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 notice 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 discuss respecting its footprint, conserving the bricks for the rebuild, honouring the secure doorways and repurposing the traditional timber picket beams. We spoke about these items as in the event that they have been sacred objects.
I’m all the time bemused when whitefellas make their white issues sacred. After my Yorta Yorta individuals fought and misplaced our land declare on the premise of some ‘tide of historical past’ judgement, my ear is extremely attuned to such speak.
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 underneath 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 mild nicely? 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 slightly 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 interested by 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 reminiscent of ‘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 youngsters’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 Competition. Then got here Wesley Enoch’s The Tales of the Miracles at Cookie’s Desk and extra lately 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 yr. This Blak wave of theatre has lastly and solely very lately 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 created from electrical tape within the colors black, yellow and purple, 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 will likely be revealed amongst the glass, horse shit and ceramic colonial detritus after we dig into the grime? 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* Competition, developing in 2024)
For now, on this sacred place of Australian theatre we’ll honour an elder—a sensible and wisened storyteller. These three Louis Nowra performs, tailored and lovingly crafted right into a trilogy will unfurl earlier than us into an extended 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 scholar, I obediently studied the nice Australian theatre works, Così, The Golden Age and Radiance, which might 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 have 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 laborious, 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 ladies.
I learn Louis’ newest play This A lot is True once I was on a funding evaluation panel some years again. I beloved its coronary heart, its tough across the edges gumption, the acknowledgement of its pure environment, its neighborhood and god rattling it—its class! I beloved it from the get go. I rooted laborious for that play to get its funding, however it didn’t make the minimize. I can’t bear in mind why.
This A lot is True by Louis Nowra (Griffin, 2024)
I like that this play received itself up anyway—the little play that would—when it discovered its world premiere (most appropriately) on the Outdated 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 sensible theatre minds to bookend a chapter and to honour a theatre—oh if these partitions and floorboards might speak.
BUT, this Trilogy, this honouring, this constructing is however a blip within the panorama, a blink of an eye fixed, slightly dot in a challenged and unbroken line of storytelling.
We’re however mere company on this place on Gadigal land. Our job right here is to tread evenly and respectfully. It’s to not say we are able to’t make a mark, make the air vibrate with our phrases, throb with politics, giggle and love wildly—however we should all the time acknowledge the land underneath our ft and the individuals whose storyline is ever altering and steady.
Andrea James
Affiliate Inventive Director
Griffin Theatre Firm
