Whilst attending the anzca09 academic conference in Brisbane I got a tip to go and see oodgeroo:bloodline to country a play on at the local theatre. Oodgeroo is a play by Sam Watson and was put on as part of Brisbane’s 150th anniversary celebrations. The play is about aboriginal writer, poet, activist Kath Walker, oodgeroo. One of her sons Denis co-founded the Brisbane black panther party along with playwright Sam Watson back in the 1970’s. So sam is in this piece, contrasting how one family deal with their anger at the treatment of indigenous people by government and other non-indigenous settlers.
There was a q&a aftewards where I asked sam a question designed to get him to reflect on his journey as he is I figured in some ways writing about himself when he writes about denis. The importance of being ‘the teller’ of story in the indigenous community and not the author or owner of the story meant that sam felt no need to disconnect ’self’ from ’story’ when writing he replied.
A few days after seeing the play I am left with ideas of being one own country and each others, about connecting in the present, immediate and also beyond the present immediate through time and space in ways we might not be able to imagine. The piece produced by La Boite theatre company really connected with the Brisbane audience.
And in an example of the power of theatre 2 anecdotes:
Anecdote 1- sam never made it through uni as in his own words he was ‘busy getting arrested’ all the time (incidentally sam said his daughter who did make it through and the character Pearl in the piece who becomes a lawyer are kind of like surrogates for him). A guy in the audience spoke to say he was at the same uni as sam at the same time and had admired him and what he had to face daily as the only aboriginal in a uni of 25,000 but never had the courage to speak to him and tell him how much he admired him. He had follwoed sam’s career from afar over the intervening years and now he was so pleased to be able to now be able to tell him of his admiration.
Anecdote 2- in the early 1970’s kath walker, oodgeroo was on a plane that was hijacked. This event played a big part in the play. The nature of power, struggle, oppression. The actor playing black panther denis walker also played the arab hijacker. After the show he noticed a woman who seemed really affected so went to give her a hug. She it turned out was on this same plane 35 years ago. She was watching parts of her life played back a few feet in front of her.
The power of theatre.
Posted by joolsayodeji 
Posted by joolsayodeji 