases of contemporary performing arts. The play models three historical figures into different archetypes of Indigenous leadership whose positions are integrated in order to derive a vision for a cohesive Eora Nation, which is proposed as a touchstone for intracommunal reconciliation on Eora land. The largely abstract, multi-modal play (directed by Enoch) interlaces spoken word performances with dance and an almost continual underscore of large-scale visual projections as well as live music performed on stage by a range of popular Indigenous musicians from around Australia. I Am Eora is representative of Enoch’s approach to storytelling in that it is shaped with a strong focus on advancing concepts of identity that empower and enable Indigenous people to build their lives in the present and into the future. The engagement with the past is structured in ways that not only document the losses wrought by colonisation but that also celebrate the remaining cultural capital and the spirit of survival (Turner 2011). By self-­ consciously enlisting historiography and performance as tools, Enoch and Heiss discursively strengthen the foundations of contemporary Indigenous identifications in the Sydney region. Their rigorous focus on creating an Indigenous voice and reclaiming interpretive authority over the Eora Nation seeks to performatively realise Indigenous sovereignty in Australia on stage by side-stepping what is identified in the play as alien (i.e. Western) discursive structures that have undermined Eora cultural values of old. In response to colonial attempts of discursively erasing, obscuring or absorbing Indigenous identities into the mainstream Australian nation, Enoch and Heiss emphasise ongoing vitality and capacity for renewal in the Sydney region. The play’s presented context of social disruption references extra-­ theatrical intra-communal division and strife in the Sydney region that has grown throughout colonial history. It is emblematic of the challenges facing contemporary Indigenous communities at the crossroads of cultural assertion and/or absorption into a Western nation state: The 29 clans of the Eora Nation have been among the hardest hit by the impacts of British invasion and settlement, suffering ongoing dislocation, a massive reduction in population size due to introduced diseases and violence (Heiss 2002, p.12), as well as having had to deal with continuous, intense urban development.

138  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora From the early 1800s, many Indigenous people from other areas resettled on Eora land – navigating, responding and adapting to changed political, economic, social and cultural circumstances. Therefore, even though Indigenous people have always maintained a presence in the Sydney region, the identity of the Eora as a nation has been a site of continuous (re)creation and contention. The name “Eora” itself has come into common usage in the time of First Contact, when local people identified themselves to the British as “Eora”, translating from the Dharug language into ‘from this place’ (ibid., p.8). Lost in translation and with cross-cultural incomprehension and disregard for actual Indigenous identifications, the British erroneously assumed this term to denote a local nation. In response to colonisation and the politics it engendered, the clans and newcomers (as most Indigenous people in Australia) adopted the concept of national identification and have since used it as a political instrument in the struggle for acknowledgement of political status, rights and claims to land. Thus, the “Eora Nation” denotes a discursive construct that is deployed in response to the colonial incursion on Indigenous sovereignty in the Greater Sydney Region. As such, it is subject to constant negotiation since people use it as a strategic asset in the struggle for political self-determination. However, who can claim belonging, authoritatively direct its culture and leverage power in the name of the Eora has been an issue of ongoing contestation that has led to intra-­ communal divisions, compounding the disempowerment of Indigenous people in the (post)colonial space (Everett 2009, pp.54/59). The dynamics that have shaped the present community on Eora land have given rise to a heterogeneous conglomerate of cultural, political and social identifications that struggle to meet a concept of “nation” – defined as consisting of people united by ‘common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory’ (Oxford Dictionaries n.d.). In the context of Indigenous nationhood, the parameters for this definition are generally adapted to reflect the histories of dispossession and disruption (e.g. usually encompassing shared ‘history, traditions, or language’; Merriam Webster n.d.). Consequently, Eora nationhood requires for its full coming into being and mainstream recognition as a political entity a shared understanding of its history and present constitution as well as a shared culture. As a cultural intervention, I Am Eora seeks to address this challenge and needs to be read as a contribution to the extra-theatrical efforts of strengthening the “Eora Nation” – an entity that the playwrights attempt to cohere through the means of theatrical performance.

The work of Wesley Enoch Wesley Enoch is among the chief proponents of a politically and artistically integrated programme that seeks to break with the established patterns of performing and knowing Indigenous Australia. Of the Noonuccal Nuugi clan from Minjeribah (English name: Stradbroke Island, Queensland), he

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  139 is one of the most prolific contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre practitioners, having held both artistic and key administrative roles in the most significant Indigenous theatre companies in Australia (including Artistic Director of Koemba Jdarra and Ilbijerri). His playwriting credits encompass seminal works, such as The Seven Stages of Grieving (1997), Black Medea (2005) and The Story of the Miracles at Cookie’s Table (2007). As one of very few Indigenous Australian directors, he has also worked continuously in the mainstream performing arts sector, completing prestigious residencies with major performing arts companies (including Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre). From 2010 to 2015, he was Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, the first Indigenous Australian person to hold such position in a state theatre company in Australia. He continued this pioneering path in 2016, when he was confirmed as the incoming Artistic Director of Sydney Festival (2017–19) (Taylor 2015). Many Indigenous Australian people consider him a cultural leader (Sorensen 2010) – a standing that is underlined by his membership on industry boards and committees engaged in Indigenous Affairs, like the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association, the Sydney Opera House Trust, and the Ethics Council of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (Sydney Festival 2012). Enoch’s artistic work reflects the agenda of highlighting diversity of Indigenous Australian peoples and cultures by continuously pushing the boundaries of existing representative paradigms and by experimenting with different genres and styles of theatrical production rather than developing a signature style or personal aesthetic. For example, I Am Eora sits among a corpus that includes upbeat musicals (e.g. The Sapphires, 2005), realist dramas (e.g. The Story of the Miracles at Cookie’s Table, 2007), abstract transpositions of Indigenous experiences (e.g. The Seven Stages of Grieving, 1997), adaptations of Western classics (e.g. Black Medea, 2005; Mother Courage and Her Children, 2013) and explorations of traditional practice (e.g. Kungkarangkalpa, 2013). He often uses abstract design, scaling back visual markers of “traditional practice” (unlike flagship institutions such as Bangarra Dance Theatre), in order to debunk pervasive stereotypical expectations of Indigenous performing arts. Enoch’s aesthetics instead connect to lifeworlds that most Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia recognise instantaneously. In this way, he connects Indigeneity to the familiar, constructing it as part of everyday life in Australia rather than making traditional markers a potentially exoticised selling point. The resultant impression of cultural hybridity here is generated to express vitality and growth rather than signalling a loss of Indigenous identity amid Western influences. A significant trait of Enoch’s work is his advocacy for Indigenous cultural sovereignty that emerges through exploration of Indigeneity as a cover term for cultural identities in their own right – rather than predominantly enlisting notions of non-Indigeneity as a comparative backdrop on which to develop

140  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora Indigenous identities on the stage. Accordingly, he maps subjectivities by instating Indigenous frameworks as dominant from the start, and only then connects these to universal themes and conditions that are often implicitly connoted by default with non-Indigenous standards. Indigeneity here emerges as maximally broad and inclusive: As explained by him in a phone interview on 9 April 2013, for Enoch, Indigeneity conceptually denotes the values, practices and expressions of Indigenous people past and present – and in whatever ways Indigenous people may choose to express themselves in the future. As such, it is intimately connected to the quest for self-determination and assertion of sovereignty in intercultural spaces. As further explained in another telephone conversation on 24 June 2013, for him, the scoping of Indigeneity away from colonial constrictions toward fluidity and malleability are prerequisites for generating capacity in contemporary Indigenous Australian artistic and social practice. While the engagement with the past is important in this work, Enoch’s principal focus thereby lies on its repercussions in the present and the task of shaping historiography in ways that empower communities to build their identities into the future. As confirmed in our second phone interview on 14 May 2013, Enoch openly embraces the bricolage and creative licence that is attendant to his artistic approach. He does so from a place that rejects the imposition of Western constrictive paradigms of “knowledge”, “objectivity” or “truth” in the engagement with Indigenous cultural resources in the aftermath of colonial disruption. For him, an adherence to such paradigms amounts to a continuation of the colonial process that he seeks emancipation from. Enoch identifies part of this constrictive influence in the pervasive attempt to define, legitimate and ground contemporary Indigenous cultural practice in relation to conceptions of pre-colonial societies and their cultural systems. He largely refuses the imposition of such a restrictive discourse of authenticity, which is adopted by many Indigenous people especially in the extra-theatrical Eora community. Enoch instead uses surviving cultural resources as “stepping-stones” to legitimate his own practice of cultural creation and development. Rather than founding his practice on imaginations of the past derived from surviving material records, he seeks to imbue his creations with veracity by advancing an ideology that defines truth as grounded in subjective experience and dynamic social practices. In doing so, Enoch pushes not only the boundaries of Western epistemic and historiographical paradigms, but he also challenges the limits of cultural discourses as they are led across Indigenous Australian communities. Since there are firm protocols in place for the engagement with cultural resources, he has to tap into traditional value systems and to work according to these protocols to maintain broad community approval for his practice. This context forbids an overt break with the paradigm of tradition (which he does not seek anyway) and necessitates a selective fore- and backgrounding of specific aspects of the past in order to conceive an empowering communal

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  141 identity model. As indicated above, Enoch avoids a strict re-­orientation toward pre-colonial conceptions of Indigenous ­Australian social or cultural orders. In their structuration, these offer only limited scope or instructive potential to him for an empowering exploration of the manifold contemporary Indigenous Australian subjectivities, including his own. As a relatively young, urban, gay man working mostly on lands that he has no familial ties to, Enoch has to recalibrate these frameworks in order to gain an authoritative voice as a cultural leader: Traditionally, cultural authority has been vested in mature elders, with knowledge being coded and passed on in close relation to one’s Country – a relation that has supplied also the foundation for familial bonding often exclusively on the grounds of institutionalised heterosexuality (Canny & McCrum 2011). Considering Enoch’s standing in the Australian performing arts world and the philosophies that underpin his practice, I Am Eora needs to be read as a careful artistic intervention into contemporary cultural discourses as they are led across intracultural as well as intercultural divides. The play was presented as part of one of Australia’s most prestigious performing arts events – a platform that guaranteed high visibility, positioning the negotiation of Eora identity not at the fringes as an afterthought to colonial inscription but at the heart of Australia’s public arena. Thus, simply through the context of presentation, Enoch and Heiss have achieved a significant measure of inclusion and visibility for Indigenous perspectives in mainstream debates – a circumstance that they use to favour the exploration of intracommunal issues rather than primarily exploring questions of national reconciliation. One revolutionary aspect of I Am Eora therefore lies in its marked conceptualisation for an Indigenous audience, which in and of itself constitutes an act of decolonising the Australian mainstage.

Production history In 2008, then outgoing Artistic Director Lindy Hume commissioned Enoch to write and direct I Am Eora for the 2012 Sydney Festival. The play was in development for roughly four years, with the artistic team involved in many parallel production processes – meaning that, in comparison to Namatjira, the show was created on a much more stringent timeline. The team consisted solely of professional artists, who with the help of local institutions like Gadigal Information Services, the Metropolitan Aboriginal Lands Council and the Redfern Community Centre, consulted with the numerous and diverse stakeholders of the Indigenous communities on Eora land (­Sydney Festival 2012). The adherence to cultural protocols was a significant factor: I Am Eora was developed to provide a platform on which local Indigenous audiences could see their historically marginalised perspectives celebrated, and around which a new sense and practice of community could be cohered (ibid.). As a play performing identity work for these communities, losing their endorsement would have undercut this aspiration. Most of the

142  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora professional artists involved in the show (Enoch and Heiss included) did not have traditional connections to Eora Country but have mostly lived and worked for extended periods of time in Sydney. Consequently, they were neither the rightful custodians of the local stories nor the culturally authoritative spokespeople to advance a novel conception of the Eora Nation. For I Am Eora to work within the bounds of appropriate Indigenous Australian cultural practice, it was therefore of utmost importance for the artistic team to identify and actively collaborate with stakeholders who are broadly recognised as rightful custodians of Eora land and its stories, and to develop the play with their support. Hence, in February 2011 an official advisory group was established to facilitate monthly consultations. This included a range of senior local Aboriginal spokesmen and spokeswomen and many interested local community members (ibid.). In a personal interview on 14 May 2013, Enoch described this process as challenging and as requiring a complex navigation of manifold heterogeneous interests. Ultimately, he deemed community engagement on I Am Eora successful – hedging, however, that these consultations overall had a constraining impact on the play’s overall artistic cohesiveness. The show underwent three creative developments, with co-writer Anita Heiss brought on to the project in May 2011. Dr Anita Heiss is a popular Sydney-based Wiradjuri writer and public commentator, actively involved in both the creative arts and education sectors where she has worked with Indigenous communities and organisations toward Aboriginal empowerment (Reading Australia n.d.). As personally related by Enoch, in June 2011, the rough ideas around I Am Eora had taken shape, with the musical and visual components as well as choreography having taken precedence over the development of the script, which was added as the last layer in the development of the play. Yet, the envisioned scope of the production by far exceeded the allocated budget. To still be able to realise the  artistic vision on its grand scale, veteran producer Wendy Blacklock started a crowd-funding campaign that acquired an additional AUD$240,000 for the show. While most of the money (AUD$150,000) was contributed by the Balnaves Foundation, which is a regular funding partner for Indigenous performing arts projects in Australia, AUD$90,000 were raised by 16 individual donors – mostly corporate businesses but also some small-scale gifts from individuals to ensure the realisation of the show in its original design (Turner 2011). The success of the funding campaign demonstrates that a broad interest was taken in the public exploration of the stories of Aboriginal Sydney, giving credence to politician and Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney’s statement that the ‘days of fringe dwelling are over’ (Burney 2003; Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.19). Yet, it also points to the intricate web of relations existing between Indigenous efforts for self-determination and the wider intercultural Australian space, which impacts on intracommunal relations and identifications – a context that the play itself seeks to sidestep in an effort to envision an unimpeded sovereign identity constitution.

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  143 In December 2011, the show went into stage rehearsals, accompanied by a film team that created a documentary for Studio TV (Enoch 2011), granting a “behind-the-scenes” glimpse of the rehearsal process, providing some insight into the development process and the historical background to the play that – due to the elliptical, a-chronological approach to storytelling – remains largely oblique to an uninformed audience in the theatre space. Today, the documentary is used in Australian tertiary education contexts (e.g. at The University of New South Wales’ Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit) to enable engagement with Aboriginal Sydney through an artistic lens, thereby ensuring that the play continues to inform critical reflections long after the season of the ephemeral theatre show closed. The cast of I Am Eora included more than 30 professional actors, dancers and musicians, bringing together household names of the contemporary Indigenous Australian performing arts sector but also providing space for emerging artists to showcase and celebrate their artistic capacity. As such, the play figures as one of the biggest Indigenous spoken-word theatre productions ever produced in Australia. As Enoch explained in our second phone interview, aspiring Indigenous theatre workers were employed in addition to the professional crew to provide career prospects in the highly competitive performing arts sector. In this way, the producers demonstrated a stratified approach to decolonisation by leveraging their resources not only to communicate Indigenous philosophies and empowerment on the stage but also to extend this impetus to the offstage domain by supporting Indigenous people through employment and training. This has been similar to Big hART’s approach of coupling artistic endeavour with industry exposure – with the difference that the latter generates such opportunities for members of disadvantaged remote communities, whereas the team of I Am Eora recruited their talent from the local urban communities. Rather than creating entirely novel opportunities, I Am Eora served as a “door-opener” to the youth involved who live in an environment where professional opportunities in the arts are simultaneously within and out of reach. The show premiered on 8 January 2012 at the Carriageworks precinct to an audience of 800, including many dignitaries of the artistic and political sectors (Stiff Gins 2012). The final version of the show blended spoken word, music, projections and dance into a hybrid format that was lauded for its ambitious scope, the talent of its performers, its non-linear narrative approach and for its exploration of Aboriginal stories mostly unknown to non-Indigenous Sydneysiders (Bradford Sykes 2012; Shand 2012; Supple 2012;). The show was received as a celebration and assertion of Indigenous presence and performing arts talent, successfully drawing ‘together the disparate strands of black urban life into a coherent, visually compelling and dramatically satisfying entertainment’ (Simmonds 2012). However, a  ­recurrent criticism was that the show would have benefitted from further development and refinement, for example that its non-linear

144  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora storytelling format not always integrated its constituent parts to maximum effect, that the stage design was impressive but not sufficiently made use of, and that the scope – while grand and a departure from the naturalistic/ realist approach of most Indigenous Australian theatre so far – was not utilised to convey Aboriginal stories in ways that eschewed stereotypical typecasting and only offered a superficial engagement and exploration of issues affecting the ­Aboriginal communities in Sydney and beyond (Jackson 2012; Waites 2012). I position my analysis of the play between these strands of critical response, taking note of the innovations ascribed to Enoch and Heiss’ work and the criticism levelled at the production, yet directing my critical eye to the implications, strengths and limitations of its innovative conceptualisation of Eora identity.

Historical figures The play espouses its principle of social responsibility as foundation to the Eora Nation through three archetypes: the Interpreter, the Warrior and the Nurturer (Enoch qtd. in Gallasch 2011). In the play, these archetypes are identified with the names of three historical Eora figures from the period of First Contact: Bennelong, Pemulwuy and Barangaroo. Woollarawarre Bennelong was a Wangal man who had been captured by the British in 1789 on the behest of Governor Arthur Philip (Smith 2009, p.7). He freed himself but upon having retaliated against Philip resumed his contact with him and became an intermediary between the growing non-­ Indigenous settlement on Sydney Harbour and the local Indigenous clans. He lived for some years with Governor Philip, and as the latter was called back to England in 1792, Bennelong accompanied him – becoming one of the first Indigenous Australians to make the journey into the colonisers’ homeland (Hinkson 2011, p.65). An uncorroborated assumption persists that upon this occasion, he was also presented to King George III (Smith 2013) – a detail I Am Eora repeatedly references. No documented archival records exist that would allow an approximation of how Bennelong experienced his encounters in England. He returned to Sydney in 1795, finding it greatly changed both in terms of urban development and in the ways intercultural relations were structured (Hinkson 2011, p.65). In his absence, the colony had significantly grown; local clans had been forcefully displaced from their lands and pushed to the fringes of the ever-growing British settlements, with the Eora population decimated by imported diseases1 and attacks (Heiss 2002, p.12). In addition, the invasion of more Indigenous Countries had led to an influx of displaced Indigenous people from other language groups, who had hoped to find sustenance in the Sydney region – increasing the pressure on the social systems of the Eora clans – a trend that intensified over the years, leading to the suburbs of Redfern, Waterloo and Blacktown becoming surrogate Aboriginal homelands to many Indigenous Australian people (Shaw 2013, p.260).

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  145 Pemulwuy, a Bedegal man, became a symbol of resistance to the forced alienation of Aboriginal land. He was a guerrilla warrior, who drew on an intimate knowledge of his land in order to deprive the settlers of the foundations of their livelihood (Maloney 2013, p.58). He is reported to have burnt crops, slaughtered or stolen livestock and to have attacked and killed settlers in order to assert Indigenous sovereignty on Eora land (ibid., p.58). After having driven parts of the colony to the brink of starvation, Governors Hunter and King ordered his capture (Woodroffe 1993, p.27). Pemulwuy continued his guerrilla tactics and managed to evade the war parties sent out to eliminate him for 12 years (ibid., p.27), having been wounded several times by gunfire, which contributed to his legendary status in Indigenous oral history (Kohen 2005). However, in 1802 he was fatally shot, his head severed from his body and sent back to England as a trophy (ibid.). Despite many attempts by his descendants to locate and repatriate his remains, his head has been untraceable (Kohen 2005; Maloney 2013, p.58). Barangaroo only briefly enters the surviving colonial records: She was the wife of Bennelong; yet, in contrast to her husband, she remained defiant of British influence on her people and culture (Karskens 2014). She returned to her life as an influential authority and fisherwoman with her Cammeraygal people, instead of staying with Bennelong among the settlers (Smith 2013). She died shortly after giving birth and Bennelong buried her ashes in the garden of Governor Philip’s residence (Smith 2009, p.17).

Setting the scene As audiences entered the large auditorium, the smell of burning eucalyptus enveloped them as they took their seats in scaled rows. The stage was empty except for the musical equipment of the band that would later provide the live backing to the performed songs. To the left, musician Matthew Doyle (Muruwari), 2 wearing ochre body paint and a loincloth in the colours of the Aboriginal flag, stood silently stoking a fire in a 40-gallon tin drum. The sizeable, rectangular stage consisted of two large planes used throughout the show as projection screens – one making up the stage floor gently sloping toward the audience, while the other connected to the far end of the floor and towered on a vertical axis above the performers and audience. The stage design departed from the naturalist conventions adopted in most contemporary Indigenous Australian drama and embraced a decidedly abstract aesthetic. The default projection onto the stage floor and vertical slate were regularly shaped ashlar blocks shaded in irregular blue hues evoking both the building blocks of the city as well as the region’s dominant seascape. This default blue design was overlaid with a grainy texture that with the end of the opening scene was revealed to be inscribable  – as a Black hand began tracing and then erasing the words ‘I am Eora’.

146  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora

Plot summary As the audience takes their seats, an “Acknowledgement of Country” in English is projected in a rolling electronic scroll on the vertical backdrop of the stage. As the font disappears, a young man (Luke Currie-Richardson; Kuku Yalanji, Djabugay, Munaldjali, Meriam) dressed in an elegant business suit joins the older, ochre-painted man on stage. Looking calmly into the auditorium, the young man undresses slowly, revealing the same body paint as the older man. As he finishes, a recording is played of a male voice singing a “Welcome to Country” in Dharug. Other cast members enter and join into the ceremonial exposition of the play. Their performance is interrupted by veteran actor Jack Charles (Bunurong, Wiradjuri) aggressively yelling at them from the auditorium ‘[f]ucken move on. Let it go. Can’t you see we have to change’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.2), refuting their form of cultural reappropriation, deploying rhetoric that strongly resonates with popular assimilationist discourses. Climbing the stage, he starts an altercation with a young dancer who punches him in the face. The squabble is broken up and the cast leaves. Charles, alone on the darkened stage, addresses the audience in a monologue, with his line ‘I met your king’ (ibid., p.3) identifying him as Bennelong, while he laments the alienation of Eora land and announces his impending death. As Bennelong finishes his monologue, a large projected Black hand writes the name “Pemulwuy” onto the backdrop of the stage, erasing it again once fully spelled out. This marks the beginning of three discrete acts, which are each dedicated to one of the three historical figures. The “Pemulwuy act” is dominated by defiant rap songs delivered by local musicians Radical Son (aka David Leha; Kamilaroi) and Nooky (aka Corey Webster; Yuin) that challenge dominant historiographical accounts of Australia as a peaceful, thriving nation, instead labelling it as ‘war torn’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.5) and ‘bleached red’ (ibid., p.7). They accuse the government of having the Eora ‘mob poisoned’ (ibid., p.3) and making them ‘living life like lie’ (ibid., p.4), holding them accountable to the erosion of Indigenous Australian communities. This view is dramatically affirmed when Leha eventually gets shot by a policeman in front of the eyes of the “Boy”3 to whom he had been peacefully imparting the story of Pemulwuy. The Boy traces the outline of Leha’s body with chalk, which is immediately blended with a projection of human body shapes (modelled on age-old rock engravings from the Sydney Basin) that begin to travel across the screens into the off. The stage in the “Pemulwuy act” is constantly shaded in interchanging bright hues of red, black and yellow, the colours of the Aboriginal flag, and filled with blasting hip hop music. The transition into the “Barangaroo act” sees the Boy carrying a glass container with a severed head onto the stage, accompanied by a silent Bennelong. They meet centre-stage with a heavily pregnant young Barangaroo (Miranda Tapsell; Larrakia) who carries a mop and bucket,

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  147 clad in a black and white Pinafore dress, while wailing female voices sound from the off. As the men leave and Tapsell wipes away the chalk outline, the Black hand emerges again and spells out, then erases the name “Barangaroo”. The tone immediately alters, with the lights changing to blue hues and the popular music duo Stiff Gins performing their upbeat song Diamonds on the Water as the full cast returns and performs a dance routine that mimes the historical fishing practice of the Eora women. The “Barangaroo act”, while also raising political issues such as the overrepresentation of ‘Black people in prisons’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.14), participation in government4 and intracommunal alienation; predominantly invokes female support networks and solidarity as an antidote to the disintegrating effects of colonisation and male social irresponsibility, with Tapsell emphasising that she and the other women ‘are the matriarchs who protect [their] family and [their] clans’ (ibid., p.20). The stage is continuously peopled as women of all ages perform music, dance together and contemplate the complex terrain of interpersonal (romantic and broader political) relationships. The act ends with Tapsell raising her voice, proclaiming that ‘[w]e are black women and we are strong’, asserting that they ‘are capable of life without a man’ (ibid., p.20), rejecting (as so often in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre) the quest for romantic love in favour of embracing the role of communal nurturer, while emphasising cultural continuity by citing the Eora ancestors as still providing ‘the meaning and purpose of what we still fight for’ (ibid., p.20). After a complete blackout, Bennelong is revealed sitting alone on stage, singing a song in Dharug about the arrival of the British settlers. The hand once again emerges and writes the name “Bennelong”. The Boy joins him, listening. After the song, Bennelong begins another monologue, in which he signals his knowledge of the ‘stories of how this country was created’ and his ability to pass on ‘everything you need to live here’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22). He relates observations of the upheavals in the Eora community after the arrival of the First Fleet, seeing ‘men fighting. Drunk on rum. […] over things I cannot understand. Who owns what?’ (ibid., p.22). He points out that ‘[y]ou and me. We got to come from here now. To feel this land is part of you’ (ibid., p.22), advocating for a reflected, peaceful sharing of the land. Tying his ideas back to a cosmological reflection that locates his advocacy in the realm of Eora ontology when stating that ‘the spirits […] will erase us and […o]ne day even all this will be washed away’ (ibid., pp.22/23). The emphasised ephemeral nature of human presence on the land becomes a basis to his appeal for communal reconciliation. By physically touching every cast member who have gathered quietly around him, he takes his leave and exits, accompanied by popular Pitjantjatjara musician Frank Yamma performing an acoustic version of his emotional ballad She Cried. As the song draws to an end, Leha carries the motionless body of Jack Charles as Bennelong back onto the stage. The cast congregates around him as he places the body gently on the floor into the arms of “Barangaroo”

148  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora actress  Elaine Crombie (Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Warrigmay) and Matthew Doyle. Looking up from the motionless body, the cast silently stares at the audience as the lights dim. When they come back up, the cast jumps up and merrily skips across the stage to a reprise of Diamonds on the Water.

Analysis “Nation”: aesthetic approach As stated, notions of Indigeneity in Australia have been measured against a mostly undifferentiated concept of authenticity that is tied to notions of traditional culture and dominated by Western epistemic paradigms. For example, within the current legislative bounds, anyone wishing to claim Indigenous Australian identity and land title has to prove genealogical descent and community recognition (Langton 2003, p.116), with a Native Title claim being contingent on the ability to demonstrate continuity with pre-colonial social organisation and cultural practice (Duff 2014, pp.25/27). I Am Eora is challenging these criteria: Even though the play evokes the thematic nexus of land rights in its opening by referencing the ‘fight for land rights, justice and equity’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, pp.1/2), it does not seek to insert its vision into the parameters set out by the contemporary Australian systems in place that enable whatever feeble recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. It refutes such insertion because these systems are identified as contravening an assertion of Eora subjectivity. Instead, Enoch and Heiss reconceptualise the Eora Nation as a social and cultural entity by seeking to sidestep the constricting epistemic boundaries of colonially shaped extra-theatrical discourses. By affirming Eora subjectivity, they reformulate the call for land rights as an ethical and political imperative – engaging a concept of self-determination that is to reflect Eora sovereignty. The playwrights aim to contribute to the project of nation building on Eora land, namely advocating for a shared culture and understanding of history among Eora people as a basis for self-identification. The fact that the playwrights apply the terminology of nationhood when referencing the Eora people (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.1) testifies to their belief in this concept as an appropriate vehicle to strengthen Indigenous rights in the contemporary (post)colonial space. Indigenous people adopted this concept in the aftermath of colonisation as an instrument to leverage political power within and against institutionalised Settler states. While this form of identification carries commonalities with Indigenous pre-colonial social and political institutions, it is a phenomenon born of and translated within the colonial situation (Rumsey 1993, p.192). As testament to Indigenous people’s active and strategic navigation of this context, it is engaged to achieve recognition of sovereignty within the context of national and international politics. However, this engagement is dependent on a

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  149 translation of Indigenous demands into the frameworks of these contexts. Scholars like Irene Watson (Tanganekald, Meintangk Boandik) criticise this process as significantly undermining the concept of Indigenous sovereignty because Indigenous ways of structuring discourses are not given precedence but are inserted into globalised systems of power distribution (1997, pp.54–58). Enoch and Heiss’ vision, however, is underpinned by a belief that Eora sovereignty can be realised in the Sydney space via a specific form of social and cultural engineering. Broadly speaking, they accept the parameters of contemporary political discourse that prescribe the concept of nationhood as the foundation for political subject status and, unlike Watson, do not seek its transcendence within the context of Indigenous politics. Their adoption of the concept forms part of their re-envisioning of Indigenous identification and inclusion in the national community, evoked in Bennelong’s final monologue when he addresses the audience, stating ‘[s]itting here in this place. You and me. We got to come from here now. To feel this land is part of you’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22). This re-envisioning recalibrates popular notions of sovereignty that define it as maximal independence and disentanglement of Indigenous institutions from mainstream society (compare Watson 1997, pp.54ff). Watson grounds her scepticism of the aspiration to assert Indigenous sovereignty within the framework of international politics in a close observation of the ways in which Indigenous people are pragmatically (dis)empowered and (mis)represented in the institutional chapters that are to provide them with a politically influential voice (1997, pp.54–58). Enoch and Heiss structure their performance of their Eora Nation outside of parameters that demand such a pragmatic reflection of viability: For example, they engage a myth by postulating the necessity of overcoming community divisions without clearly identifying or examining in-depth how these have arisen in the first place or how they play out and are perpetuated in the extra-theatrical community. Similar to Germaine Greer’s essay Whitefella Jump Up (2003), which Enoch cited in our phone interviews as a defining influence in the writing process, the playwrights ask the audience to contemplate a possibility for reconciliation in ways that depart from the conventional structures of Australian discourses: I Am Eora was conceived in the spirit of Greer’s notion that ‘we must imagine a community before we can construct one’ (Craven in Greer 2003, p.v), with Enoch and Heiss labouring to float this idea to a broad audience without alerting to its utopian premises. While Greer was publicly attacked with gusto for her ‘broad, simplifying and unsupported argumentation’ (e.g. Birch 2003), Enoch and Heiss received mostly positive feedback in the press, prompting musician Nardi Simpson (Yuwaalaraay) to comment in a personal conversation at the University of New South Wales on 29 April 2015 that what was most remarkable about the resonance of the show was the near absence of reflected criticism. This difference in critical reception must be attributed on the one hand to the use of medium, i.e. theatre is

150  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora valued for its fictional properties and is conceived as an emotive laboratory for the conception of novel ideas. On the other hand, the difference may also be explained by the authors’ identities: While Greer, as a non-­ Indigenous public intellectual living in the United Kingdom, was readily attacked for her alleged disconnection from Australian domestic debates (Millett 2003, p.121), the stakes in critiquing Enoch and Heiss as well-­ regarded Indigenous intellectuals are higher for non-Indigenous mainstream journalists and academics because their verdicts will inadvertently be read in light of sensitive debates around power, voice and representation in the (post)colonial space. As Enoch laments, this space is often characterised by a lack of critical engagement with Indigenous works, either for fear of missing the mark in terms of political correctness or for a still pervasive dismissiveness of Indigenous expression that testifies to a persistent colonial mindset (qtd. in Bradley 2000, p.64). Either way, the silence surrounding the ideas developed in I Am Eora, which was mostly reviewed in terms of its technical and artistic realisation, is noteworthy. Its presentation as flagship production in Sydney Festival’s Black Capital season ensured extensive media attention and reception. Hence, the absence of commentary on its ideological horizon could be read as a sign of lacking coordinates in public mainstream debate in discussing what Indigenous sovereignty could look like within the fold of the Australian nation – indicating that the publicly circulated concepts of “reconciliation”, “recognition” or even “treaty” are still a long way off from being filled with substance. Conceived in this way, I Am Eora addresses an important vacancy in public debate, despite the terms for its full appreciation having not yet been reached. The following analysis critically assesses the conceptual framings provided in the play in order to begin addressing this gap in public engagement. Enoch and Heiss include many visual, aural and structural markers of traditional cultural practice in their play, for example ochre body paint, chants in Dharug language, designs of rock engravings from the Sydney Basin, evocations of gender and age stratifications in the community, etc. Yet, instead of instating these markers as a foundation for an argument of authenticity derived from a construction of the past, the playwrights (and Enoch as Director in particular) reject this idea – for example, by having Bennelong rail against cultural recuperation efforts, bellowing that ‘[t]he old ways are gone. […]. Fucken move on’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.2). Instead, they rework these markers into the contemporary fabric of their identity concept. For example, the ochre body paint is first encountered in the image of Doyle wearing a loincloth in the colours of the Aboriginal flag, triggering readily available notions of Indigeneity in highlighting the connection between body and land. This image is extended by Currie-­R ichardson shedding his elegant suit and by Leha painting up the Boy – images that transpose past practice into the present while accumulating additional layers of meaning that together yield a palimpsest of contemporary Eora identification (e.g. the original denotation of connection to Country and

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  151 kin is extended by signalling endurance of identification and cross-cutting of difference in the state of colonisation). Enoch and Heiss’ identity concept is built on the process of bricolage, which self-consciously layers materials of the Eora past and present to emphasise Indigenous agency. The overt constructedness of their approach thereby announces the basis on which cultural recalibration is to be achieved. This decidedly post-modern approach locates agency in the ability to reflect on and recombine cultural resources in order to adapt these for present needs. It sits at odds with conceptions of Indigenous ontologies as expressed in the Dreaming, which develops a worldview on the grounds of creation stories that inscribe and predetermine contemporary law and social organisation. Many scholars have meanwhile pointed out that the assumption of inflexibility attendant on received ideas of the Dreaming as essentialised and unchanging is in need of revision (Benterrak, Muecke & Roe 1984; Rose 2005). Nevertheless, Enoch and Heiss’ post-modern reworking of Eora nationhood in its theatrical language carefully bridges the divide between the extreme stances of postmodern renunciation of a belief in higher beings and the traditional firm belief in them: By linking the ‘spirits’ as ‘the hands that write [people] onto this Land’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22) with the projection of a human hand repeatedly writing across the stage floor, ­Enoch and Heiss leave it up to the audience to interpret this strategy merely as a vehicle to represent Dreaming ancestors within the scope of a theatre play, or, alternatively, as a reflection of culture being understood as a human myth-­making process that encrypts the foundational values of a given people. The playwrights thus ensure that their vision does not provocatively challenge traditional ideas about the Dreaming, remaining within the bounds set by cultural protocol. By transposing markers of traditional ontologies and practice into the present, Enoch and Heiss invoke the past as an important, inextricable component for present identity constitution that would lack grounding without historical consciousness. Yet, they also ensure that the past does not become what Enoch termed in one of our phone interviews a ‘prison’ for Indigenous Australian identity constitution. Cultural continuity is envisioned as a dynamic process that is adaptive, fluid and creative, constantly overriding any parameters that people seek to cohere and fix identities around. Consequently, unlike Namatjira which posits a fully intact cultural system carried over from the past as touchstone for identity construction; I Am Eora only draws on selected elements of past Eora practice and productively enlists them for the formation of a newly assembled cultural framework. As succinctly articulated through Bennelong, ‘[t]he old ways are gone. […] There is no going back’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.2), the playwrights reject the idea of cultural nostalgia from the start. They derive empowerment from the notion of assemblage  – ­d rawing on a range of materials that are filtered through Indigenous subjects and are consequently claimed as part of Eora identity. This

152  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora new cultural framework is developed  through the voices of Bennelong, Barangaroo and Pemulwuy: Bennelong paves the way for a new conception of interpersonal engagement, when stating that ‘[w]e live [the past] now but it isn’t now. Don’t let it weigh you down’ (ibid., p.23), Barangaroo emphasises communal reinvigoration when programmatically calling for a ‘move away from the vicious cycle of poverty and welfare […] in [active] partnership’ (ibid., p.19), while ­Pemulwuy calls for historiographical revision and acknowledgement of the past as the basis for empathetic reconciliation in the Eora space, when declaring that ‘[t]hey buried our history. […] But I ain’t about to hate nuh. I’m all about the love. I just speak the truth from the deepest of roots’ (ibid., p.10). The playwrights legitimate their recalibrated concept of a shared culture by channelling it through the voices of three revered historical Eora leaders from the time of First Contact. The playwrights underline their status and integrity as Indigenous leaders by signalling their command of traditional knowledges. For example, Leha passes the story of Pemulwuy on to the Boy, highlighting his elusive survival capabilities when relating ‘[t]hey shoot him. One, two, three, four. And he still lived on. And fought’ (ibid., p.8), while Bennelong instates himself as authority by pointing out that ‘[w]e have stories for all this place. […] I can tell you everything you need to live here’ (ibid., p.22) and emphasising Barangaroo’s unbroken role as the provider to the community by referring to ‘the fires of the women fishing in the dark’ (ibid., p.22). Yet, this traditional knowledge serves solely to connect Bennelong’s revised cultural framework to a cosmological and social order that is ultimately presented as superseded in the play: Traditional knowledge in I Am Eora is not shown to provide a key to the improvement of relations in the contemporary Eora community. P ­ emulwuy’s spear, which in an animated projection kills a settler aiming a rifle at the warrior, eventually proves futile against the policeman’s gun that kills Leha on stage (ibid., p.9), Barangaroo’s fishing skills become redundant when a giant projected net takes all fish out of the harbour (ibid., p.13), and Bennelong references but does not elaborate on the story of the ‘serpent’ but rather proceeds by outlining his philosophy of co-habitation in a built environment as a new vision for his people (ibid., pp.22/23). This vision is primarily conveyed through the act of storytelling itself, which frames the play and connects it to ancient Indigenous traditions of cultural creation. Consequently, the reformed pillars of Eora capacity are identified with the act of performance itself, residing in the eloquence of the storytellers, who together conjure an image for the audience of performative (if volatile) integration of differences, of communal co-operation and the social harmony that is implied can be attained through such practice. The persuasiveness of the professional production of the play is to support and vouch for the capacity of the ideology developed in the script. With the script having been developed as the last element in the creation of the show, this performative backing of the ideology advanced in the show must be ascribed special significance.

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  153 Influences of global performance cultures and philosophies are noticeable in the script and the staging but they are not identified as alien in the play. Enoch and Heiss present their Eora cosmos as fully contained, for example by working with an Indigenous-only cast (Enoch 2011), as well as by maintaining the focus solely on Indigenous experience and subjectivities, with scant reflection of non-Indigenous presence in the Eora space. This allows them to formulate the challenges facing the Eora community as mostly of an intracultural nature and hence to postulate them as manageable through community action. In this way, Enoch and Heiss seek to empower the Eora to take charge of their communal problems. However, by leaving out as much consideration of the intercultural space as possible, the playwrights go so far as to be silent on any colonial frictions that are part of this space and which impact on the Eora community beyond their control. This significantly limits the playwrights’ project of empowerment because they do not engage with aspects of Eora lifeworlds that constitute major sites of cultural disturbance. Enoch and Heiss counter the slowness of non-Indigenous efforts at decolonisation with their singled down focus onto the Eora ­people alone. Yet, this prevents them from reaching any depth of engagement with the actual divisions among the extra-theatrical Eora communities and which constitute the historical and political realities that I Am Eora sets out to discursively intervene into. The few indications of communal challenges provided in the script are limited to Bennelong’s observation of men quarrelling on the grounds of Western ideas of ownership (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22) and Barangaroo’s criticism of male lethargy (i.e. in Crombie’s rant to her lazy husband and Tapsell’s “we are black women” declaration; ibid., pp.15/20/21). Instead of critical analysis of conflicts in the extra-theatrical Eora space, which tend to revolve around differing ideas about inclusion and participation in mainstream Australian society, or to reflect conflicts compounded by racism, marginalisation and trauma (Everett 2009, p.54), Enoch and Heiss attempt to silence these, which concurrently curtails the power of their vision. Questions of cross-cultural navigation are pushed back in the queue of identity formation, giving precedence to the imagination of an Indigenous Eora Nation before trying to bring this into relation with a non-­Indigenous presence. Enoch and Heiss include reference to non-Indigenous Australians only scarcely: For example, in one projection, a settler points a rifle at an Indigenous warrior holding a spear (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.3), Nooky labels the government as ‘tyrants’ (ibid., p.7), vowing to ‘burn down parliament’ (ibid., p.9) as Leha states that ‘living like white man got me living with no son, no daughter’ (ibid., p.4). In these instances, European settlers emerge as the sole disintegrating force acting on the Eora community, providing a horizon and an origin from which the playwrights explain the challenges and issues facing the presentday Eora community and into which they project their vision of communal reconciliation. The possibility of a positive bond growing between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is referenced only in the projection of photographs from demonstrations in favour of Indigenous causes (ibid., p.9)

154  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora ­ urney who speaks of politician Bill O’Reilly and included in the speech of B as ‘a native of South Australia […] [whose] heritage is mostly Irish [and who] wants to make things better’ (ibid., p.18). This tentative positivity is reinforced by Bennelong pointing out the need to ‘feel this land is part of you [too]’ (ibid., p.22). However, this tendency is curbed in the final tableau of the show as the cast silently stares at the audience, congregated around the motionless body of Bennelong (ibid., p.23)  – an image of death and vulnerability that jars the idea of decolonisation being within immediate reach. Ultimately, similar to Greer’s reflection on Australian reconciliation, I Am Eora explores it not as a process that needs to be engaged from both sides but seeks to find its answers in a focus on one group only. Even though Enoch and Heiss engage with the Eora ­perspective – while Greer keeps her focus on non-Indigenous Australians  –, the two positions do not add up to a practicable exploration of decolonisation because in both works the plane of argumentation disconnects from the historical particulars and structurations of the Australian nation. Both works remain beacons – conjuring visions of “better” Australian identities than the ones presently available but they fail to connect them to the histories they are lifted from. Storytelling hereby provides the vehicle for this imaginative process, in which challenges are worked upon but whose pragmatic solution is not attempted. For example, the playwrights’ modelling of the Eora Nation provides a dramatic space in which Indigenous perspectives on history and concepts of epistemology can be deployed to counter the dominance of Western paradigms in which Indigenous identity is often publicly negotiated but they are not productively enlisted to respond to issues arising at the seam between Sydney’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, such as, for example, questions of public policy or economic participation. Herein lies another difference to Namatjira: While Enoch and Heiss leave it up to their audience what to take away from their play, Rankin and the Namatjira family provide an immediate channel for the emotions conjured in the performance, i.e. to either buy a painting or donate to the legacy trust in order to financially support the family. Although highly ambivalent in a consumerist context, Namatjira clearly proposes a system for engagement to improve intercultural relations – with the financial contribution figuring as a concrete material way of supporting, while Western Aranda relational identity concepts are engaged as a positive means to alter the parameters of Australian national identification. In contrast, Enoch and Heiss mainly alert to the absence of an adequate differentiated framework of cross-cultural engagement that could guide Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians to a more equitable society in contemporary times. “Country”: configuring emplacement Even though I Am Eora references a particular place, namely the Greater Sydney Region, and hence could draw on multiple ways to evoke Country

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  155 physically, visually or deictically, Enoch as Director opted for an abstract and actor-centred aesthetic. With hardly any props or photographic imagery used in the staging, the evocation of I Am Eora’s cosmos is largely dependent on sign-systems that foreground the processual construction of place (i.e. physical interaction, language and inscription). Its world is socially constructed on stage with any meaning-making contingent on human action. References to mythical contexts, such as, for example, ‘since the beginning of the Dreamtime when Spirits come forward from the earth and sky to create all living things’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.1), were later cut from the script in favour of strengthening this humancentred focus of the play. The term “Dreamtime” is no longer used in the script (compare Sydney Festival n.d.). Instead, the term ‘ancestors’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, pp.1/18/20) is used for any reference to the ontological framework in which Eora identity is negotiated. This shifts the focus away from mystical connotations toward a secular worldview. Yet, in using the multi-­dimensional term “ancestors”, 5 the playwrights retain traces of a grand récit that channels human needs for transcendence. The Dreaming as a definite conceptual ontological base for the relation between land and people, however, is backgrounded to make room for an engagement with sociality as the prime site of identity constitution. Deploying this strategy of reformulation, ­Enoch and Heiss centralise the social dimension of place making. While this allows representing the Eora as an enduring creative life-force in the Sydney region and rebuking notions of colonial erasure of Indigenous sovereignty, it also means that vital dimensions of Indigenous Australian relations to Country – for example kinship with the natural world – are not brought into view. People emerge as the determining factor in the constitution of place, centralising the human in the play’s ontological framework. The equality of and balance between humans and other animate and inanimate features of the land often stressed in Indigenous ontologies is not reflected in the play. Not even in the sparse explicit references to the Dreaming ancestors as ‘spirits’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22) does kinship and interconnectivity with all matter filter into the representation of place. The representation of land in the play hardly leaves room for the multi-­stratified notion of Country – as ‘a living entity with […] a consciousness, and a will toward life’ (Rose 2008, pp.110/11) – to be communicated to the audience. The spiritual dimension to Eora life is solely deduced from social interaction between humans, allowing for a concentrated focus on sociality that prepares the play’s ground for engaging with the problems affecting the Eora community. The traditional stratified ontology of Country is not reflected to address these issues, indicating that Eora identity in contemporary times is conceived of as in need of a different grounding – one that offers a rationale for Indigenous identifications in the urban environment that today characterises Eora Country. The land itself is referred to as an independent entity from the people living on it. Bennelong’s caveat that ‘the footsteps we have made will be

156  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora swept away with the water and wind’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22), alludes to the conceptual paradigm of “deep time”, casting the land as eternal and resisting lasting human inscription. This singular representation conceptually divides people from place rather than postulating the two as essentially identified with one another. Rather, the playwrights operate on the concept of land-people-identification by breaking open this essentialised identification and making it a site of human relationship making: The land is presented as the horizon of shared habitation. People are shown to incessantly inscribe themselves and others into the stage space (often literally by using ochre or chalk; Enoch & Heiss 2012, pp.2/9/10/23), asserting a relation that in the play only comes to be through wilful action and remembrance by Eora people rather than being conceived as a pregiven merely in need of symbolical avowal. Even though in reference to accumulative generations of ancestors and the subtle evocation of land in the projection of sand and shells (Sydney Festival n.d.), aspects of the Dreaming are woven into the fabric of the play, the land itself is not unequivocally presented as a sentient entity. The stage space is devoid of identificatory coordinates; it is mostly dark and empty. Thus, land emerges as a purely symbolic backdrop on which people forge their relations to one another, making fleeting marks that determine the political realities in the Eora space. The politics that result from this reconfiguration of the relation between land and people are that the land needs to be continually claimed as Eora. The enduring identification of the land, which is postulated in the citation of the slogan of the Aboriginal land rights movement ‘is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.2) is reconceptualised as dependent on human action. Whether or not this land maintains its identification as “Aboriginal” depends on the commitment of Aboriginal people to maintain it as such. Consequently, the community is called upon to cohere and work collaboratively toward this end – an end to which Bennelong dedicates his living and dying in the face of colonisation, when declaring ‘Eora Land. I give my life to here’ (ibid., p.23). By casting relation to land in this way, Enoch and Heiss undermine the fundamental premise of traditional inalienable identification that has underpinned Indigenous Australian resilience vis-à-vis colonial pressure. While strengthening the argument for social activism, their postmodern argumentation – largely emptied of mythical components – also creates the threat of a “transcendental homelessness”6 for Indigenous people, which heightens the impending loss of orientational frameworks amid the state of colonisation. This heightening is to alert to the need for a cohered Eora community, which is called upon to defend the inscription of the land as Aboriginal. Enoch and Heiss here skirt a fine line in the navigation of political discourses in Australia: Their approach does not allow for an exoticising framing of Indigenous cultures as different or other but highlights that Eora culture is subject to the same lability and dynamism as any other culture, with Leha imploring the Boy to not ‘let our ways be wiped from existence’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.9).

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  157 With Burney highlighting that ‘the core issue is to work with communities to develop capacity and to focus on economic development’ (ibid., p.19), the playwrights emphasise that without human commitment, colonial erasure of Eora identity becomes a possibility. While Enoch and Heiss enlist this call to continuous ‘creation’ for a strengthening of community cohesion that will enable an Eora identity not ‘weight[ed] down’ by the past (ibid., p.23), they also run the risk of deconstructing the premises on which many Indigenous activists have made what little gains there were in struggles for recognition, i.e. through trading in and promoting essentialised ideas about Indigenous connection to land. Bennelong states briefly that he ‘want[s] some of [the land] back’ (­Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.3). However, his statement that the men ‘fight over things I cannot understand. Who owns what?’ (ibid., p.22) highlights that this demand for him carries different connotations than a Western concept of personal ownership as, for example, derived from John Locke’s reflections on the genesis of personal property from labour invested into land (Locke 1984, p.138). I Am Eora’s vision extends beyond what is conventionally associated with the phrase “land rights” in Western parlance and seeks to broaden such understandings by communicating the more comprehensive philosophical connotations attendant on such claims. These are hinted at in Bennelong’s proposition that ‘[w]e got to come from here now. To feel this land is part of you’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22), proposing that the shared presence on the land requires a recalibration of concepts of self and other and their collaborative negotiation. Land here no longer figures for its capacity to guarantee material provision but is transformed into a symbolical token within a larger philosophy of connection and empathy. To the same degree as material provision is located in urban ­professionalism  – ­demonstrated by Barangaroo fulfilling her role as provider in the present time-frame, alternatively as Politician or as a member of the domestic workforce (ibid., pp.10/17–19) –, the significance of land as a material source of provision wanes, while its currency as a political symbol ascends. Land rights in ­Bennelong’s monologue figure as a basis for community building on the grounds of values that are claimed as foundational to the Eora Nation, pinpointed by Burney as ‘the values of honesty, loyalty and respect’ (ibid., p.19). They exceed the simple gesture of a mere material exchange of land title but instead Eora rights to land would necessitate that people adopt a specific codex of guiding values that are proposed to attenuate divisions wrought by a Western model of individual land ownership. In their adopted representational format, which is congruent with Greer’s Whitefella Jump Up, the playwrights sketch this codex in broad terms but fail to demonstrate how it could be translated into a solution to the contestations around land in the Eora space, i.e. how loyalty, honesty and respect could be translated into a pragmatic system of land sharing. Bennelong’s vision merely indicates that a path for peaceful sharing of the land needs to be developed, i.e. that the term “Eora” has to be reinvested with its original Dharug meaning “from

158  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora here”. Yet, it is left open to what degree this path will reflect core Eora principles of land tenure. Within his vision, land rights predominantly come to denote political recognition and agency. Linking to Burney’s vision of Indigenous participation in the political process of the mainstream nation, exemplified in the ‘co-operation between government and the community’ (ibid., p.19), the vision of collaboration and shared management swears the audience to a largely hazy notion of Indigenous cultural management as a way forward for the Eora space. Since the delineation of an Eora culture is only in the process of being developed in the play, while references to previous clan-based land management systems are largely oblique in the script (e.g. in Burney’s comparative reference to the Canterbury region as previously ‘abundant country’; ibid., p.17), the playwrights struggle to develop a vision of how Eora engagement with the land would offer novel and possibly more sustainable ways of managing Country. The reconfiguration of Eora ontologies and the lack of reflection of Country as a sentient entity is relevant to I Am Eora’s objective of urban identity constitution: Developed in a saturated context of mediating technologies, e.g. projections, voiceovers, audio amplification, etc., Eora identity is sited in a contemporary, urban context that closely connects to mainstream Australian ideas about place and sociality. Same as in Namatjira, the comparability of Indigenous cultures with mainstream ­Australian culture is amplified in its representation within a humanist frame that reduces distinctive difference at the service of the identificatory project. While the levelling of difference in Namatjira predominantly serves to enable non-Indigenous audiences to identify with Albert Namatjira and his family’s plight to further the aim of national reconciliation, the focus on urbanity in I Am Eora reflects the navigation of Indigenous lifeworlds in a metropolitan area. While Bennelong draws attention to the fact of urban development on Eora Country, he emphasises the material integration of Eora presence into this environment, connecting the people as an integral layer to the present-day city: I have seen our middens crushed to become the mortar between the stone to build this city. I have seen the stones of one house torn out to build another. I have seen destruction become creation. I have seen our walking tracks criss-crossed with roads and street and lanes. (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.23) Hence, urban development is not critiqued for its disruption of ecological systems but is cast as the self-evident, natural backdrop for contemporary Eora identity formation. Bennelong’s lines absorb the built environment into an argument for continuous Eora identification and cultural practice in situ, providing the rationalisation for an urban Eora community that is not conceived as at odds with traditional practices of land stewardship. Negative ecological impact (and a better Eora alternative) is solely alluded

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  159 to in Barangaroo’s fishing routine, which implies a pre-colonial sustainable practice of land tenure which is disrupted by the arrival of non-Indigenous settlers. The giant net, which links metaphorically to the subsequent discussion of incarceration of Indigenous people, is represented as an instance of colonial ecological mismanagement. In its juxtaposition with Barangaroo’s traditional alternative, it highlights the colonial destruction wrought on Eora land (ibid., p.13). However, the playwrights contain this ecological critique of colonial impact within the represented past and do not extend their reflection into the present, where a population of over 5M occupies the densely urbanised Greater Sydney Region. The ecological pressures that urban development inflicts on the health of Country are not considered, and hence do not cause discrepancies with the formulation of an asserted urban Eora identity. The complexities and contradictions of contemporary urban lifestyles are eclipsed from view and enable audiences to conceive of urban identity as largely commensurable with the core principle of Country as foundational to traditional Indigenous identity conceptions. In doing so, Enoch and Heiss seek to provide a counter argument for challenges levelled at Indigenous people for living in urban environments, namely, that an urban lifestyle would somehow compromise Indigenous identity (Heiss 2012, p.239). They posit and emphasise that people live on Country in the Greater Sydney Region, that the land’s identity as Eora has been retained continuously throughout 230+ years of colonisation, and that therefore people are able to ground their identities within a fold of traditional ontologies. What Enoch and Heiss fail to provide, however, is a conclusive argument for another contributing factor to the potential undermining of identity in an urban context: In traditional ontologies, land is posited as significant to human identity constitution because it engenders ‘relations of interdependence’ (Rose 2008, p.110), i.e. it binds a person into an active reciprocal relationship of care that calls on the person to maintain the health and ecological balance of Country. In a metropolitan setting like the Greater Sydney Region, the fulfilling of such roles is heavily constricted and with the continuous sprawl of urban development, ecological sustainability only slowly filters into mainstream discussions around place making. Enoch and Heiss structure their identity model for Eora people around an acceptance of the existing realities on Eora land. Since most people living on Eora land live urban lifestyles, the play seeks to supply an adequate philosophical framework for this reality. In line with Enoch’s agenda of pushing for a recognition of Indigeneity as a contemporary identification that does not sit at odds with broader mainstream lifestyles, the play casts Eora identity as commensurable with contemporary urbanity and affirms the city as a place of inhabitation for Eora people. The city as an alternative form of human sociality is explored in relation to its possible effects of alienation (e.g. in the song Redfern Girl; Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.16) but not for its effect on the ecological system. The issues worked through in the play are identified as manageable problems of social relation, not of lifestyle more broadly. In this

160  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora regard, I Am Eora forms part of a larger, noticeable trend in contemporary Indigenous Australian and intercultural performing arts practice: With the notable exception of Marrugeku’s Cut the Sky (2015) that, similarly to I Am Eora, was created in a culturally negotiated context and presented as a flagship production in major performing arts festivals, most contemporary works explore issues of identity and belonging in relation to Country and colonisation; yet, they do not locate these politics of identity within a larger critique of ecological impact. This divorcing of identity- and ecological discourses in most contemporary Indigenous Australian performing arts practice could be related to the fact that dimensions of socio-political decolonisation are prioritised. These are primarily conceived within terms of personal and cross-cultural negotiation between two clearly demarcated parties: Indigenous versus non-Indigenous. In the (post)colonial context, the push for political voice here tends to take precedence over the reflection of how surviving Indigenous knowledges could reconfigure life in Australia – a task that is, for example, slowly being addressed by stakeholders in land management policies (Rose, James & Watson 2003). The engagement with contemporary realities on Eora land and the acknowledgement of colonial influence on the Eora is highlighted in the play’s “Acknowledgement of Country”: Eora land is delineated by reference to English place names, as being bounded by ‘the Hawkesbury, the Georges and the Nepean Rivers’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.1). With Doyle on stage, this mapping alludes to the presence of co-existing practices of inscription in the Eora space. The opening scene with its English “Acknowledgement” and its “Welcome to Country” performed in Dharug confronts the audience with a mixture of cultural codes that are subtly claimed as constituent of Eora identity. Use of English is employed as an unmarked vehicle for expression. The inclusion of Dharug, which is not spoken widely among Sydney’s Indigenous communities, while signalling a sovereign Eora space, strategically consolidates a community feeling without closing the Eora community off from the city’s wider ecology. Unlike Page, Blair, Marika & Munyarryun’s Bloodland (2011), which was performed entirely in Yolngu language, the argument for sovereignty is not developed by a maximal emphasis on difference and secession from the intercultural space. In I Am Eora, the Indigenous experience of colonisation remains the touchstone for contemporary identity formation. Concurrently, the solutions to contemporary problems are developed on the basis of the collective memory of First Contact. The ancestors invoked to guide the contemporary community are the leaders that first had to come to terms with lasting nonIndigenous intrusion on their lands. As archetypes, the historical figures constitute the “beginning”, denoting a turning point in Eora history. They are the ancestors with whom the contemporary community identifies in their response to contemporary life. Of course, as such they also form part of the Dreaming; yet, their identities are not textually connected to previous generations or Dreaming ancestors in the play. The pre-colonial society

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  161 that occupied the Eora lands is not brought into view but only its changing under the onset of colonisation is narratively woven into Bennelong’s ratio for adaptation, for example evident in his lines ‘[m]emories of how it used to be. This place where we would gather and dance ceremony and tell the stories of our history. Now I hear yelling. These men some from here and others from beyond the rivers’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22). The cultural resources that are activated for this adaptation consist not in concrete material legacies of cultural practice that codify a specific relation to land but are identified with adaptive capabilities that orient people toward their social interconnectedness, such as, for example, the guiding values ­Burney cites as her family legacy that prescribe a politics of care and mutual support (ibid., p.19). Bennelong invokes these capabilities in his vision for the Eora people, when counselling that even though the ‘history [lives] in every step’ (ibid., p.23), it is time to cast bitterness ‘into the fire’ (ibid., p.23) and to focus on enabling ‘destruction [to] become creation’ (ibid., p.23). These adaptive capabilities are finding their performative expression in the mixing of cultural codes, which dominate the aesthetic communication of I Am Eora (for example, the use of English). These capabilities in the play are represented as ensuring the resilience of the Eora Nation, effecting that any act perpetrated by the colonisers to eradicate Indigenous presence in the Sydney space only leads to its deeper inscription: For example, Nooky emphasises that Eora ‘land is bleached red so [he] was born drenched […] with [his] fist clenched’ (ibid., p.7), explaining his political assertion as a result of genocidal Settler violence. In addition, the tracing of Leha’s lifeless body in chalk inscribes his presence into the land by being digitally lifted and merged with a projection of the archaeologically recorded Sydney Basin rock engravings. As the father figure becomes absent and is reinterpreted as part of a collective, this visual cue alludes to the Boy undergoing initiation, affirmed by him carrying on the traditional practice of engraving (ibid., p.9). Therefore, visually and performatively, Leha’s death in the play begets a potential new warrior who ‘picks [his spear] up’ (ibid., p.5). The concept of Eora culture in the play here emerges as a dynamic interface that absorbs external influences and transmutes them into a shifting, fluid identificatory practice. Culture in I Am Eora is hence conceived as a processual rather than content-bound bricolage. The nexus of stability and fluidity of Eora practice resonates also in the play’s evocation of land and waterscapes as sites of communal negotiation: Bennelong highlights that Indigenous ‘middens [were] crushed to become the mortar between the stone to build this city’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.23), speaking of the city as manifesting a history of inhabitation that links the materiality of place into its social performance throughout the ages. The material hereby brings notions of stability and fluidity to bear on concepts of human inhabitation and cultural practice. While nature images in the set design, i.e. sand and blue lights as evoking waterscapes, signify fluidity encapsulated in the cycle of destruction and renewal, the projected ashlar

162  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora block-design bespeaks the human endeavour to arrest this cycle in order to introduce a degree of stability that allows for the anchoring of human practice. So too does the theatre performance itself constitute an ephemeral inscription of identity in the wider Eora space, embodying its own concept of fleeting inscription in place in the moment of performance. As Bennelong highlights, the endeavour to achieve lasting inscription is doomed to forever falter in the face of geological cycles ‘washing away’ human generations (ibid., p.23) and requiring perpetual renewal. These processes of inscription in I Am Eora carry political weight and are presented as sites of contestation among people. The abstract stage rendition of place, however, substitutes historically grown identifications with an ambient sense that in its erasure of emotionally charged concepts of Eora Country risks becoming largely unmarked. Instead of casting the land as the site of communal grounding, Enoch and Heiss locate promising instances of community collaboration in proximity to water. As a fluid, ambivalent, ever-changing space, the harbour resists inscription and is not suitable for an assertion of ownership in definite terms but only allows temporary traversal. The water is presented as a palimpsest: An abundant place where people procure food in the Barangaroo fishing choreography (Enoch & Heiss 2012, pp.11/12), and where children are reared by the women (ibid., p.22). It is cast as the place where the Eora and Settlers clash, as exemplified in the images of Aboriginal protest against the 1988 re-enactment of the First Fleet’s arrival (Sydney Festival n.d.) but also where they find their shared ground and perform together, illustrated in the images of wharf workers engaging in solidarity protest (ibid.), evoking a feeble sense of hope for future reconciliation in the Eora space. The playwrights use the image of water to construct a liminal space that figures as a transitory projection environment for a reconfigured way of social engagement. Yet, in relation to the extra-theatrical Eora space, their projection clashes with the established realities of occupation and inscription: The harbour and its adjacent lands are among the most contested and densely populated areas in Sydney and are far from being a site of harmonious, inclusive intercultural encounter. Thus, the play here utilises the image of water as a heterotopia to contested land spaces but eclipses from view pragmatic barriers existent in the extra-theatrical world. Ultimately, the playwrights articulate their call for community cohesion in Bennelong’s final monologue, which annuls the significance of present-­day divisions and conflicts by contextualising them in a horizon of “deep time”: With his statement ‘[o]ne day even all this will be washed away’ (­Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.23), he implies that – in time – also the foundations of colonial inscription and Indigenous manifestations will be eroded by natural forces, enabling new orders. This anticipation enables him to relativise the present in terms of its political weight, reducing the importance of contemporary contestations by ascribing them only temporal status within a larger scheme of global transformation. Continuing with ‘[w]e live [the past] now

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  163 but it isn’t now. Don’t let it weigh you down. Throw those tears into the fire’ (ibid., p.23), he directs the focus onto the consequences of this insight, implying that current divisions should be transcended and inclusiveness be practiced. Bennelong’s attendant philosophical ‘re-­situating and decentring of the human’ (Rose 2005) here reflects fundamental Indigenous Australian ontologies that conceive of the world as an interconnected web geared toward maintaining life – a web in which the individual and the present are located as part of a larger ecology that is rooted in space and which transcends time. While this ultimately grounds the reformulation of Country in the fold of traditional ontology, the activation of notions of “deep time” here relegates the revolutionary political impulse (conveyed through the figure of Pemulwuy) to the margins of the play’s political vision. Activism is subsumed in a philosophy of endurance. Rather than turning the focus onto the engagement with contemporary divisions, the play advocates for their outright suspension in contemplation of the insignificance of the present moment. In doing so, the playwrights risk contradicting their own ideology premised as it is on valorising the individual as significant carrier of social change and which locates the human subject at the centre of the play’s ontological concept. Its overall relativisation effected through the introduction of a concept of “deep time” bespeaks the challenges of coarticulating Indigenous Australian ontologies within a colonised space that has created its own requisites for political engagement. Enoch and Heiss envision a concept of the Eora Nation as a recognisable sovereign political entity within the contemporary Australian nation. Yet, their attempt to reconnect its premises to core principles of Indigenous Australian ontologies, like interconnectedness and transcendence of individuality and linear time concepts, reveals the challenges their project faces. “People”: formulating culture Temporalities In opposition to the linear structuring of narrative characteristic of traditional modernist Western storytelling, Enoch and Heiss present their play in discontinuous, associative vignettes that resonate with multiple temporal and contextual frames. The Aristotelian unity of time, place and action (which broadly characterises much Indigenous Australian naturalist work, for example that of David Milroy) is abandoned in favour of a cyclical engagement with archetypical identifications that enables a reflection of Indigenous ontologies of emplacement and time. For example, Leha and Nooky carry forth the legacy of Pemulwuy: Leha expresses admiration for the warrior’s deeds, ‘want[ing] to live like [Pemulwuy] did’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.8). This instates the resistance fight as a guiding principle in his lyrics that he addresses to the Boy in a bid to pass on this mindset to the next generation. Nooky presents himself as a ‘young angry Black man’

164  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora (ibid., p.6), an identity label that he relates as imposed on him and which he reinterprets as an expression of pride in his otherness to the Australian mainstream. He embraces this otherness and through the stance of dissent, instates himself as a successor to the legendary warrior. He casts himself as ‘Pemulwuy’s ghost in the flesh’ (ibid., p.7), inserting himself into the stream of successive generations that according to his proposition ‘won’t ever stop’ (ibid., p.7) to maintain resistance. In their ongoing evocation of the Pemulwuy story, Leha and Nooky anchor it in the dramatic present, establishing relevance and ensuring that – at least for now – Eora resistance culture lives on through their performance. The narrative blending of time layers, for example undertaken by Nooky when he relates his dream in which ‘Pemulwuy came to me alive as you and me […] he said I neva [sic] died…’ (ibid., p.6), instates cyclically interlocking Indigenous Australian temporal concepts as dominant because linear time is transcended in the individual’s subjective experience. The men’s strong identification with Pemulwuy evokes a sense of perpetual recreation of a social order that is implied to have been maintained throughout post-contact history. Since the play does not provide access to the story of Pemulwuy other than through the accounts presented by Leha and Nooky, their credence is not queried. The impassioned embrace of Pemulwuy as identificatory touchstone asserts that Eora culture on stage maintains a connection to the past and is derived from ancestral orientation. The transposition of the story into the contemporary context thereby reformulates concepts of authenticity premised on fixity and supplants these with a dynamic processual mode of interpretation that maintains a firm grounding in the present rather than principally deriving its legitimation from the past. The playwrights structure their representation of the performative engagement with Barangaroo as the archetypical nurturer in similar ways: Transitioning from the sombre tale of sacrifice and death concluding the “Pemulwuy act”, the pregnancy of Tapsell re-introduces a procreating element into the Eora narrative that supports Nooky’s assertion that Eora people will continue to ‘just multiply’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.7). The men’s vision of Eora resistance culture as ultimately premised on the relation to the invading other, in the song Diamonds on the Water is complemented by a vision of immersion in the natural environment and communal life, underscored by the fishing routine performed by the dancers. The song introduces a vision of Eora culture as unaffected by colonial change, with any threat to the people recast as emanating naturally from the environment that is labelled yet also embraced as ambivalent: ‘Cold and wet is how I see [the water] ready to swallow me whole […] I hope she doesn’t mind I feel safer on dry land’ (ibid., p.11). With nature being instated as the other with whom the Eora need to negotiate their relation, the process of identity formation is sublimated onto a plane of cosmological dimension which bespeaks a natural cycle of life and death (linking to Bennelong’s advocacy as discussed above). This change in orientation and temporal framing to a

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  165 degree frees the female characters in the play from the constricting historical bind to the settlers, enabling them to focus on the pragmatic requirements for nurturing life. This orientation foregoes centralising questions of competing cultural inflection and introduces a universalising tenor of care and support that Tapsell verbalises in her lines ‘[w]e are the one who love you when you have nought. We hold our heads high, when our spirits are low’ (ibid., p.20). She claims these principles as formative of female Eora culture when closing her declaration with ‘[w]e are strong […] We are Barangaroo’ (ibid., p.21). Switching from a historical to a cosmological outlook here enables the playwrights to introduce a reconciliatory vision for a way forward that sounds out capacities for cross-cultural engagement. However, this strategy only works on the premise of containing the subversive potential opened up in the “Pemulwuy act” and restricting the embrace of subjective responses to the colonial situation, controlling which emotions are embraced and which are pushed aside in order to open up capacities for change. Together, the “Pemulwuy” and “Barangaroo” acts consecutively evoke an ecology of perpetual renewal and revitalisation in which Eora orientations are derived from images and narratives of the past that are translated for the present purpose of contemporary identity constitution, yielding a palimpsest that resonates with Eora concepts of cyclical time. Bennelong’s line ‘I have seen destruction become creation’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.23) hereby provides the frame within which this process is to be understood, i.e. as a selective engagement with the trauma and destruction wrought by colonisation. The emphasis on cyclical recreation backgrounds the significance of historical detail: Rather than providing a birds’-eye view of Eora colonial history, which would invariably have to speak of Eora loss and trauma, the playwrights focus on an exploration of the subjective experience of this history as a way to centralise Indigenous perspectives and subjectivities. This shift moves the focus away from the colonial narrative of Indigenous disempowerment and recuperates Indigenous agency in the act of introducing an alternative regime of truth based on the verity of emotions. This alternative regime of meaning making is backed by a relativisation of the spoken word as the dominant carrier of signification in Western theatre traditions where dialogue is often constitutive for a play. In I Am Eora, the word recedes amid the dominance of competing choreographic and musical elements. These provide the backbone on which the play’s notion of embodied subjectivity becomes palpable, visually establishing a sense of community on stage: The leading characters in I Am Eora in most scenes are accompanied by a group of dancers, who amplify the physical presence on stage and whose choreography co-articulates with the script, extending the individual expression into a communal context of reception, interpretation and transmission. For example, while actress Marlene Cummins (Guguyelandji, Woppaburra) lip-synchs the words of historical activist and communal beacon Mum Shirl (Wiradjuri) played back on the

166  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora sound-­system, the dancers provide a visual interpretation of them in the background, complementing the storytelling act by a collective, embodied reading that affirms Mum Shirl’s significance to the Eora community. Furthermore, the harmonious interaction of the dancers provides an anticipatory vision of Eora capacity, when divisions are overcome in favour of collaborative communication. Therefore, rather than merely providing a visual interpretation of the content conveyed through the script, i.e. figuring as subordinate to the spoken word, the dancers provide an integral backing to the play’s aspiration of cohering the Eora community. In their harmonious synthesis of physical difference with respect to gender, Indigenous heritages, age, etc., they pre-empt and symbolically vouch for the possibility of an Eora Nation to come about and hence figure as visual testament to the playwrights’ aspirational programme. Historiography The decentring of the spoken word as dominant signifier in the play also enables the playwrights to support their concept of the Eora Nation without being negatively impacted upon by the constricting standards of Western historiography: Enoch and Heiss do not base their account on the recounting of historical events and hence do not need to abide by rules of historiographical writing. The playwrights restructure the few surviving oral and written records available on the Eora by filtering the history of colonisation through their Indigenous subjects on stage. For example, while Nooky makes passing reference to historical details such as ‘small pox [sic] on my blanket’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.10) or calling for ‘send[ing] the heads back home’ (ibid., p.10), his performance predominantly emphasises his subjective reaction to the history he engages with, evident in his lines ‘surrendid [sic] by pain’ (ibid., p.5) or ‘[n]ow tell me I ain’t got a reason to be hurtin [sic]’ (ibid., p.10). In the play, it is this emphasis on emotional processing of the past that lays the foundation for the construction of contemporary Eora culture. While much contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre focuses on absence and loss as a consequence of the colonial history, I Am Eora maximally emphasises Indigenous presence in the Sydney space: For example, from the outset, as audiences file into the auditorium, the space is already held by Doyle clad in traditional garb. As the large cast begins to people the stage, Bennelong emerges from the auditorium – a strategy that breaks the fourth wall between stage and auditorium and extends Indigenous presence to the entire theatre space. Throughout the play, the stage is never devoid of Indigenous bodies. Actors are never left for more than two minutes alone on stage, thereby incessantly disrupting the contemplation of individuals on stage by a communal fold that continuously absorbs the actors into a collective – most notable in the staging of the mourning for Bennelong in which the initial outcast is recuperated as a revered member of the

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  167 community. The play’s exclusive emphasis on Indigenous points of view and its enlisting of Indigenous Australian performance traditions affirms an enduring Eora identification. Such identification is effected through a number of strategies: literal inscription, i.e. the cast using chalk to write I Am Eora on the stage floor; as well as using projections of Sydney Basin rock engravings; use of the Dharug language; incorporation of ceremonial formats such as “Welcome to Country”; and embodiment, identifying the entire cast as being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. The playwrights avoid reference to the colonial state as an external reality existing independently from the perceiving subject.7 Non-Indigenous people do not enter the stage space. They remain a nebulous, linguistic presence mediated solely through Indigenous subjects. This focalisation of Eora subjectivities performs against the dominant discursive eradication of Indigenous subjects in mainstream imaginations of the Australian nation. While it does not constitute a balanced engagement with extra-theatrical realities in the Eora space because the practice of erasure is inversed, not overcome; it heightens the visibility of Aboriginal Sydney, validating experiences of Indigenous subjects as foundational to this space. I Am Eora engenders colonisation primarily as an Aboriginal experience: While the play in its abstract aesthetic does not reflect the ecological changes the land has undergone throughout colonisation, it also does not feature coordinates that make palpable competing presences in the Eora space. Subjectivity is accentuated with Nooky placing emphasis in his lyrics on ‘pain’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.5) and ‘hurt[-]’ (ibid., p.10), while Leha condenses his rationale for resistance down to the insight that ‘[l]iving like white [is] like living life like lie’ (ibid., p.4). With the women precluding a preoccupation with the history of colonisation and predominantly focusing on community support from a pragmatic contemporary perspective – evident in Burney’s urge for ‘co-operation between government and the community’ (ibid., p.19) –, the play reimagines the colonial reality as manageable by Indigenous subjects. Rather than bringing the quest for self-determination into view as a concrete negotiation of the limitations of the Settler state whose overcoming depends on a dialogically negotiated relation to the other, the play turns it into a matter of personal recalibration of perspective and relationship building – something achievable to the individual and community without dependence on the non-Indigenous other. While this approach opens capacities for imagining an empowered Eora community that can negotiate the colonial situation mostly on its own terms via strong leadership, I Am Eora nevertheless struggles to move beyond its bold rhetoric and avoids engaging with the complexity of the contemporary Australian political space. Transposing the reflection of colonial relations away from the material onto the philosophical plane allows conceiving of the issues in alternative (arguably more Indigenous) ways; yet, it circumscribes the play’s ability to address these issues in the terms they are engendered in. The playwrights here transpose the discourse

168  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora on Indigenous sovereignty onto a plane of argumentation that reflects a political framework dominated by Indigenous conceptions, i.e. they move beyond a preoccupation with material concerns toward an engagement with Indigenous concepts of relation and social responsibility. While their vision addresses a significant vacancy in much public debate, the imminent political feasibility of their vision is called into question when considered in relation to the extra-theatrical reality in which Enoch and Heiss develop their work – a reality that is characterised by a broad inability to conceive of Indigenous concepts independently from mainstream institutions and which is accordingly structured in mainstream terms. However, Enoch does not conceive of this utopian quality to I Am Eora’s vision as problematic but rather sees it as playing to the strengths of theatre as a medium: As he explained in our phone interview on 14 May 2013, for him, theatre is largely powerless in creating change in terms of material or political conditions but instead it has the ability to affect the ways in which people think and talk about certain issues – something that sustains communal identity and might effect broader change over a prolonged period of time. I Am Eora repeatedly uses the written word. For example, it opens with a rolling scroll of print that delivers the “Acknowledgement of Country” that addresses the audience from an Indigenous position, welcoming them onto the land of the Eora and establishing a narrative pact. Another example constitutes the script of Burney’s speech, which is projected across the stage as she delivers her presentation, opening up a competing performative frame surrounding the actresses on stage. A third instance is the rolling scroll of Dharug words that translate into English as they pass through Bennelong’s body during his final monologue. These deployments of the written word form part of a critical engagement with forms of inscription in the play that throws into relief an Eora philosophy of presence: By obscuring the process of authorship in the projections of print in contrast to the hand writing and erasing the names of the three leaders on the vertical slate, writing here emphasises a disconnection between content and source of enunciation – a source that is absent, yet still intervenes into the stage action from an indefinite place. This creates a sense of pervasive Indigenous presence – a sense that is also conveyed by the projected hands writing the names of the three historical characters –, extending beyond the visible theatre space. This form of representation on the one hand helps the playwrights to amplify their claim of Eora resilience. On the other hand, it connects the play to the Eora ontology of cyclical temporal layering and pervasive co-presence of the living and the passed – finding a form of theatrical representation for the spirit realm in the deployment of Western forms of inscription that are drawn on and reinterpreted for Eora purposes. Generally, Enoch and Heiss avow this functionalisation of Western forms of inscription as a legitimate form of Eora cultural expression, given that the written word is pervasively utilised for identification in the communication to the audience,

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  169 for example in the cast repeatedly writing the words “I am” and “Eora” in chalk onto the stage floor. Through the voice of Mum Shirl, the playwrights, however, delimit the embrace of Western forms of inscription for the constitution of Eora culture and advance a preferred form of relation through the words of Mum Shirl: She rejects the written form of communication for her project of Eora community building, relating that […] a lot of people say why don’t you take time out and go and a [sic] learn to read and write and I grind my teeth and I say to myself why waste all that silly looking time when I can be still visiting people. (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.13) Her voice emphasises that Eora subject status is tied to presence and direct personal exchange and is not achievable through the depersonalisation rendered by writing: ‘I think being confronted by people face to face […] and then I can […] tell them about the love’ (ibid., p.13). The fact that the audience is only presented with her recorded voice, while Cummins mimes her words on stage, on the one hand, heightens awareness of the absence of the actual speaking body, which figures as the core of the Eora ideology of presence. This representative strategy effects a sense of disappearance and impermanence that requires ongoing management by the community that performs against this perpetual disappearance of generations. The dancers’ interpretation of Mum Shirl’s words enacts this form of maintenance, imbuing them with vitality on stage and reactivating her concept of direct personal engagement. On stage, this form of maintenance is presented, yet in terms of its translation across to the audience and the implied advocacy for a recalibration of intracommunal relations in the extra-theatrical Eora community, the play is constrained by the theatrical frame. In foregoing direct audience involvement, the play is invariably bound to a representational mode that can only offer ideas for contemplation. However, the playwrights enlist the strengths of the medium of theatre, enabling the audience to establish a general empathetic accord to Indigenous perspectives and experiences, when inviting them to contemplate, for example, Nooky’s bitterness and rage at the oppression that his ancestors had to live through, when referencing ‘[t]he small pox [sic] on my blanket got me tossin [sic] and turnin [sic]. They cut my mother’s tongue to stop me from learnin [sic] […] Now tell me that I ain’t got a reason to be hurtin [sic]’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.10). By emphasising the emotional dimension of experience, the playwrights reinterpret and affirm the emotional as an important vehicle of knowledge. In relating the emotional impact of colonial history and interpersonal engagements, the characters’ emotionally constituted humanity is emphasised and used to instate them as reflected, coherent subjects.

170  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora A result of this turn toward the emotive is that the concept of truth becomes relational because it is grounded in subjective experience. For example, Nooky expresses his action against the government as guided by his emotional state, itself a result of the colonial experience: ‘I got the mic gripped tight with a raised fist, blinded by rage, surrounded by pain, past fuels the fire, I got a closed fist now I’m about to reach higher’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.5). Here, truth is constituted through the enunciation of the Indigenous subject, which constitutes itself as a feeling entity. Empathy is vied for in a self-contained presentation of emotional worlds, in which any reflection of the broader context of individual experience is eclipsed. The playwrights only provide sparse information about events that have shaped the history of the Eora, strongly limiting the frame in which audience members can reflect the information imparted by the individual characters. Rather than focusing on representing historical events (whose representation could be assessed as adequate or distorted), the play focuses on the communication of emotional states triggered by colonisation, which are impossible to be assessed as right or wrong because they are subjective in nature. Presented as experiential fact, the truth of emotions is positioned beyond the coloniser’s ability to dispute in the play. Thus, while it is contested among historians whether the 1789 smallpox epidemic among the Eora people was due to an accidental or intentional transmission by Settlers (Warren 2014), Nooky’s emotional response of ‘hurtin [sic]’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.10) stands apart from such discursive negotiations as an irreducible fact. While many areas of traditional Indigenous knowledge have been delegitimised under colonialism by assessing them against Western epistemological standards, the playwrights assert personal emotion as a vestige of Indigenous resistance that can supply an epistemological foundation to their Eora Nation. A drawback of I Am Eora’s representation is that characters at all times communicate veraciously, with their aspirations unanimously geared toward community cohesion. This unanimity of aspiration maps the common ground between Pemulwuy, Barangaroo and Bennelong, ultimately backgrounding the significant differences between them as largely inconsequential. Same as in Namatjira, the characters emerge as idealised: They do not serve any self-centred aims and dedicate all their efforts self-effacingly to the support of others, which casts them as martyrlike leader figures on the implied backdrop of a struggling community. Consequently, the play does not reflect communication that runs along a stratified spectrum of motivations and only presents one particular mode of personal engagement. It neither accommodates the existence of nonveracious modes of engagement like wilful manipulation, nor does it invite to consider how the subjective, monologically established truths on stage can be brought into fruitful dialogical negotiation. Subsequently, the play does not mirror life-like engagements, which constricts its ability to inspire critical engagement with conflict and community division.

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  171 To overcome strife, I Am Eora proposes a framework of ‘spirituality’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.1) that is grounded in ‘love’ for the other (ibid., p.13). In establishing a comparative link to Christianity when pointing out that her grandfather – as the chief proponent for the guiding principle of ‘love’ – was ‘as good as any Christian’ (ibid., p.13), Mum Shirl emphasises its distinct status as Indigenous. As such, it is not governed by nor practiced within a depersonalised institutional framework but is passed on through the family network. Love is presented as the principle underpinning Indigenous survival in the colonial space and is the motivating driver for all three leading characters. As an emotion, love is dependent on the affective body as a vehicle – strengthening I Am Eora’s valorisation of embodiment as the foundation for a relational Eora identity model. In the play, it is chiefly through the body and not the marginalised spoken word that relation is established on stage: Community is visually evoked by the interaction of musicians and dancers, fusing the disjointed individual bodies on stage into a collaborative whole. Mum Shirl reminiscences that ‘when we had our own spirituality, I had to pick up a guitar and my brother would play [along]’ (ibid., p.13), establishing a connection between love and music that she immediately extends by reference to ‘dancing’ (ibid., p.14) to delineate a framework for the expression of Indigenous spirituality in the play. The representation of the spirituality of “love” represented in the play through music and dance is not sexualised but rather maintained in a discrete and platonic way, as dancers keep physical contact to a minimum and any flirting gestures are not followed up by further interaction. The resultant effect is that relation emerges as of more communal than romantic nature. This effect is strengthened by I Am Eora’s exclusive presentation of romantic relationships as problematic or failed,8 exemplified, for example, in Elaine Crombie’s insecurity expressed in ‘[…] you don’t love me anymore?’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.15), Wilma Reading’s pleading with her lover to ‘[not] close the door on me’ (ibid., p.20), and lastly, Tapsell’s declaration that ‘we are capable of life without a man’ (ibid., p.20). With its focus on negatively connoted romantic love, I Am Eora favours the concept of communal nurturing over that of romantic love, expressed in Tapsell’s self-effacing ‘[w]e are the one who loves you when you have nought. We hold our heads high, when our spirits are low’ (ibid., p.20). Burney attests to the effectiveness and benefits of this communal nurturing model when pointing out that her surrogate parents ‘Nina and Billy Laing […] were brother and sister [and] gave me the ground on which I stand today’ (ibid., p.19). This concept of communal nurturing is further imbued with positive connotations through visuality, when, for example, the group of dancers provide support to the central actors in moments of alienation, for example joining Tapsell on stage after she cleaned away the chalk outline of Leha’s body. Mum Shirl’s concept of Indigenous ‘spirituality’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.13), which is premised on transmission through the family network,

172  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora implies a contrast to that of institutionalised religion. The term directs focus onto the personal, subjective negotiation of meaning, emplacement and connection to the world (Gall, Malette & Guirguis-Younger 2011, pp.159/68) – emphasising a conceptualisation of the individual as significant carrier of the social order. Even though Mum Shirl extends the concept of spirituality back into the social sphere by emphasising the love for the other, ‘tellin [sic] them about the love’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.13), this focus on the individual as primary site of concern constitutes a significant shift from Indigenous Australian ontologies of interrelation and departs from established representative conventions in contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre. These tend to represent the individual and the social body as intimately conjoined, focusing on the individual’s navigation of the social order, yet without examining the two entities as conceptually separate spheres. Enoch and Heiss’ identity concept maps new territory because it seeks to generate a systematic call on the individual to work toward social cohesion without conceptualising the social order as an essentialised pre-given entity. The playwrights thus depart from the protectionism often encountered in Indigenous community representations that stipulate the community ideal as vouchsafed in the face of colonial pressure. Enoch and Heiss, while celebrating the potential and capacity of Indigenous leadership, position themselves against such discourses by framing the community as a volatile entity in need of strengthening by individual commitment. Bennelong alerts to the volatility of his community when observing the ‘men fighting. Drunk on rum. Up there above the cliff where once we danced’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22). His main concern lies in the corrupted role-model function they serve for the children when stating: ‘the children can hear them. […] The future lays awake in its bed listening’ (ibid., p.22). This concern bespeaks a concept of education that assumes a child’s mind to be a blank slate on which the adults’ behaviour leaves its lasting imprints. Archetypical roles are thereby shown to be not conceived of as innate psychological imprints (Faber & Mayer 2009, p.308) but as learned behaviour that is passed on from generation to generation as performance scripts. Thus, the consolidation of community relations is formulated as a task to be shaped by the adults, derived from the imperative of the next generation observing their actions – a generation represented in the play by the Boy and Tapsell – who, as the youngest character embodying the Barangaroo archetype, is positioned at the threshold to maturity. The two characters quietly observe their elders, taking in their performances and processing the seen. The playwrights here introduce a radical concept of constructionism that places responsibility on the individual adults to structure their relations in exemplary ways that will persuade the youth to follow their lead and thus to perpetuate the social order. In I Am Eora, the intergenerational accord is presented as intact, with the Boy and Tapsell attentively observing and engaging with their

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  173 elders, processing the lessons imparted by them. The playwrights here exclude a consideration that, in the extra-theatrical context, this bond between the generations in Indigenous communities is often on the verge of disintegration and that many communities are struggling to engage their youth. Rather than exploring this, Enoch and Heiss merely enlist the intergenerational relation as a strategic vehicle to affirm the role of the individual as carrier of social development: The youngsters are exposed to communal life; they absorb and process it silently. The elders do not interfere in this processing but passively await the outcome of their interactions, effectively passing on the responsibility to the youth to mould the concept of Eora identity in the future. The play here offers a rationale for imbuing the younger generations with social and cultural authority as the imminent leaders of the Eora Nation – by implication also consolidating status for the playwrights and any other young Indigenous leaders in the extra-theatrical world. The playwrights premise their communal identity model on individual responsibility; yet, they do so on the basis of a definition of Indigeneity that remains largely unexamined: Bennelong in his expository rant against the dancers labels the upholding of a racialised concept of identity delusional when he barks: ‘They’re here…we’ve already interbred…we are the same people now’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.2). Yet, the playwrights nevertheless continually engage a genealogically derived concept of Indigeneity to differentiate the Eora from the non-Indigenous populace. The reliance on an all-Indigenous cast and the overall emphasis on Indigenous survival in the Eora space contribute to the instating of the category “Indigenous” as a differential identity label. Bennelong’s argumentation challenges the political project of assertion, conjuring a vision of assimilation and dissolution that calls for a performative response – a response that the play subsequently provides. Enoch and Heiss do not transcend but extend the genealogically derived identity concept into a philosophically founded communal identity construct. As they do not continue to examine Bennelong’s initial vein of provocative argumentation, they delimit considerations of a universally shared identity on Eora land in the continued emphasis on Indigeneity as important differential category. Ultimately, Indigenous identity emerges as essentialised, i.e. primarily defined by lineage and only secondarily tied to the nexus of cultural values that is advocated in the play as vouchsafing Eora resilience. The strength of this conception in terms of Indigenous assertion in the Eora space is that Indigenous identity is formulated as inalienable. This essential bond vouchsafes the ongoing communal relation between Bennelong and the dancers despite their initial dispute and constitutes the feeble link that provides an explanation for the communal mourning of Bennelong’s death: Despite significant ideological differences, the common bond of Indigeneity unites the community in the face of colonial pressure. The genealogically derived concept of Indigeneity thus supplies a horizon against which the

174  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora Eora Nation is presented as invariably finding a minimum of cohesion necessary for survival in the (post)colonial space. I Am Eora’s reliance on the genealogical concept of Indigeneity consequently ensures that the threat of complete social disintegration is discursively contained at all times. In the extra-­theatrical context, such sense of security is of course dependent on a variety of factors that require sustained management. In the play, with Eora survival thus vouchsafed, the focus is shifted onto the identity work necessary for a thriving of the community. Leadership Enoch and Heiss develop their concept of the Eora Nation by juxtaposing a range of ideas about Eora orientations that are each projected onto Bennelong, Pemulwuy and Barangaroo respectively. The cultural foundations for their remodelled Eora Nation are derived from the clash between Bennelong and Pemulwuy, while Barangaroo in her role as female ‘nurturer’ (Sydney Festival 2012) represents the site of procreation and pragmatic navigation of the colonial space. By structurally framing the play through his monologues that allow him to unfold his views in a cohesive, well-structured and persuasive manner, Bennelong is instated as discursive centre, imbuing his philosophy of inclusion and social orientation with ultimate authority. As Bennelong is played by the visibly oldest actor on stage, the playwrights (despite valorising the leadership potential of the younger generations) ultimately affirm traditional conceptions of Eora leadership as residing with mature elders – delimiting the subversion attendant on the affirmation of youth leadership and tying their vision back into the fold of traditional Eora socio-political conceptions. Conversely, the playwrights use the figure of Pemulwuy to demarcate a distinctive Eora identity that can be pitted against the non-Indigenous realm and which can provide a basis for deconstruction and reformulation. Through Pemulwuy, Eora identity is reclaimed as empowered and a source of communal pride, expressed in lines like ‘Pemulwuy. My hero. […] I want to live like you did’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.8). Through him, constructions of Eora people as feeble victims of colonisation are refuted by projecting a concept of Indigenous masculinity that is modelled on classical notions of the male protector. With his aggressively assertive stance against attempts at colonial erasure, Pemulwuy represents the past and present of the Eora Nation. His identity is structured around defence and resistance, being thus intricately bound up with external influences that dictate the terms on which his identity is conceived. With the aspiration to envisage an Eora Nation emancipated from the colonial bind, Pemulwuy alone cannot furnish the grounds on which such a nation is to be developed. Bennelong supplies such vision, advocating for a recalibration of values that orient the community toward the ideal of cohesion. As an emotive call to cohere in the face of sustained pressure of colonial influence as evident in the fighting men on the cliff (ibid.,

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  175 p.22), Bennelong’s philosophy of “overcoming” in perusal of the eternal turnover of time provides a soothing vision beyond strife and antagonism that is backed by the affective capacities of the theatrical medium. However, the utopian premises of his vision surface in a close analysis of its political shaping: The playwrights develop their concept of an Eora Nation as an emplaced community sworn to the values of solidarity, support and care, in which individuals commit themselves freely to the upholding of a culture premised on these cornerstones that are narratively derived from present-day constructions of an ancestral Eora past. This concept is developed in marked opposition to the representation of the colonial state, which in the play is defined by one-sided, coercive government action. The playwrights markedly forego defining the Eora Nation along fixed institutional lines. This representation provides a space for the articulation of alternatives to the colonial organisational form, countering its rigidity with adaptability that might yield a social order able to manage difference through discursive action rather than physical violence. Physical violence as a political instrument for Indigenous self-determination is brought into view only briefly as a spectre of what could eventuate if reconciliation is not advanced – when a dancer throws a Molotov cocktail, setting the stage backdrop on fire (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.9). Otherwise, violence is reserved for the representation of the Settler sphere, for example when the policeman shoots Leha (ibid., p.9). The play does not present the historical Pemulwuy as a guerrilla warrior per se but expressly avoids a comparison of his violence with that of the colonial state, not providing details on his actions and presenting them as merely defensive, for example when Leha describes Pemulwuy’s fight against the Settlers: ‘They shoot him. One, two, three, four. And he still lived on. And fought’ (ibid., p.8). This strategy is utilised to imply that Indigenous leadership would not be tied to the exertion of violence in its management of social relations – hence, implying that it would inadvertently provide a better alternative to current governance in the Sydney space. This mythic form of presentation, however, proceeds from an ameliorating premise that cuts away most of what is conventionally celebrated about the historical Pemulwuy among Indigenous communities (Kohen 2005) and distorts the reflection of power and its negotiation in any social context (Hokowhitu 2012, p.26). I Am Eora does not engage in a reflection of power as a social phenomenon but only as a property of the colonial system. This constricts the play’s ideological horizon, standing in contradiction with its aspiration to conceive of the Eora Nation as an independent political entity: Projecting violence as a colonial property does not allow exploring the contemporary Eora community through an independent lens – the envisioned nation is still dependent on its counterpart, the colonial administration, to account for its inherent ambivalence. The manifesting issues of intracommunal disintegration cannot be explored in their full complexity because they are framed solely as originating in the other’s influence.

176  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora Furthermore, fuzziness of definition also extends to the playwrights’ conceptual framing of “communal benefit” that leaves out of consideration the existence of factional interest: The play presents the audience solely with characters practising leadership cohered around an implied “common good”. However, the community that is arguably in need of this leadership is not embodied as a physical presence on stage. The struggling community evoked, for example, by Bennelong in his final monologue ‘I see men fighting’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.22), or as becoming evident in Crombie’s tirade against her uncommitted husband whom she addresses as somewhere in the auditorium (ibid., p.15), remains voiceless vis-à-vis the bulwark of appointed community leaders. Leadership in I Am Eora is represented as monological individual expression that is visually backed by other silent but complying bodies occupying the performance space. The ideological positions of the three “archetypes” are presented in consecutive order; there is no negotiation of ideas between them, nor a shared negotiation of a definition for the “communal good”. This helps to present their ideas as distinct positions; however, it also means that the (if only ideological) exertion of power in the play is not conceived of as a communal task but is ascribed to individual leaders alone. This presents a significant departure from traditional governance structures in Indigenous Australian communities that are premised on consensual decision making in councils of elders, where individual voice may have strong influence but is not meant to be without dialogical corrective (Bauman & Williams 2004, p.10). The leadership ideal advanced in I Am Eora, even though originating from a communal context and penned by Indigenous playwrights dedicated to consensual production, in its monological presentation on stage seems to disavow such consensual practice. It does not represent an empowered, discerning Eora community that critically engages with ideas around social cohesion and future development. While celebrating strong individuals who defy colonisation, the playwrights do not find a dialogical answer to the question of how to bring into view the cost of invasion and colonisation. The exclusive focus on upbeat celebration of survival by resilient individuals prevents an engagement with the segments of the Eora community who struggle with the impact of colonisation. Same as in much Settler discourse, the social cost of colonisation is shielded from view. The intention behind these silences is of course different: Colonial discourses have sought to write Indigenous people out of the nation’s narrative in order to legitimate Settler nation-building on Indigenous lands, while the playwrights attempt to protect the Eora communities against colonial stereotyping that often accompanies the reception of representations of dysfunctionality in Indigenous communities. Yet, the result of their representation is awkwardly similar. While Enoch and Heiss prevent an indulgence in voyeurism by lack of representation, they also forego the possibilities that an exploration of Indigenous marginalisation could open up – not reflecting Burney’s caution about such practices of representation: ‘Growing up as an Aboriginal child

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  177 looking into the mirror of our country was difficult and alienating. Your reflection in the mirror was at best ugly and distorted, and at worst nonexistent’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.19). As outlined above, the monological form of representation is also connected to the playwrights’ scaling-back of the spoken word and dialogue as the dominant carriers of colonial meaning making. This decolonising representative approach, however, here leads to the potential disenfranchisement of a segment of the Eora community that is markedly left without embodiment. Instead of locating the communal capacities for cultural recalibration on the level of collective action, the playwrights develop these from an individual base – to a degree where, for example, even the mainstream government is deconstructed into manageable individual agents in order to construct an argument for hope: While the Australian colonial administration is cast as a depersonalised destructive other by the Pemulwuy characters, Leha referring to it as ‘the system’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.3), the ‘white man’ (ibid., p.4) and Nooky as ‘tyrants’ (ibid., p.7) or ‘parliament’ (ibid., p.9), Bennelong speaks of his encounter with the King who catered to his needs as a guest: ‘I  drank with your king. He gave me a bed for a while and these fine clothes. I sang for him. He was a good sort’ (ibid., p.22). This framing of the king as an individual person with whom Bennelong engaged personally integrates the monarch into the Eora political framework of social responsibility – albeit as an idealised figure onto which the potential for hope is projected. A contradiction inherent in this idealisation is not reflected, namely that, as Head of the Commonwealth of Australia, the monarch (especially at the time of First Contact) has countenanced the actions of the abjected government. Consequently, the monarch must be seen as an unlikely partner for the advancement of Indigenous self-­ determination. Nevertheless, the play here mirrors pervasive contemporary Indigenous extra-theatrical discourses that revere the Monarch as centre to the British Empire  – ­foregoing a critical reflection of their role in the complex web of power that has stifled Indigenous self-determination efforts (Gold 2013). Such critical lens only emerges in the deictic reference to Bennelong’s clothes (which are partially printed with white bones) but is absent in the (non-ironic) verbal delivery of the script. Through the figure of Linda Burney, the playwrights purport that the present Government can undergo transformation if infiltrated by Indigenous individuals who can effect change from within the system. Similar to Bennelong’s singling out of the King, Burney articulates the hope for overcoming systemic oppression by discursively remodelling the abjected Government into a group of individuals who can be turned into allies: “Bill O’Reilly is […] a native of South Australia and […] tells me his heritage is mostly Irish. This dignified older man […] wants to make things better” (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.18). Conversely, when stating ‘in [the] context [of Parliament], I observe the significant Aboriginal protocol of acknowledgement of country’ (ibid., p.17), she labels the adoption of

178  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora Aboriginal protocols into the practice of Parliament a significant instance of “indigenising” the system. The playwrights here draw on broad ideas of political participation that are not critically reflected in relation to extratheatrical limitations: The play celebrates Burney’s 2003 election as the advent of a new era in politics on Eora land; however, in addition to cutting the references to her policy areas Education, Disability Services and Natural Resources from her original maiden speech (Burney 2003), the playwrights also do not specify the concrete policies Burney was working on in her time in office, for example the Keep Them Safe Child Protection Services reform that – for the number of Aboriginal children affected by this package – sparked strong opposition from Indigenous communities (NSW Gov 2010). Since policies are never unequivocally embraced by all, such reference would have invariably alerted to the factional divisions among the extratheatrical Eora community. The playwrights, however, rather eclipse these divisions than to critically explore them. They model a cultural imaginary on the grounds of a selectively generated myth that celebrates moments of achievement and counter-hegemonic assertion. One major differential category that the playwrights consciously downplay in their conception of the Eora Nation is that of “class”: Even though the costumes of Burney (an elegant business outfit with eye-catching jewellery) and Leha (tracksuit pants and Hip Hop attire) stand in stark opposition to one another and emphasise difference in socio-economic standing, the playwrights bridge these differences by postulating that their shared communal orientation and grappling with the category of “race” in the intercultural sphere would annul the significance of “class” in the Eora Nation. The play includes no scepticism toward either Burney’s or Leha’s characters’ capability of representing the entire Eora community. It is implied that these leaders will have an innate understanding of the needs of the Eora people merely on the grounds of their Indigeneity and their agenda of supporting others. The playwrights here deliberately avoid the engagement with class as a strong alienating factor in the contemporary extra-theatrical Eora community, where solidarity has been affected especially by the rise of disparities in socio-economic status among the people. For example, the contentions over the redevelopment of Redfern’s iconic Aboriginal housing estate The Block toward a more profitable venture are a case in point, where the community is split over the question of either embracing a corporate management model or sticking to a grassroots community approach (Bagnall 2014). As I Am Eora seeks to integrate both sides of the argument by having Indigenous people fully participate in mainstream institutions and upholding the integrity of traditional Eora orientations, the “overlooking” of issues of class spares the playwrights the task of having to work through the pragmatic incongruities of their proposed concept. This intentional blank constitutes one of the major weaknesses of Enoch and Heiss’ work because the question of socioeconomic development is intricately interwoven with a concept of Eora

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  179 sovereignty. If Eora sovereignty depends on the articulation of finding ‘another way to live’ (chorus of the closing song She Cried; Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.23), then the engagement with economic systems is a prime site that needs to complement the mythological structuring of the Eora Nation in order to provide a sound foundation to the management of relationships in the Eora space. Gender A final point of analysis concerns the gendered representation of relationships in I Am Eora. The marked stratification of society according to gender and age is a general characteristic of many Indigenous Australian nations that dates back to pre-colonial times. Enoch and Heiss reflect this tradition and integrate it into their call for improved community relations – with the dividing lines between “young & old” and “men & women” becoming the site of cultural work. As outlined above, Enoch and Heiss develop a rationale for the valorisation of the young generation as future leaders. Their engagement with questions of gender, however, exposes the volatility of community relations and, as one of the few foci of the play, provides a window into a somewhat critical reflection of intracultural challenges facing the Eora community. The play implies that, in pre-colonial times, Eora genders were conceived as functionally divided: In his final monologue, Bennelong highlights that the traditional role of men was defined as maintaining the stories and ceremonies of Eora Country, while the women provided the physical nurturing, conveyed also in the pervasive trope of Barangaroo’s fishing routines – with children constituting the bond that holds men and women together. Throughout the play, female identity constitution in the Eora space is presented as relatively unproblematic, being mostly identified with the ability to give birth – visualised in the heavily pregnant Tapsell and the adoption of the role as nurturer, which is conceived as innately structuring the female’s disposition toward care. In different ways, all women on stage embrace their role as collaborating members of the community, for example Crombie gently holds Bennelong’s body in the final tableau (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.23), Burney dedicates herself as Politician to helping Aboriginal people to ‘move away from the vicious cycle of poverty and welfare’ (ibid., p.19) and Tapsell declares her acceptance of self-efface when proclaiming ‘[w]e are the one who loves you when you have nought. We hold our heads high, when our spirits are low’ (ibid., p.20). In the absence of refutation of this role, it becomes unmarked and defaulted. While the idea of diversity and heterogeneity of Indigenous Australia is conveyed in the casting of the show, which refutes the stereotypical expectation of a unitary “Indigenous Australian look”, the playwrights fall behind their aspiration in terms of gender and present a very conservative, limited concept of femininity. Their representative approach exhausts ideas of diversity on the level of external

180  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora appearance and internally coheres the female role around stereotypical ideas of procreation and nurturing. This limited vision is neither transcended in the representation of professionally successful women like Burney as Politician because her quest is brought back into the fold of female concern for the community. Nor does Tapsell’s emancipatory gesture subvert the bastions of Eora femininity: Though she rejects the romantic quest when declaring, ‘[w]e are capable of life without a man’ (ibid., p.20), she nevertheless affirms and embraces the cornerstones of the nurturing role when forsaking individual needs at the service of others (ibid., p.20). This reversion in the play is marked as a liberation from alien (i.e. individualistic) ideas that are implied to damage the communal fabric in a comparable way as Western concepts of private ownership that undermine male solidarity (ibid., p.22). While the women emerge in the play as the reliable foundation to the community, the role of men is less well defined and remains a site of problematic identity constitution. Except for Leha and Bennelong, who figure as potential leader figures in the play, men in I Am Eora are presented as squabbling, fighting and divided, narratively evoked in Bennelong’s final monologue and visually presented in his squabble with a dancer in the exposition (ibid., p.2). Bennelong identifies the influx of strangers into Eora land and the adoption of alien concepts and influences as the reason for social upheaval in the time of First Contact (ibid., p.22). The overall representative approach extends this verdict: While the women are engaging mostly in collaborative action, interactions between men are dominated by aggression. Even Bennelong, who in the end of the play is instated as the spokesperson for an approach of peaceful sharing of the land, enters the stage space in the exposition yelling abuse and provoking an altercation (ibid., p.2), evoking an image of social disarray and communal infighting. Even though Leha contains the fight and reinstates order on stage, the condescending language he later deploys to refer to Bennelong, for example ‘worm tongue’ and ‘sucker’ (ibid., p.3), points to a male culture of engagement that is premised on denigration of the other. With the Boy listening to and observing him, Bennelong’s caution that ‘[t] he future lays in its bed listening’ (ibid., p.22) highlights that this culture of conflict resolution by denigration is being actively promulgated among the men concurrently to the attempts at community consolidation that enlist a collaborative approach. Since the Boy remains quiet throughout the play and – contrary to Tapsell – does not reveal his interpretation of the lessons imparted on stage, the playwrights leave it open as to how Eora masculinity might develop in the future. As men, neither Pemulwuy nor Bennelong are presented as productively supporting the communal fabric: Pemulwuy’s aggressive stance leads to his death and turns him into an absent father to the Boy, while Bennelong is presented as a frail old man on the verge of death and, critically, not as the husband and father of Barangaroo’s children that he historically was. This creates a sense of isolation around him that is only partially recuperated in

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  181 the communal mourning of his death. The deaths of Leha and Bennelong highlight the absence of a productive concept of masculinity in I Am Eora. As the intercultural space is still conceived as a battle zone between the Eora and Settlers, the warrior role of Pemulwuy – even though not directly supporting communal cohesion – is still needed. However, Bennelong heralds the advent of a new era of peace and collaboration in which the warrior no longer constitutes a beneficial identificatory figure to the community. Nevertheless, the play does not offer an indication as to how this gap might be addressed in the future. Ultimately, it leaves its communal vision resting on a volatile foundation that is held by women alone who forsake their desire for romantic love and dependable men in their lives and accept their role as carers and nurturers without support from the men. A vision of a balanced community that could successfully embody the Eora Nation is therefore not generated upon conclusion of the play, leaving the Eora nation-­building project still unfinished.

Conclusion Enoch’s commission brief was to create a work that articulates the Aboriginal stories of Sydney as part of the city’s multicultural narrative (Sydney Festival 2012). This brief is intimately connected to the political agenda of Enoch’s work, which is of a two-fold nature: On the one hand, as explained in our phone interview on 9 April 2013, he seeks to further the recuperation and development of distinctive Indigenous Australian cultural identities, holding on to the identity label of “Indigenous” as a tool in the fight for social justice and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty in Australia. His advocacy for developing cultural heterogeneity in the Australian nation is premised on acceptance of cultural differences as irreducible. Consequently, he works against historically dominant tendencies that seek to generate and uphold a homogenous, clearly definable Australian national identity. On the other hand, in his artistic and political aspirations, Enoch also seeks to connect Indigenous Australian people to mainstream Australia in terms of lobbying for inclusion and equal partaking in political, economic, social and cultural opportunities. He wants Indigenous experiences, ontologies and philosophies appreciated as containing resonances with (and instructive potential for) broader questions facing humanity across the globe, expressed in I Am Eora’s reworking of the concept of Country and its resonances with notions of deep time. However, as delineated in the analysis, this aspiration in I Am Eora is heavily circumscribed by the representative approach that largely eclipses a consideration of the nexus of mainstream Australian and Eora culture. I Am Eora’s strength lies in its attempt to articulate a response to the colonial challenge from within the Eora cosmos, by attempting to translate traditional parameters of identification, i.e. land and people, into the contemporary situation. The novelty of Enoch and Heiss’ approach resides in their enlisting of a highly deconstructive approach in the engagement with traditional conceptions of Indigenous cultures, attempting to legitimate a

182  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora communal ideal on the basis of individual accountability and commitment. Instead of discarding the pillars of pre-colonial Eora identifications, they carefully remodel and extend them to offer guidance in the project of nation-­ building. The inherent contradictions and limitations identified in their approach thereby do not delimit the significance of their bold undertaking. The drawbacks of their approach lie in the attempt to maintain the concept of the Eora Nation as maximally inclusive for Indigenous people: Enoch and Heiss avoid a critical engagement with the complexities and challenges facing the extra-theatrical Eora community, transposing their reflections onto a plane of ideological surmising. In doing so, they miss the opportunity to engage critically with pragmatic challenges that in the extra-theatrical context stand in the way of a cohesive Eora community. Instead, their vision is backed by problematic shorthand representations that create contradictions between the aspiration of expressing diversity and valorising the communal on the one hand, and a reification of stereotypical images that contravene these ideals on the other hand. Enoch’s intention of challenging the community to conceive of Eora identity in novel ways and to depart from cherished touchstones for self-identification (Enoch 2011) must therefore be assessed as only having been partially realised. The exclusions fall short of preparing the ground for a rigorous contemplation of the playwrights’ vision. Similar to Germaine Greer, however, they provide an entryway into a contemplation of the capacities and challenges for Indigenous self-determination in contemporary Australia.

Notes 1 About half of Sydney’s local Indigenous population had perished from the effects of the 1789 smallpox epidemic (Heiss 2002, p.12). 2 Bennelong is the only role in I Am Eora embodied by a single actor. Pemulwuy and Barangaroo were played by multiple actors simultaneously and their identification in the unpublished rehearsal script is inconsistent. Hence, I use the actors’ names when referencing the Pemulwuy and Barangaroo roles in specific scenes in order to guide the reader through the analysis. As the play was only staged for one season, the actors’ names enable stable identification. 3 Played on alternating nights by Ian Harrison and Jarad Simon. 4 For example, first female Indigenous Member of the New South Wales Parliament, Linda Burney, as part of the cast, delivers an abridged version of her 2003 maiden speech. 5 Which in the context of I Am Eora is polysemic: It could denote human ancestors or alternatively mythical creators from the Dreaming. 6 A term first introduced by Georg Lukács, denoting the dissolution of orientational religious frameworks within Western societies since the period of the Enlightenment (1920, pp.23/24). 7 The cost of colonisation (e.g. traumatised, struggling communities, alienated land etc.) remain outside of the play’s representative realm and constrict the playwrights’ ability to transcend the monological structure of colonial accounts of Australian histories. 8 The fact that the historical Bennelong and Barangaroo were married and had children together (Karskens 2014) is not expressed in the play.

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  183

References Bagnall, G 2014, ‘The Block protesters maintain the rage’, Stringer Independent News, 14 July, viewed 4 April 2019, http://thestringer.com.au/the-block-­ protesters-maintain-the-rage-8047#.V7K40WVfZd1 Bauman, T & Williams, R 2004, The business of process, research discussion paper, no.13, AIATSIS, Canberra, viewed 4 April 2019, http://aiatsis.gov.au/ sites/default/files/products/discussion_paper/bauman-williams-dp13-business-­ process-indigenous-decision-making-disputes-land.pdf Benterrak, K, Muecke, S & Roe, P 1984, Reading the country, Freemantle Arts Centre, Freemantle. Birch, T 2003, ‘Correspondence’, in D Malouf (ed.), Made in England, quarterly essay, no.12, Black Inc., Collingwood, pp.84–87. Bradford Sykes, L 2012, ‘REVIEW: I Am Eora’, Crikey, 17 January, viewed 4 April 2019, http://blogs.crikey.com.au/curtaincall/2012/01/17/review-i-ameora-sydney-festival-carriageworks/ Bradley, L 2000, ‘Choosing good ground’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.37, pp.59–67. Burney, L 2003, ‘Inaugural speech’, Parliament of New South Wales, 6 May, viewed 4 April 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20110331102638/http://www. parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20030506036 Canny, A & McCrum D (dir) 2011, Artscape: Anatomy: Eye, TV documentary, ABC TV, Australia. Duff, N 2014, What’s needed to prove Native Title?, research discussion paper, no.35, AIATSIS, Canberra, viewed 4 April 2019, http://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/­ default/files/products/discussion_paper/whats-needed-to-prove-native-title.pdf Enoch, W (dir) 2011, I Am Eora. TV documentary, Studio TV, Sydney. Enoch, W & Heiss, A 2012, I Am Eora, unpublished manuscript supplied by arrangement with the Licensor, Anita Heiss, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd, Sydney Festival, Sydney. Everett, K 2009, ‘Welcome to country…not’, Oceania, vol.79, no.1, pp.53–64. Faber, M & Mayer, J 2009, ‘Resonance to archetypes in media’, Journal of Research in Personality, vol.43, pp.307–22. Gallasch, K 2011, ‘Keith Gallasch: interview, Wesley Enoch, director, I Am Eora’, RealTime Arts, no.106, pp.14/16, viewed 4 April 2019, www.realtimearts.net/ article/issue106/10500 Gall, TL, Malette, J & Guirguis-Younger, M 2011, ‘Spirituality & religiousness: a diversity of definitions’, Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, vol.13, no.3, pp.158–81. Gold, T 2013, ‘Britain’s monarchy is an invocation of a reactionary past’, The Guardian, 27 May, viewed 4 April 2019, www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2013/may/26/britain-monarchy-reactionary-past Greer, G 2003, Whitefella jump up: the shortest way to nationhood, quarterly essay, no.11, Black Inc., Collingwood, pp.1–78. Heiss, A 2012, Am I Black enough for you? Bantam, Sydney. ——— 2002, ‘An introduction to the people and place of Gadigal country’, in A Heiss (ed.), Life in Gadigal country, Gadigal Information Service, Strawberry Hills, pp.8–19. Hinkson, M 2011, ‘Exploring ‘Aboriginal’ sites in Sydney: a shifting politics of place?’, Aboriginal History, vol.26, pp.62–77.

184  Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora Hokowhitu, B 2012, ‘Producing elite Indigenous masculinities’, Settler Colonial Studies, vol.2, no.2, pp.23–48. Jackson, K 2012, I Am Eora, theatre blog post, 12 January, viewed 4 April 2019, www.kjtheatrediary.com/2012/01/i-am-eora.html Karskens, G 2014, ‘Barangaroo and the Eora fisherwomen’, Dictionary of Sydney, viewed 4 April 2019, www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/barangaroo_and_the_ eora_fisherwomen#page=2&ref= Kohen, J 2005, ‘Pemulwuy (1750–1802)’, in M Nolan (ed.), Australian dictionary of biography, Australian National University Press, Canberra, viewed 4 April 2019, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pemulwuy-13147/text23797 Langton, M 2003, ‘Aboriginal art and film:  the politics of representation’, in M  Grossman (ed.), Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, pp.109–24. Locke, J 1984, Two treatises of government, vol. 2, Dent, London. Lukács, G 1920, Theorie des Romans, Paul Cassirer, Berlin, viewed 4 April 2019, www.gutenberg.org/files/26972/26972-h/26972-h.htm Maloney, S 2013, ‘Pemulwuy & Black Cesar’, The Monthly, March, p.58. Merriam Webster n.d., Simple definition of nation, viewed 4 April 2019, www. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation Millett, P 2003, ‘Correspondence’, in D Malouf (ed.), Made in England, quarterly essay, no.12, Black Inc., Collingwood, pp.121–26. New South Wales Government (NSW Gov) 2010, ‘Media release. Measuring impact of reforms on Aboriginal families’, keepthemsafe.nsw.gov.au, 16 March, viewed 4 April 2019, www.keepthemsafe.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0003/83064/KTS_AIS_media_release.pdf Oxford Dictionaries n.d., Definition of nation. Def. 1, Oxford University Press, viewed 4 Aprili 2019, www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/nation Reading Australia n.d., Profile Anita Heiss, viewed 4 April 2019, https://­ readingaustralia.com.au/authors/anita-heiss-2/ Rose, DB 2008, ‘Dreaming ecology: beyond the between’, Religion & Literature, vol.40, no.1, pp.109–22. ——— 2005, ‘An Indigenous philosophical ecology: situating the human’, Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol.16, no.3, pp.294–305. Rose, D, James, D & Watson, C 2003, Indigenous kinship with the natural world in NSW, New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service, Hurstville, viewed 4 April 2019, www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/ IndigenousKinship.pdf Rumsey, A 1993, ‘Language and territoriality in Aboriginal Australia’, in C  ­Yallop  & M Walsh (eds.), Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia, ­Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp.191–206. Shand, J 2012, ‘Archetypes evoke spirit of place’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January, viewed 4 April 2019, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/­ archetypes-evoke-spirit-of-place-20120109-1pro5.html Shaw, W 2013, ‘Redfern as the heart(h): living (Black) in Inner Sydney’, Geographical Research, vol.51, no.3, pp.257–68. Simmonds, D 2012, Sydney Festival – I Am Eora, theatre blog post, 9 January, viewed 4 April 2019, www.stagenoise.com/review/1803 Smith, K 2013, ‘Woollarawarre Bennelong’, Dictionary of Sydney, viewed 4 April 2019, www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woollarawarre_bennelong

Wesley Enoch & Anita Heiss’ I Am Eora  185 ——— 2009, ‘Bennelong among his people’, Aboriginal History, vol.33, pp.7–30. Sorensen, R 2010, ‘Director Wesley Enoch makes stage history’, The ­Australian, 25 June, viewed 4 April 2019, www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/directorwesley-enoch-makes-stage-history/news-story/8d8336a41d908b374b322 dba90f16666 Stiff Gins 2012, I am, blog post, viewed 25 July 2015, www.stiffgins.net/www. stiffgins.net/Blog/Entries/2012/2/12_I_Am.html Supple, A 2012, I Am Eora|Sydney Festival, theatre blog post, 9 January, viewed 4 April 2019, http://augustasupple.com/2012/01/i-am-eora-sydney-festival/ Sydney Festival 2012, Free program. I Am Eora, Sydney Festival, Sydney. ——— n.d., I Am Eora, unpublished video recording. Taylor, A 2015, ‘Wesley Enoch appointed new Sydney Festival artistic director’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June, viewed 4 April 2019, www.smh.com.au/ entertainment/art-and-design/wesley-enoch-appointed-new-sydney-festival-­ artistic-director-20150601-ghed7b.html Turner, B 2011, ‘Eora epic: Sydney’s Dreamtime legacy’, Australian Financial Review, 29 September, viewed 4 April 2019, www.afr.com/lifestyle/artsand-entertainment/theatre-and-dance/eora-epic-sydneys-dreamtime-legacy20110928-i47d6#ixzz3iT4CzX9s Waites, J 2012, I Am Eora: whitefellas take note, theatre blog post, 10 January, viewed 3 May 2016, http://jameswaites.ilatech.org/?p=7079 Warren, C 2014, ‘Smallpox at Sydney Cove – who, when, why?’, Journal of ­Australian Studies, vol.38, no.1, pp.68–86. Watson, I 1997, ‘Indigenous peoples’ law-ways: survival against the colonial state’, Feminist Law Journal, vol.8, no.1, pp.39–58. Woodroffe, R 1993, ‘Pemulwuy’, Ngoonjook, November, pp.23–31.

Conclusion

Considering the influence of cultural protocol and production context on Indigenous Australian theatre enables a deeper appreciation of its aesthetics and communicative challenges. As demonstrated in the case studies, this investigative approach sites the artists’ practice within its broader historical, social, cultural and political context, bringing to the fore how the staged work is determined by a multitude of stakeholders, agendas and constraints. By appreciating the heterogeneous relations engendered in the devising process, academic interpretation can explore the stage work through an expanded framework that understands performance not just as an artistic but also as a socially and culturally productive practice. This allows appraising Indigenous theatre within the full breadth of its performative function, forestalling a reading only in light of artistic considerations that often only provide a limited understanding of its overall signification. As a case in point, by considering who conceived and staged a play predominantly for which audience, such as done for I Am Eora, can provide a clue as to why its aesthetics and narrative structure may not command full mainstream appeal but how these connect to a cultural and political purpose, offering alternative coordinates for its appreciation. The approach extends significant previous studies into Indigenous ­Australian theatre that documented past practice, and responds to the call for a contextualised critique that values performance works within their culturally determined contexts (Casey 2004, p.86; Joseph 2016, pp.94/95). For example, the study builds on the ground-breaking work of Maryrose Casey who, through her historically oriented studies, has helped to build a publicly accessible archive of contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre, contextualising and describing the genesis of the sector within its broader socio-political context (esp. Casey 2004). My study complements this archive through a comprehensive review of works staged over the past 20  years, providing insight into thematic foci and aesthetic trends now available for further academic enquiry. The present study also expands Casey’s approach through a critical analysis of the plays’ conceptual and aesthetic framings. Rather than only describing the works for documentational purposes, the approach critically examines how the plays intervene into

Conclusion  187 dominant discourse formations, how they adapt traditional ontologies and position Indigenous subjects within the contemporary Australian space. This project connects intimately to the other vein in which contemporary Indigenous Australian theatre has been subject to academic enquiry in the past, namely taking its cue from deconstructive explorations as offered by scholars like Joanne Tompkins, Helen Gilbert, Helena Grehan and Denise Varney. These have insightfully applied spatial, psychoanalytical and cultural theories to the study of contemporary Australian theatre (Gilbert 2013; Grehan 2009, 2010; Tompkins 2006; Varney 2011), elucidating particular aspects of plays in order to appreciate the transformative cultural work being undertaken in Indigenous performing arts. While these have provided invaluable instructional input, the approach adopted in this book expands the conceptual frame by not only considering the final representation and performance on stage but also pinpointing what has been left out of the representational frame. It thoroughly considers the process of identity construction on stage, taking into account what has been embraced as well as what has been rejected in order to perform identity on the stage. By using the wider cultural context as instructive backdrop to such consideration, it becomes possible to spell out the intricacies of cultural transformation performed in the plays rather than merely stating that this kind of work is done in Indigenous Australian theatre. Most reviews seek to affirm Indigenous Australian theatre along these lines; however, they most often struggle to articulate substantial critique due to a lack of familiarity with the cultural coordinates in transformation (Joseph 2016, pp.94/95). Discussing the works within their broader historical, social, cultural and political context here offers a prototype for such a contextualised, dramaturgically based critique that seeks to appraise Indigenous Australian theatre within an appropriate critical framework. By closely engaging with those cultural coordinates, it becomes possible to speak about the ways in which these enable or possibly may stand in the way of realising the artists’ political and artistic agendas. This approach discusses Indigenous Australian theatre practice in terms of its co-articulation with as well as its divergence from traditional ontologies as conveyed through the literature and through interviews with stakeholders involved in the production process. Yet, rather than reverting back to critical approaches that relate findings to an arbitrary notion of authenticity, and limiting the appraisal of theatrical practice; this approach seeks to generate an acute understanding of how the work intervenes and reconfigures cultural coordinates and discourses. Thereby, it appreciates practice as dynamic and transformative, assessing work predominantly against the aspirational horizon as delineated by the artists themselves and offering a perspective on that. Since artists often frame their aspirational horizon around the aims of inclusion, discursive and historiographical intervention and cultural assertion, seeking to generate a space in which Indigenous subjectivities can be articulated and celebrated, intentionality

188  Conclusion and the degree of its successful translation on stage here can supply productive entryways into academic enquiry – even if this contravenes central tenets of postmodern literary critique that are otherwise informing the critical approach adopted here. The case studies thereby shed light on the emblematic challenges that can arise in the attempt to translate particular Indigenous Australian ontologies onto the contemporary stage. The case studies explore the artists’ strategies in navigating questions of inter- and intracultural community building. The analyses trace how the playwrights/directors seek to rebut negative stereotypisation of Indigenous Australian peoples in the public sphere by, for example celebrating Western Aranda and Eora cultures as productive cultural systems that have maintained bindingness for Indigenous subjects. Positioning themselves against pervasive public narratives about Indigeneity that focus on cultural disintegration, they seek to emphasise strength and vitality of Indigenous cultural orientations in the face of colonial pressure, proposing their respective relational identity models as potent vehicles for a recalibration of social relations in Australia. Both Namatjira and I Am Eora rewrite the history of Australian intercultural relations from a marginalised perspective, asserting an alternative voice and understanding of the dynamics of colonisation as a corrective to what is presented as dominating, disintegrating non-Indigenous conceptions of identification. Both approaches open up potential but the decisive aim to concentrate on overtly positive narratives of cultural navigation necessarily produces some topical and formal problems. As shown, the artists tackle the objectives of assertion and affirmation by drawing on a range of narrative and theatrical strategies that each have their strengths and limitations. Both Namatjira and I Am Eora are characterised by a strong tendency to suggest coherence and to argue continuity for their cultural frameworks, which on the one hand draws out a connecting tissue of identification but on the other hand glosses over complexities that invariably constitute and govern extra-theatrical ­identities – be it on individual or communal level. In the case of Namatjira, the political agenda is determined by an attempt to affirm Western Aranda resilience and capacity within the fold of the Australian mainstream nation. In I Am Eora, the agenda is to work toward community cohesion through a reconfiguration of cultural values in order to arrive at a concept of a sovereign Eora Nation as coexisting with the broader mainstream nation. As shown, the traditional elements which the playwrights/directors selectively draw on to back these agendas undergo transformation in the process of adaptation, positing selected elements as foundational to the formulation of contemporary Western Aranda and Eora identities while marginalising others. Especially, the multidimensional concept of Country is notably affected by such reformulation: Deborah Bird Rose points out that Indigenous Australian cultures ‘re-shap[e] the term “country” […] from a common noun to a proper noun. [Imbuing the land] with a consciousness, and a will toward life’ (Rose 2008, pp.110/11).

Conclusion  189 The centrality of land as the touchstone for identity formation is reflected in the plays: In both works, the playwrights emphasise land as the horizon in which identities are grounded, repeatedly drawing attention to the emplacement of characters within a particular Country from which sustenance is drawn, e.g. the positive rendition in Namatjira of Albert and Rex both growing up in the bush and, later on, making their living off landscape painting, or I Am Eora’s identification of people with land as most clearly expressed in Bennelong’s lines framing the beginning and end of the play: ‘Eora land. I give my life to here. I am Eora’ (Enoch & Heiss 2012, pp.3/23). However, the aspiration to map the common ground between Western Aranda and non-Indigenous cultural orientations in the case of Namatjira, and the grappling with the task of community building in an urban landscape under the auspices of an ideology of individual social responsibility in the case of I Am Eora, each effect a backgrounding of some of the vital dimensions of Indigenous Australian relations to land. For many Indigenous people, the conceptualisation of Country as a sentient living entity, which encodes a particular relationship of reciprocal care, can be assumed to be instated as default and hence would complement the understanding of the plays’ communicative horizons. However, the forms of representation in the plays bespeak an engagement with the (post)colonial material realities on Indigenous Australian lands, such as economic marginalisation and circumscribed political influence, that the artists judiciously yet precariously navigate. The agenda of assertion and affirmation – while aiming at a varied and empowering vocabulary in the cultural domain – here reveals the limits of self-determination vis-àvis a still constraining, unreconciled colonial order and the challenges of translating Indigenous concepts into this cultural and political space. As Enoch conceded in a phone interview on 14 May 2013, theatre practice only has limited influence on these material conditions and can merely work on these by advocating to change the terms in which such realities are discursively reflected and (not) perpetuated. Namatjira and I Am Eora each reveal the potentials and resistances of cultural translation on the stage when channelled through strict artistic protocols as well as political agendas: Namatjira seeks to forge a space for the appreciation of Western Aranda culture in the mainstream nation by connecting the two cultural frameworks under a highly constructed universal ideology of Christian derivation. It constructs a narrative of Albert Namatjira’s life that resonates with both cultural frameworks, mapping the common ground between them to communicate fundamental commensurability and to reduce experiences of difference for the audience. This strategy is employed to open pathways for intercultural appreciation, as expressed in Big hART’s credo – ‘It’s much harder to hurt someone if you know their story’ (Big hART n.d.). The drawback of this approach is that particularities of Western Aranda identifications and idiosyncrasies of Albert Namatjira’s biography and of his extended family do not find their point of

190  Conclusion articulation in the play but are excluded from representation. Ultimately, the play’s ability to appraise Western Aranda culture and capacity is curtailed to the same degree as it attempts to level out demarcations of difference and complexity in the belief that respect can only be built from an experience of commonality rather than exposure to difference. The audience is hence predominantly exposed to the familiar within the other. It is not challenged to recognise and work through the resistances within identity conceptions, which calls into question Namatjira’s capacity to push for a reflected engagement with Western Aranda subjectivity as a recognisable Australian framework in its own right. Rather, the play offers a low-level entry-point into cross-cultural engagement that invites non-­I ndigenous audiences into a contemplation of their implication in Australian colonial history. As such, the play offers a timely yet not radical intervention into ongoing extra-theatrical discourses that centre on Indigenous representation in the Australian nation. It adds to the growing body of work that shifts the focus away from a preoccupation with the destructive impacts of colonisation toward an inventory and celebration of resilience in Indigenous communities. In its community cultural development approach, Big hART furthermore seeks to actively create a sustained positive impact on the material conditions that affect the involved remote Indigenous Australian communities, for example, by expanding the ways in which the Namatjira family can build a livelihood and engage with mainstream society beyond the theatre space – even if this expansion is still grounded in an acceptance of an economic order that in the context of the play is marked as part of the colonial system that delimits the unfolding of Western Aranda agency. In this way, the play must nevertheless be recognised as an important steppingstone in the long road to decolonisation that requires ‘stories […], symbols [and] shared experiences to move forward’ (Enoch 2001, p.11) – a process that is constituted by a multitude of singular expressions, interventions and encounters that together combine to influence public imaginations of the Australian nation (Rankin 2018, p.vi). I Am Eora intervenes into such discourses by centralising Indigenous identity constitution and constructing a concept for a sovereign Eora Nation that is projected beyond the institution of the Australian nation state. A prime strategy that Enoch and Heiss employ in their quest is to reappraise Eora knowledge as an embodied and subjective practice  – ­projecting Indigenous subjectivities beyond constricting boundaries of Western knowledge paradigms and Indigenous community mythologies. In the face of destructive colonial impact, the playwrights assert the perceiving and feeling individual as the seed from which Eora culture can be grown. Their approach depicts community as a conglomerate of individuals that are positioned as champions of the communal cause. In order to arrive at this appraisal of social responsibility, Enoch and Heiss largely background traditional Eora ontologies. The assertion of Indigenous survival and cultural renaissance is articulated through a stripping back of distinctive

Conclusion  191 particularities of traditional Eora practice, which are relegated to the past and reinterpreted as arbitrary vehicles for a posited deeper enduring cultural orientation. This becomes, for example, explicit in the representation of traditional fishing practice that is evoked as the central image of community provision and coherence in the past: With the projection of the giant net catching all fish, it is stripped off its capacity for material provision and in the present is recast as a ritual that coheres the group of actors into a collaborative performative routine (Enoch & Heiss 2012, p.13). This shift from the material to the symbolical dimension of cultural practice enables the playwrights to claim continuity between the past and the present and provides the grounds on which they construct their guiding framework for community building in the present. While their framework provides an important response to the disintegrating influence of colonialism on the Eora from a position endorsed by the community, this response remains limited in its power due to the silences that Enoch and Heiss built into their account of the Eora Nation: Their attempt at creating cohesion within the Eora space relies to a large extent on overriding the communal parameters of traditional Eora culture and on avoiding an engagement with the problems of historically grown identifications in this space – be they defined by gender, class or relation to the non-Indigenous populace. Enoch and Heiss advance their vision of a sovereign Eora Nation on the premise that Indigenous and non-Indigenous identifications can be clearly divided from each other in the Eora space and be productively put in relation to each other after the question of Indigenous cohesion is addressed. Their attempt at foregoing an engagement with non-Indigenous influences on Eora identity in order to articulate a vision of a sovereign Eora Nation thus has an ambivalent effect: On the one hand, it provides a powerful vision of Indigenous sovereignty in the (post)colonial state; but on the other hand, in this space, the term sovereignty is mostly engaged with as a myth rather than being filled with political import. Enoch and Heiss’ vision is constrained by their radical aspiration toward autonomy that forecloses an engagement with non-Indigenous Australia because it blocks a reflection of complex processes and challenges of identity constitution, which are never contained to just one sphere within a heterogenic environment. Due to the broad and indeterminate premises on which the concept of Eora identity is constructed, Enoch and Heiss’ intervention into postcolonial discourses consequently commends itself for its symbolical power rather than for a capacity to inspire critically reflected engagement with the pragmatics of living in contemporary Australia. With these limitations duly mapped, it is important to also acknowledge the strengths and achievements of the two plays: Instating Indigeneity positively as a heterogeneous identification in the public domain provides a corrective to colonial accounts that have cut Indigenous people’s voices out of the national conversation. The increasing visibility and articulation of Indigenous artists in such discourses not only empowers individuals to

192  Conclusion open up new trajectories but – as demonstrated in the case of the Namatjira Project – can reinvigorate and inspire communities to redefine their relations along parameters that productively mediate the old and the new. The emerging poetics of contemporary Indigenous Australian performing arts practice evidence such translation in their interlinking of Indigenous with Western performance traditions in order to utilise the strengths and expressive capabilities of both in articulating concepts of self and other. Over the past 20 years, a growing inclusion of Indigenous artists within the mainstage performing arts landscape in Australia has been noticeable. Collaborative productions such as Wesley Enoch & Tom Wright’s Black Diggers (2014/15) set a new standard in respectful and culturally appropriate engagement with Indigenous stories. They point the way forward from mere inclusion of Indigenous artists on mainstage productions (as, for example, in John Sheedy’s Storm Boy, 2013) or volatile collaborations as in Neil Armfield & Andrew Bovell’s landmark production of The Secret River (2013), which struggled to provide the same depth of engagement with Indigenous perspectives as it did with the narrative of convict-turnedfree-settler William Thornhill. With perspectives being increasingly negotiated in dialogue, Indigenous artistic control over stagings of identity is growing and slowly leads to a deconstruction and dismantling of colonial structures. This process is not a straightforward one (Maddox 2018). A persistent concern lingers over the kinds of representations of Indigenous identity that reach the mainstage – be it in the form of a particular notion of the strong and resourceful matriarch who remains locked within the gendered limits of her role (Casey 2005, p.212) or the new superhero as envisioned in ­Nakkiah Lui’s Blackie Blackie Brown (2018) who is sited way beyond everyday norms. Equal contention naturally exists over who is provided with the little funding available and privileged access to the mainstage platform (compare Maza et al. 2013) and therefore is recognised as a legitimate agent in shaping the public negotiation of Indigeneity in Australia. However, the diversity of voices and approaches that currently advance Indigenous Australian performing arts practice fuel a hope for growth that will be capable to afford Indigenous artists with the means to express identity on sovereign as well as interrelated terms.

References Big hART Inc. n.d., Who we are, viewed 4 April 2019, www.bighart.org/whowe-are/ Casey, M 2005, ‘A compelling force: Indigenous women playwrights’, in R ­Fensham, D Varney, M Casey & L Ginters (eds.), The doll’s revolution. Australian theatre and cultural imagination, Australian Scholarly, Melbourne, pp.199–237. ——— 2004, Creating frames: contemporary Indigenous theatre 1967–1990, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. Enoch, W 2001, ‘‘We want hope’: the power of Indigenous arts in Australia today’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.38, pp.4–15.

Conclusion  193 Enoch, W & Heiss, A 2012, I Am Eora, unpublished manuscript supplied by arrangement with the Licensor, Anita Heiss, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd, ­Sydney Festival, Sydney. Gilbert, H 2013, ‘Indigeneity, mobility and the cosmopolitics of postcolonial belonging in the atomic age’, Interventions, vol.15, no.2, pp.195–210. Grehan, H 2010, ‘Aboriginal performance: politics, empathy and the question of reciprocity’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.56, pp.38–52. ——— 2009, Performance, ethics and spectatorship in a global age, Palgrave ­Macmillan, New York. Joseph, D 2016, ‘Power and privilege: the role of the reviewer in responding to Indigenous theatre’, Te Kaharoa, vol. 9, pp.91–106. Maddox, G 2018, ‘Indigenous playwright: Australian theatre is ‘whitesplaining’ stories’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2018, viewed 4 April 2019, www. smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/indigenous-playwright-australian-­theatre-iswhitesplaining-stories-20180726-p4zttw.html Maza, R, Milroy, D, Morrison, K, Harvey, J, Harvey, M, Maza, L, Mullaley, E, Drandic, I, Hart, C, Schnaars, M, West, A, Watson, T, Lui, N, James,  A, Kinchela, C, Copperwaite, F, Dallas Law, S, Sainsbury, L, Tamiru, J & ­Enoch,  W 2013, RECOMMENDATION for need to develop a best practice model in the making of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander work, discussion paper produced at the Australian Theatre Forum, 31 May 2013, viewed 4 April 2019, www.australiantheatreforum.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ATF_­ RECOMMENDATION_Best_Practice_Model.pdf Rankin, S 2018, Cultural justice and the right to thrive, Currency House, ­Strawberry Hills. Rose, DB 2008, ‘Dreaming ecology: beyond the between’, Religion & Literature, vol.40, no.1, pp.109–22. Tompkins, J 2006, Unsettling space: contestations in contemporary Australian theatre, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Varney, D 2011, ‘New and liquid modernities in the regions of Australia: reading Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu [Wrong Skin]’, Australasian Drama Studies, vol.58, pp.212–27.

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Aboriginality 14, 21, 34n1, 45 Acknowledgement of Country 146, 160, 168, 177 ancestor 11, 25, 28, 91, 109, 111, 114, 117, 118, 131n4, 147, 151, 155, 156, 160, 169, 182n5 assimilation 30, 31, 43, 52, 54, 116, 146, 173 authenticity 10, 13, 14, 94, 140, 148, 150, 164, 187 Bangarra 3, 41, 47, 52, 57, 79, 93, 139 Bhabha, Homi 13, 14, 56, 97, 98, 100, 114, 119, 122, 129, 133 Big hART ix, 41, 88–94, 98, 100, 119, 122, 123, 131n5, 131n7, 132n21, 143, 189, 190 Casey, Maryrose x, 1–3, 5–7, 12, 13, 15n1, 21, 28, 32, 41–7, 53, 54, 59, 78, 80, 82n2, 83n13, 102, 109, 110, 133, 186, 192 Charles, Jack ix, 40, 41, 42, 44, 55, 56, 58, 146, 147 choreography 6, 11, 65, 66, 79, 80, 83n17, 142, 162, 165 Christianity 26, 27, 30, 87, 95, 96, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 113–20, 132n15, 136, 171, 189 comedy 41–3, 49, 51, 67, 70, 71, 117, 189 consultation 5, 34, 43, 51, 58, 76, 77, 89, 91, 93, 117, 131n5, 137, 142 Coranderrk 30, 41, 44, 46, 74–6, 79 country 7, 9, 11, 19, 22, 24, 27, 28, 41–7, 50, 58, 60–9, 74, 75, 79, 81, 82, 89–91, 96, 97, 103–5, 109–12,

116, 118, 131n12, 137, 141, 142, 146, 147, 150, 154, 155, 158–60, 162, 163, 167–77, 179, 181, 188, 189 cross-cultural 1, 5–7, 30, 53, 54, 65–7, 76, 87, 90, 98, 113, 117, 128, 131n11, 138, 153, 154, 160, 165, 190 dance 8, 15, 25, 28, 51, 65, 67, 78–81, 83n17, 137, 143, 146, 147, 161, 164–6, 169, 171–5, 180 Davis, Jack 42, 44–8, 62, 72 Dharug 138, 146, 147, 150, 157, 160, 167, 168 Dreaming 11, 23, 24, 27, 28, 45, 52, 58, 81, 83n12, 103, 107, 111, 151, 155, 156, 160, 182n5 elder 27, 28, 56, 62, 64, 90, 105, 120, 141, 172–4, 176 Enoch, Wesley ix, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 33, 34n4, 41, 49, 51, 52, 59, 60, 62, 68, 69, 77, 79, 81, 83n19, 98, 120, 132n14, 138ff epistemology 11, 14, 24, 29, 76, 78, 79, 80, 154, 170 femininity 53, 62, 127, 128, 179, 180 Frankland, Richard ix, 42, 47, 48, 52, 58, 72, 82n6 funding 15, 32, 35, 44, 89, 142, 192 gender 28, 53, 59, 61–4, 69, 127, 128, 150, 166, 179, 191, 192 Gilbert, Helen 1, 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 33, 45, 46, 49, 50, 68, 69, 78–80, 187

196 Index Grehan, Helena 1, 3, 10, 31, 32, 43, 50, 51, 52, 74, 78, 79, 82n8, 109, 110, 130, 187 historiography 6, 10, 19, 21, 29–32, 40, 46, 48, 56, 60, 70–7, 79, 80, 99, 137, 140, 146, 152, 166, 187 Ilbijerri 3, 47, 49, 50, 55, 77, 98, 132n14, 139 Indigeneity 2–4, 11, 12, 15, 31, 34n1, 40, 46, 49, 52–4, 57, 59, 63, 66, 67, 82, 87, 94, 97, 98, 115, 120, 129, 131, 132n14, 139, 140, 148, 150, 159, 173, 174, 178, 188, 191, 192 kinship 23, 26–8, 65, 88, 108, 155 land rights 22, 32, 69, 83, 148, 156–8 Langton, Marcia 13, 14, 21, 31, 48, 99, 148 Marrugeku 7, 41, 79, 160 masculinity 62–4, 129, 174, 180, 181 Maza, Bob 41–3, 55 Maza, Rachel 7, 8, 45, 55, 57, 72, 93, 192 mission 30, 43, 91, 95, 96, 109, 110, 114, 116, 125 monodrama 57, 63 Moogahlin 47, 62 Muecke, Stephen x, 11, 13, 23–5, 110, 151 multi-modal 58, 63, 66, 67, 72, 80, 81, 137 music 8, 25, 45, 48, 49, 51, 56–8, 61, 63, 66, 81, 83n19, 93, 95, 117, 118, 137, 139, 142, 143, 145, 147, 149, 165, 171 National Black Theatre 42, 47 ngapartji ngapartji 11, 25, 44, 77–80, 88, 94, 119, 122 oral 12, 24, 29, 56, 75, 81, 91, 145, 166 ownership 30, 32, 69, 91, 153, 157, 162, 180 Page, David 57, 77 Page, Stephen ix, 7, 53, 64, 80, 93, 160 protocol 1–6, 9, 15, 48, 81, 82, 90, 94, 100, 140, 141, 151, 177, 178, 186, 189

Rankin, Scott ix, 3, 5–8, 11, 34n3, 60, 64, 67, 70, 72, 76, 77, 79, 83n10, 87ff reserve 30, 31, 72, 75, 125 role model 60–3, 75, 100, 101, 104, 113, 116, 121, 125, 126, 130, 132n21, 172 romance 64–6, 120, 147, 171, 180, 181 Rose, Deborah Bird 23–8, 103, 107, 109, 110, 127, 128, 151, 155, 159, 160, 163, 188 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 32, 47, 72 sacred 25, 28, 108, 109, 117 sector 1, 3, 5, 6, 15, 21, 32, 41, 55, 79, 139, 143, 186 shame 10, 30 sovereignty 22, 28, 32, 56, 57, 61, 80, 107, 119, 123, 130, 137–40, 145, 148–50, 155, 160, 168, 179, 181, 191 spiritual 7, 23–5, 36, 45, 52, 53, 62, 75, 102, 108–20, 155, 171, 172 stereotype 3, 13, 20, 45, 53, 59–66, 75–9, 99, 103, 105, 115, 139, 144, 176, 179–82, 188 Stolen Generations 31, 33, 49, 55, 56, 83 storyteller 9, 51, 56, 58, 60, 69–71, 74, 77, 78, 81, 95, 102, 120, 152 Swain, Rachael ix, 6–8, 11, 23 temporal 11, 71, 80, 92, 162–4, 168 Tompkins, Joanne 8, 47, 48, 51, 68, 69, 187 Torres Strait 3, 5, 12, 13, 20, 21, 22, 31, 34n1, 40, 53, 58, 83n14, 167 transcultural 96–8, 107, 113, 116, 123–6, 128, 130, 131n11 trauma 31, 40, 48, 49, 51, 60, 61, 76, 83n12, 106, 136, 153, 165, 182n7 Varney, Denise 64, 65, 187 verbatim 10, 45, 46, 55, 57, 72, 75 Watson, Irene 22, 25, 34, 54, 115, 123, 149 Welcome to Country 9, 146, 160, 167 yarning 56, 74, 78, 95 Yirra Yaakin 47, 68, 79