I am a regular
theatre-goer. I love it. I admire the actors, the production, everything that
goes into transporting our lives for just a few hours. There are times I’d
gladly be an usher, just to see performances over and over again. Early in my
academic career when I felt nervous about standing in front of students, a
colleague suggested that lecturing can be like theatre—you’re on a stage, you
have story to tell, tell it as you would wish to have it told to you. I try and
I think it works, most of the time.
With theatre (or
classical music concerts for that matter) I enjoy the anticipation of the
unknown, the story unfolding, the hope that I might see the world in a
different way. Sometimes one is moved from the opening line, sometimes the
emotion creeps up as the story unfolds. Always, I leave appreciating that I
have seen others present their world in a creative and challenging way, even if
I didn’t particularly enjoy it.
Last week, I saw (again)
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. I was happy to be watching another Australian
classic, one I first saw at school with the travelling theatre troupe (probably
the QTC), one I’ve seen staged brilliantly by Frank Theatre in a sassy pastiche
of Australia and Japan that I’m yet to see surpassed. The ‘Doll’, for me, is
part of our Australian story.
But today, I saw a
play of such drama, such emotion, such superb storytelling that I hesitate to
write anything, lest I fail to capture something of the impact this play will
have on me for a long time to come. The 140-character tweet-response would
certainly not do.
Bloodland is
everything I expect from theatre. It is directed by the marvellous Stephen Page
and written by Wayne Blair (The Sunshine Club) from a story by these two and
Kathy Balngayngu Marika. It is performed in the language of the community whose
story it tells. There is a lyricism that transports you as an audience member.
It is an important reminder that English is an introduced language to this country.
The music, the lighting, the set—those things that also make a play—are
similarly superb. The actors use the space brilliantly.
[I’m going to pause here, I feel inadequately
prepared to write this post right now. I want Bloodland to be a permanent part
of Australian theatre, and I need to go away and think a little more about the
incredible resilience of our Indigenous people.]
I’m back…
You know there is
something about art that compels when every fibre of your body reacts and
responds to what is before you. This is a play that makes you laugh, brings a
tear to your eye, makes you want to reach out to a sister or brother next to
you. I loved the laughter of the Indigenous women sitting behind me, their
‘knowing’ of the meaning of what was being presented, and knowing more deeply. I
felt a wrenching within as I watched what our Indigenous people have endured.
Bloodland tells a
story that I guess those who read newspapers, listen to radio and watch current
affairs TV will think they are familiar with, but it tells it with gritty
realism, a sense of humour (especially the ‘nature documentary’ scene—to say
more might spoil it) and the bitter/sweet/ness of the class with ‘Miss White’.
There is an aesthetic and grace that mirrors the lives of our Indigenous
people. The movement across the stage was just gorgeous, as would be expected
from members of Bangarra Dance Theatre.
So many thoughts ran
through my head as I watched this play. The word ‘reconciliation’ ebbed and
flowed throughout. It matters to me that white Australia acknowledges its past.
Sometimes, I feel rather hollowed out by the hackneyed appropriation of the
term by politicians and policymakers and the ways some in my profession,
academia, would also seek to see ‘reconciliation’ as a problem-solving
exercise.
Someone during the
week threw out (on Twitter I think) that quote of Winston Churchill, apocryphal
perhaps, that when advised to cut the arts budget to pay for the war, he
apparently said, ‘then what are we fighting for?’. The sentiment came back
today as I watched the Bloodland story unfold. Say all we like and spend all we
must on reconciliation, but I reckon spend 90 minutes in the theatre with this
mob and if you don't come out with a resolve to reconcile, then someone excised
your emotional and intellectual wherewithal before you even walked in. I hope Jenny Macklin gets to see it.
I loved this play, and
I cannot, after all, adequately convey the emotion I experienced today in the
QPAC Playhouse. My apologies for that to all involved, from its conception to its staging. This play deserves to win every mainstage theatre award going
this year. We should expect to see it and similar stories more often. I doubt I
will see anything better for some time.
Thank you to everyone
for bringing the story to the stage, it shall be embroidered on the front of my
little pocket of Australian treasures.
[PS Brisbane theatre-goers, we need to embrace the standing ovation...just occasionally]
