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30.04.24
Andrea James is Griffin’s Affiliate Inventive Director. In 2024, Andrea is directing Ellen van Neerven’s play swim, premiering at Carriageworks in July. This be aware was initially printed within the printed program for The Lewis Trilogy by Louis Nowra as a mirrored image on the closure of the SBW Stables Theatre forward of its main redevelopment.
When the employees at Griffin crammed ourselves into the beloved little orange nook within the lobby of the SBW Stables Theatre to debate its demolition and redevelopment, there was a lot speak about respecting its footprint, preserving the bricks for the rebuild, honouring the secure doorways and repurposing the traditional timber picket beams. We spoke about this stuff as in the event that they had been sacred objects.
I’m at all times bemused when whitefellas make their white issues sacred. After my Yorta Yorta folks fought and misplaced our land declare on the premise of some ‘tide of historical past’ judgement, my ear is very attuned to such discuss.
So I allow them to go for a bit. For about 30 or 40 minutes I listened. I used to be the one First Nations employees member at Griffin at the moment. Now there are two.
With my colleagues I regarded on the skillfully designed and drawn up plans and we ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’. There was a lot pleasure on the prospect of getting our personal rehearsal room. Eventually! No extra schlepping throughout town to beg for in-kind or low-cost rehearsal area, away from our workplace and theatre heartland. When the Stables Theatre rises once more in all of her glory we may have a basement rehearsal area with the very same and famed kite-shaped footprint because the theatre area upstairs. All of the instruments of our commerce beneath one roof!
After which I piped up. What about Mom Earth? What concerning the Gadigal? What concerning the digging? What’s going to we discover there? What’s going to we see after we carve area out of the bottom for our rehearsal room with its architecturally-designed gentle properly? What’s going to this new footprint on and into Gadigal land reveal about our previous—not simply Griffin’s previous, however the one earlier than that and earlier than that? What’s going to it say about this hotbed colonial metropolis and the way this constructing has formed and contributed to Blak Theatre on this nation? If in any respect (or a little bit bit too Johnny-come-lately)?
Andrea James. Picture by Marnya Rothe
Blak Theatre has actually solely been in a position to flourish this final decade or so on this tiny little spot. I’m eager about Blak Theatre pioneers Bob Maza, Aileen Corpus, Bindi Williams, Zac Martin and Gary Foley who thrust Mainly Black into this area in 1972 when it was the Nimrod Theatre; later audaciously bringing iconic characters akin to ‘Tremendous Boong’ to our small screens with the fly rope hilariously uncovered.
After that, the Blak Theatre timeline on this place is a bit sketchy. Right here’s a potted Blak Theatre Historical past at Griffin—there are lengthy stretches of time between productions since Mary Morris’s non-Aboriginal 1994 adaptation of Sally Morgan’s Flying Emu kids’s ebook, retitled Shark Island Tales, co-directed by Michael Leslie with design by Bronwyn Bancroft and that includes John Blair, Gary Cooper, Marlene Cummins, Pauline McLeod, Malcolm Mitchell, Liza-Mare Syron and Penny Williams on Shark Island for Sydney Pageant. Then got here Wesley Enoch’s The Tales of the Miracles at Cookie’s Desk and extra not too long ago Meyne Wyatt’s Metropolis of Gold, Dogged, which I wrote with Catherine Ryan, Dylan Van den Berg’s Whitefella Yella Tree, a remount of Nakkiah Lui’s Blaque Showgirls and Ellen van Neerven’s swim touring later this 12 months. This Blak wave of theatre has lastly and solely very not too long ago been given its due.
Metropolis of Gold by Meyne Wyatt (Griffin/Queensland Theatre, 2019)
And, talking of sacred objects, who will get to maintain the little Blackfella flag produced from electrical tape within the colors black, yellow and crimson, that some cheeky actor caught on the wall within the dressing room? A now endangered object threatened by demolition.
What middens, bones, charcoal, instruments, fires and feeds can be revealed amongst the glass, horse shit and ceramic colonial detritus after we dig into the dust? Will we see a timeline there amongst the layers of compacted earth, sandstone and watermarks? What’s going to we see when Mom Earth is opened up like a ebook? What tales will she inform us and the way will we reply?
swim by Ellen van Neerven (Griffin/BLEACH* Pageant, developing in 2024)
For now, on this sacred place of Australian theatre we’ll honour an elder—a clever and wisened storyteller. These three Louis Nowra performs, tailored and lovingly crafted right into a trilogy will unfurl earlier than us into a protracted day and night time of theatre festivity, like ceremony. One has to admire a playwright who sticks at it. Has longevity.
Like many a theatre pupil, I obediently studied the good Australian theatre works, Così, The Golden Age and Radiance, which can be part of our nationwide canon. Etched into the panorama.
A whitefella wouldn’t dare write a play like Radiance or The Golden Age now. You simply wouldn’t… However Rhoda Roberts and Lydia Miller had been astute—they knew that in Louis there was a person who understands class, who roots for the underdog, who’s a deep thinker, drinks exhausting, listens and understands the difficulty of household—a person who might write their story. Radiance labored partially as a result of Louis allowed himself to be bossed round by three Black girls.
I learn Louis’ newest play This A lot is True once I was on a funding evaluation panel some years again. I liked its coronary heart, its tough across the edges gumption, the acknowledgement of its pure environment, its group and god rattling it—its class! I liked it from the get go. I rooted exhausting for that play to get its funding, but it surely didn’t make the lower. I can’t keep in mind why.
This A lot is True by Louis Nowra (Griffin, 2024)
I like that this play bought itself up anyway—the little play that would—when it discovered its world premiere (most appropriately) on the Previous Fitz Theatre and now to see it as soon as extra in all its glory lastly as a part of a trilogy, as Louis supposed.
I like that these three performs have as soon as once more been introduced into the sunshine by the assembly of prodigious and clever theatre minds to bookend a chapter and to honour a theatre—oh if these partitions and floorboards might discuss.
BUT, this Trilogy, this honouring, this constructing is however a blip within the panorama, a blink of an eye fixed, a little bit dot in a challenged and unbroken line of storytelling.
We’re however mere visitors on this place on Gadigal land. Our job right here is to tread flippantly and respectfully. It’s to not say we will’t make a mark, make the air vibrate with our phrases, throb with politics, chortle and love wildly—however we should at all times acknowledge the land beneath our ft and the folks whose storyline is ever altering and steady.
Andrea James
Affiliate Inventive Director
Griffin Theatre Firm
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