But, how can people write regarding a history and a people if they have no education or awareness of a culture and its peoples. However, I must say, bar perhaps a few reviews during the Festival which looked at international groups as well as national groups, most of them were honest. I must admit that I probably would have been a little bit harsher with one or two productions than the critics were. It was really interesting, because as you know, there was a number of international productions that we brought over and I had really assumed that everyone would flock to see the Inuit people or the Maori or the Native Canadian piece and it really surprised me that everyone flocked to the Aboriginal productions and we were in fact having trouble trying to fill these international groups. And it just showed the growth that we have made in this country, because I know five years ago people would have gone and seen the African heritage company before they would have gone and seen an Aboriginal production company. That's good. It wasn't so good for the international groups, but it's good.
I would like to highlight an example of a review that is, I believe, totally ignorant, and I would go so far as labelling it as racist. It was printed in The Australian on Friday, September 19; Sonia Humphrey was the critic. She was reviewing Arsenerit The Northern Lights. This was a production based on the stories of the Northern Lights and the Arctic. It was from the Silamut Dance Theatre Company of Greenland. There has never been a company from Greenland tour Australia, or in fact the Southern Hemisphere before the Festival of the Dreaming, let alone an indigenous project. It read:
There is also the problem that the language sounds, to the ill-attuned Australian ear, as if the speaker is wearing ill-fitting dentures.
The article goes on to say,
even more frustrating it is clear from the non-verbal elements of the performance that there exists a traditional vocabulary of gesture and movement, no doubt much akin to classical mime which carries much weight and power if you know what it means.
Really? You know, it amazes me when we have productions coming from Europe that are done entirely in their own language, we just go "Bravo!". The reference to the language I find ignorant. Inuit language is very unusual and many areas of the palate are used to get the 'shh' sound. Inuit traditional dance is known for the gestures of mime and mimicry. Free programme notes, as I said, were handed out and it really was only a matter of ten minutes to read to get the gist of the story. The dance piece was very different, and this is what she didn't like in the review. They don't use a lot of music; a lot of the work is done to silence. It's something that we're not used to in this country. The dance steps are very, very different to any style of Aboriginal steps that people might have seen. It's a bit like assuming you are seeing Meryl Tankard and in fact you are looking at the Australian Ballet. Sonia Humphrey had simply not done her homework.
Often Aboriginal theatre practices have a very different approach, as I said. It's not simply about getting up and performing. Many of you might have attended the Awakening Ceremony at the Sydney Opera House which was the opening event for the Festival of the Dreaming. For me it was a religious ceremony - and it had a very different approach. The review the following day was simply a total misunderstanding of what a smoking ceremony is about. Hello, folks, when you have a smoking ceremony, you use smoke. Mid-week, three non-indigenous Australians had written to the Herald questioning the journalist's view of the evening.
So I suppose my questions is, if I see a play or a film and, say, it's based on a gay or a lesbian issue, it more or less is often reviewed by members from that particular community, as well as other reviewers. Yet, when are we going to see in our national broadcast and electronic media Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander critiques? The Festival, on the other hand, sat back and we were incredibly lucky. Our marketing and promotion programme spread nationally, not just across Sydney. We managed to get out to immense sectors of the community and this showed in our attendance of audiences, and we came out looking very good at the end of the Festival. But I have to personally thank Fairfax, the Sydney Morning Herald which, if anyone had said I was doing this two years ago, I would have said 'Oh bullshit, I don't want to thank them'. They did a fucking amazing job. Because the reality was, we had out there people reading and seeing from the middle-class milieu the Aboriginal people, the angry black, the flag-waving, oh, here we go again, then all of a sudden, oh right, here comes the Olympics and the blacks are getting the first event? So it was a kind of frightening thing; how do you approach it? Though their articles and their coverage people were informed and were promoted and people did hear about the Festival and certainly learnt more about us.
I hope that a few of you got down to Bar Badu - and if you didn't, well sorry, but you missed the best bit of the Festival. Bar Badu was where we went and had a drink every night and we had performance on during the week as well as individual performers from the various productions and would also get up and do some sort of act. This particular night the Shakespeare8 had a big article in the Herald on the production. And every night I went around to all the tables and said 'Hi, I'm Rhoda Roberts, the Artistic Director of the Festival, have you been to something in the Festival of the Dreaming?' and I'd give them a free ticket to get drinks and tell them about what was on that particular night and there was a little old couple and I really don't mean to stereotype but they were from Mosman, and they would have been in their early 70s and I went over and said 'Hi, I'm Rhoda Roberts... Festival of the Dreaming... blah, blah, blah' and they said 'Oh, we've just seen Shakespeare', and I said 'Oh fantastic, how did you hear about it?' and they said 'Oh, we read the article in the Herald. We've never, ever been to Aboriginal theatre and we thought, why not?' and I said 'Did you enjoy it?' and 'Oh, it was fabulous, blah, blah.', I said 'Good. You know, every night we have performance and here are some drink tickets' and they said 'Oh, actually we can't stay, because we've got a friend coming to pick us up' and I said 'Oh, okay, well, have a free drink, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the production' and I said 'What sort of music do you like?' and she said 'Oh, I love the Platters' and I said 'Oh, what a shame, we've got some people tonight and they sing the Platters and dadeda...' Two hours later I looked up and here they were, not with glass in hand - a bowl. They're still there and their friend's arrived and he's got a drink and this was two hours later and the singers are all their in their deadly red suits - just gorgeous - and here they were, you know, bopping along and I looked at them and they were laughing. Then I looked around at the rest of the audience and it was black, white, Asian, whatever - Australians. I looked around at all these Australians and they were smiling and I thought 'Right. This is what it's about'. We need more Bar Badus.
Black Mary was another thing - and it's great to have Julie Janson, the writer in the audience today. Black Mary got a lot of coverage in the press because it was a really interesting story. It is an Australian story - a love story between an Aboriginal woman and one of our heroes, Captain Thunderbolt. It amazes me that we have all these heroes who rob and pillage, Robin Hoods, so to speak. Anyway, they go on to have children, and doing a lot of these interviews and articles, we actually had two groups of family contact us, who said they were related to them. One group's family was related to Captain Thunderbolt and the other was related to Maryanne Ward. Really? We know they both had the same children, so there was one group that identified as white and another group of the family who identified as black. Now, they both came and saw the production and when we actually sat down and talked with them the white family turned around and said 'Oh, reconciliation. Reconciliation is about reclaiming your relatives'. I thought 'This is true Australian work'. What is Australian art? What is it about? No matter how much we might dismiss it, Aboriginal people and convicts, English settlers who are invaders, whatever you want to call them - forged links. And we never get away from that.
The majority of people, as I said, hear information from misinformed television and press media. Yet, as we know, with this current government, so many issues need to be addressed, and addressed very broadly. And as I've said we need to be afraid, really afraid. We have a Prime Minister who cannot publicly apologise for thousands and thousands of children being taken. Well, it looks all right from the papers today with Wik - you never know, but there are all these issues as Australians, whether we're black, white or brindle, we have to address. How do we do that? What is the last bastion? It's the stage.
Trevor Graham's documentary, Mabo: The Life of an Island Man, was a collaborative work with the Mabo family. Now, they chose him to shoot their lives and that of Koiki - a non-indigenous film-maker: true reconciliation. The response from the arts industry at the AFI Awards brought tears to my eyes, to see the humility of Bonito Mabo accepting an award and the film industry as such giving her a standing ovation. It seems it is the only last platform in this country and they are issues that we're all facing on a daily basis. But we certainly have a long way to go. Legacies and relationships I believe were established during this Festival. But what it did; it began a journey for Australian to hear the real humour, rhythm, metre and music of the Australian landscape.
Many of our companies and exhibitions are now touring nationally and internationally. But one of the major battles - and this is the next one we're going to get! - is television, more or less the commercial sector, and the major issue we face in the industry: colour-blind casting. Now commercial sectors would be the diet of this nation. But as I write this I note with great joy that Jim Sharman's recent production of the The Tempest is a cast of the rainbow. There are people from all different backgrounds and they are good and talented at their craft. They're not there because it's tokenism or quotas, they're there because they're fine performers. Tonight on ABC TV's Wildside they have a number of Aboriginal actors working on this, working as good guys and detectives - yeah; good and bad guys. Kevin Smith, Aaron Pederson, Glen Shea just to name a few.
This is a time when Australians are bewildered by the changes around them. We need to embrace each other and truly work together as we head towards the new millenium.
Thank you very much for being here. It has indeed been an honour. I'm not an academic, as you've just realised, but I don't mind a good yarn, and any questions I'll happily talk to you about.
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