By Jorge Sotirios
CANBERRA — A slab of wood lies deep within the reddest of fibres of a beer-aged carpet. Amidst the remains of mud-encrusted boot marks and months-old spittle, a man is drawn towards it. He touches it and his eyes light up. This simple gesture has within it a magical resonance, one with enough power to create a sublime theatrical moment.
This vignette came out of the context of the Australian National Playwrights' Conference here last month. This year's conference dealt with indigenous people and their voice in the theatre. Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Maori and North American Indian perceptions were finally (if belatedly) given a platform from which to express themselves on a wide scale.
The refreshing element was that one left with no pat solutions to the complex problems faced by indigenous people in being true to their own voice upon entering the established theatre. It clarified the issues: in crossing over to an anglo establishment, how much of one's own experience will be diluted? At the very least, stories which for so long have been relegated to the margins are now moving to the centre of public consciousness.
Another important point raised was that there exist differences between cultural groups. To lump all indigenous people in the one basket smacks of sheer ignorance. Even within each cultural group are differences. As Justine Saunders put it, "I can't speak for black Australia. I can only speak for myself."
Among the plays workshopped during the conference, three seemed to me to deal most fully and most deeply with their subject matter.
Ray Kelly's Somewhere was written by the author in collaboration with his actors. Dispensing with the dictates of plot, it followed the emotional journey of its main character.
A short piece that used no props except the piece of wood noted above, it still managed to create a powerful dramatic moment. The wood came alive as a character in its own right. Like a magical rod, charged with energy, it served as a fixing point to a young Aboriginal man in search of his ancestors. Or as Bob Maza stated, it was a connecting link to his "ground-parents", those long dead beneath the floorboards engaged in a heavy, restless sleep.
Drama does this best: it can evoke an other-worldly quality and convey an emotional depth bypassing the filters of the mind.
Equally as powerful, if not as daring in form, was Cherie Imlah's The dormitory. The catalyst for this play was the oral history she learned from friends who had been brought up under repressive laws on an Aboriginal reserve. Set in 1930s Australia, this work expressed the tragedy that inevitably came upon Aborigines and white people who were forced to live in conditions that truly constrained them.
Archaic tragedy came to mind, particularly in the way characters were "caught in a bind". This tension between a character's desires and the situation in which he finds himself was extremely well executed. Reminiscent of the black policeman in Jack Davis' No Sugar, one of the characters here too found himself in a position of power, but one that was based on the oppression of his people. This sense of betrayal of one's kin leads to a vivid climax.
Likewise, the portrayal of the priest highlighted the friction between his sympathy for the plight of the Aborigines and his ultimate powerlessness to overcome his own background, one that provided the moral basis for institutionalised forms of oppression and destruction.
If there was a flaw, it was in the presentation of the superintendent. As Bob Maza pointed out, in seeing the white man as one who had superhuman qualities in achieving his mission, one denied the real power relations and overlooked that in many instances this power came about because of the willingness of many Aborigines to do his dirty work.
The last play, which dealt with the plight of the Tibetan people, was Bod, written by Elaine Acworth, a Brisbane playwright who spent some time in western China and Tibet. On an epic scale that dealt with the years from 1901 to 1959, this play wonderfully conveyed the resilience of the Tibetan people in the face of British and Chinese oppression.
Acworth's ability to entwine the historical with the spiritual and the political was no mean feat. At times mythical and other times magical, this was a drama which engrossed the audience for almost three hours, without much stage movement or props — relying solely on the breadth of its imagination.
Plays like these are sorely lacking on our stage — dramas that are willing to make the connections to the wider society, and even dare to raise the subject matter to the level of poetry. Politics and poetry are not necessarily antagonistic bed fellows.
Special mention should be made of the commitment of the actors. The likes of Heather Mitchell, Lisa Kinchela, David Ngoombujarra and Jeremy Sims meant the plays workshopped were given a decent run through.
Unfortunately, the speakers from abroad were, in my opinion, under-utilised. Playwrights of the calibre of Tony Perez from the Philippines and David Lan from the UK were willing to transgress orthodox thinking. Their intellectual rigour could have been put to greater use.
And one should remember the dangers of any conference — they can become insular environments with vague connections to the larger world of action. Just down the road, the implications of Mabo were being assessed. The conference did highlight the need to understand what occurred in the past, and what shall be in the future.
While we may feel secure in our beds tonight, it is with that larger bed, beneath our feet and floorboards (and even stained carpets of beer and red), that we must ultimately come to peace. If we do not do so then we will be like the young Aboriginal man, haunted by the troubled sleep of the restless dead.