Natives Go Wild at Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point
The cast of Natives Go Wild. Photo credit: Anna Kucera
“I wish I knew more [about the First Nations women who performed in Barnum’s shows] and I am looking forward to embodying them.”
Seini Taumoepeau AKA SistaNative, Deadly Voices From the House | Natives Go Wild podcast, 30 September 2019
Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point
Friday 24 October 2019
Created by Rhoda Roberts, directed by Chelsea McGuffin
Natives Go Wild and Me
What Am I Doing Here? This is the same question I asked myself when I was at the National Theatre, by the Thames, to see the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Secret River. Now here I am at Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour in the Opera House Studio, to see Natives Go Wild.
Why am I here?
I landed in Sydney less than 48 hours ago. I’m jet-lagged, slighty drunk and very excited. I am experiencing everything deeply, passionately and holistically – which is the best way I can think of to describe how each moment made me think and breathe and react.
The show is dedicated to Ningali Lawford-Wolf – who sadly passed away too young at the Edinburgh Festival during The Secret River tour. Thus the connection to the long history of Indigenous Australian performers abroad is acknowledged. ‘Merge the stories of the old with today’s world’ says Rhoda Roberts, the show’s creator. She describes how the performers are ‘often off Country’, both then and now as ‘our artists still travel around this world’. She says that the show aims to express these stories in ‘a way that reflects our ancestors’, to try and show ‘how they carried their baggage’ of identity, talent and displacement. This is the alternative story of Barnum.
Immediately I thought of Tambo. I was on edge as I knew his story had to be in there so I was afraid of what I would be experiencing in the lead up to it. I also thought of performers Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz whose work examines perceptions of disability and sexuality through their recreations of circus sideshow entertainments (and how lucky I was to work with them and many others in my theatre career.)
SistaNative, Josephine Mailisi and Waangenga Blanco Photo credit: Anna Kucera
I want to know more about these performers… the ones I am watching and the ones they are embodying. I want everyone to know more about them.
Cabaret has many forms. This one is a hybrid of political statement, storytelling and circus spectacle. But I also recommend you experience it with the digital programme and the Deadly Voices from the House podcast series about the show – because one viewing of the show is not enough. The idea is to tell the stories of the extraordinary First Nations performers in Barnum’s shows. We are asked to imagine the unimaginable: a life in circus might have brought wealth and fame, but at what cost when you have to leave country, disguise your ethnicity and were likely to meet an early death? And what if running away to join the circus was your only option and not a choice, a form of slavery?
The white European Australian in me felt awkward and uncomfortable while watching the show, the seasoned cabaret viewer and theatre person in me was in the mood to be entertained and I was thrilled with the skills of the performers and their confidence in making people like me feel uncomfortable. They had the room by the you-know-whats. Mika Haka is unforgettable as the ringmaster, or rather, house mother. Embodying their ancestor performers are Josephine Mailisi (contortionist, Feejee Woman), Waangenga Blanco, (Con Colleano), Seini Taumoepeau (Songwoman), Beau James (‘Little Nugget’, Clown) and Samuela Taujave (Warrior, Savage Native).
Where the f*** is everyone else?
Natives Go Wild was packed, but it was a big night at Bennelong Point. They were next door at Much Ado About Nothing on one side, and at a Tom Stoppard play on the other. It felt to me symbolic of how the literary canon endures and diversity adapts to it, rather than the other way round. The audience at Natives Go Wild might feel a bit uncomfortable but they are being entertained by and are learning just a little bit more about First Nations performers. I know where I would rather be.
For in Natives Go Wild we have not just a great show but something very unique: a historical drama with non-white actors actually playing non-white characters who are based on real people. In our day and age this remains a rarity. It is rare in British theatre and even rarer in Australian theatre.
Postscript
Meanwhile the scholar in me continues to process the whole thing in terms of how it relates to my research interests and methodology. These are the things I will be talking about in my conference papers at the upcoming AAWP conference at UTS and at Sightlines at RMIT, and previously at EASA in Toulon, France: ‘Colour blind casting’ and diversity policies of publicly funded theatre and film, indigenous invisibility as theorised by feminist legal scholars and writers Larissa Behrendt, Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Irene Watson, and what can a creative writer do about it, and about challenging national narratives. (And I had some thoughts on Barnum, Hollywood actors and inclusion riders too).
Samuela Taujave Photo credit: Anna Kucera