Queensland Theatre Case Study
• Is it reasonable to expect a state theatre company to program First Nations-centred work? If so, why?
For the reconciliation of First Nations and Torres Strait Islander peoples with wider Australia, it is necessary for a state theatre company to treat our divided histories truthfully and the potential of our united future hopefully and with equal representation in media. Because this is an arts company representing Australia as a whole, the responsibility is to all Australians.
• Is it reasonable to place the same level of expectation on smaller arts companies, like independent artists?
[If we cannot be brothers and/or sisters, then we will remain as strangers, and strangers can quickly become enemies.]
[An education cherishing the languages of the many tribes and various peoples of early Australia would mean a new Australia, a better society, and a transformed world.]
We want to make a way that will take us higher/further than our group identities as they currently stand –
Behind this question is a question:
What does each of us individually cherish and uphold as the stuff of society, the essential bodies, institutions and more, that hold us together as a people and allow us to rise as one?
The above question (case study question) really poses the grander question: how far can, or should, we go to connect as distinct peoples with foreign traditions bound up in diverging narratives?
One answer to that question is: I can go as far as I would want someone else to go to connect with me and the story behind and surrounding me.
• As an artist about to emerge into the professional field, what expectations do you place on yourself in terms of intersecting with First Nations artists and audiences?
I refer to the answer I proposed above, and also, say that I will try as sincerely as possible to make it my mission (to use a hackney expression) to bring together not only the early peoples of Australia with its more modern representatives – I view this task as merely the doorway to connecting the world in an unprecedented age of shared knowledge and awareness.
I can list, for example, my personal study of and engagement with the Welsh (Cymraeg) culture and its significance for marginal cultures everywhere.
• Lewis apologised. Was the public apology enough? If you were working for the company, what would you advise as the correct course of action moving forward?
If the financial-societal constraints of the company hold it back from progressively meeting and working as equals with First Australians performers – all early peoples of Australia and its surrounding areas – then more radical ways forward should be considered. Our art goes beyond – must go beyond – the structures from which it emerges, transforming and even destroying them altogether to make way for new space if necessary. What is the state of modern art institutions, like this theatre company? Can our hearts pour forth without restraint the songs and symbols that act to integrate our messy lives, or are we increasingly bound to bow to money and government? Shall we be a “blackfella”-inclusive white Australia or consciously construct a genuinely intercultural landscape as the foundation for a microcosm of a unified world?
