Some Defining Characteristics of Australian Aboriginal Drama

Some Defining Characteristics of Australian Aboriginal Drama DENNIS CARROLL In the past two decades, the Aboriginals comprised less than 2 per cent of the Australian population,' but their artistic contributions to the newly emerged "multiculturalism" have been during this time out of all proportion to their numbers. The 1967 referendum, which marked the end of the "protection" and "assimilation" eras, gave Aboriginals voting rights and "limited self-management ," and it also marked the resurgence of Aboriginal culture.' Kevin Gilbert's The Cherry Pickers, which he wrote in '968 while in prison, is generally considered to mark the beginning of Australian Aboriginal drama. The play was smuggled out on toilet paper and eventually workshopped at the tiny Mews theatre in Sydney. By this time the Nindethana Theatre (the word means "a place for corroboree") had been established in Melbourne by Bob Maza. Maza was also instrumental in the foundation of the National Black Theatre of Redfern, Sydney, shortly afterwards.' By '972 The Cherry Pickers and the revue Basically Black had been staged. That year saw the presentation, too, of the first Aboriginal play with an urban setting, Gerry Bostock's Here Comes the Nigger. In 1975 the Redfern Black Theatre staged Robert J. Merritt's The Cake Man , which became the first published Aboriginal play. The first major Aboriginal playwright to develop, Jack Davis (born in 19'7), has so far written five full-length plays, two children's plays, and a monodrama, Wahngin Country (1993). His first adult play, KIIllark (Home) ('979) was followed by what later became known as a trilogy under the name The First Born, which consisted of The Dreamers (1981), No Sugar (1985), and Barungin (Smell The Wind) (1988). Parts or all of the trilogy have been staged throughout Australia and in Canada and London. The fifth published full-length play, In Our Town (1990), is a study of racism in an outback town Modern Drama, 40 (1997) 100 Australian Aboriginal Drama !OI in the 1940S.4Davis, after many years in Western Australia as ajackeroo and laborer, filled various positions in public life as advocate of Aboriginal rights, including Manager of the Aboriginal Advancement Council Center in Penh from 1969 to [973 and editor for the Aboriginal Publications Foundation of the imponant periodical Identity (from 1973 'to 1979), He was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1977, He published two collections of poetry, then began writing his plays, and in 1985 in Penh founded the theater company Marli Byol to stage them. More recently, significant plays by Richard Walley (Coordah), Eva lohnson (MurrasIHands), and Bob Maza (The Keepers) have been published in the volume Plays From Black Australia,S A play by Sally Morgan, Sistergirl , has had two national tours; Roger Bennett's Funerals and Circuses has had acclaimed seasons in several venues and was published in mid-[995;6and a breakthrough Aboriginal musical Bran Nue Doe, by Jimmy Chi and the band Kuckles, had hit seasons in Broome and at the Penh Festival in 1990 and went on to tour various Australian states in 199I before its publication in the same year. Since the first National Black Playwrights' Conference in 1987, a great many other Aboriginal plays have been workshopped and staged. In spite of the vicissitudes in Aboriginal theater since the 1980s, it is now especially strong in Sydney and Penh and has developed an impressive array of well-trained Aboriginal actors.' Except for their subject matter, most of these plays seem on the surface to be similar to European realistic plays, with brief forays into stylization. However , the plays of Merritt, Gilben, Davis, Walley, and Johnson have cemin defining characteristics which make them an expression of what has been called "Aboriginality." I wish here to bring out these characteristics in several of the published plays, panicularly the Davis trilogy. Drawing on interviews with Aboriginal writers and activists, Shoemaker has defined "Aboriginality" as: .....the legacy of traditional Black Australian culture ... .It implies movement towards the future while safeguarding the pride and dignity of the past. But Aboriginality is also counter-cultural in European terms: a reaction against the dictares of White Australian society.'" In drama, the concept of "Aboriginality" predicares the most imponant defining...