The Secret River at The National Theatre: Contemporary Responses to Indigenous History
Contemporary Responses to Indigenous History
National Theatre in Association with the Menzies Australia Institute, 29 August 2019
This is the text of the presentation I gave at the National Theatre in London last week at our National Theatre/Menzies Australia Institute talk, The Secret River: Contemporary Responses to Indigenous History. On the panel were Ian Henderson (Director, Menzies Australia Institute, KCL), Jared Michael Field (Chevening and Charlie Perkins Scholar, Oxford) and Sheridan Humphreys (Menzies Australia Institute, KCL).
For my Reading List and Watch List inspired by this show, click here.
The Sydney Theatre Company Production of The Secret River runs until 6 September 2019 at the National Theatre, London.
Dubs Yunupingu in The Secret River. Photo by Ryan Buchanan
THE SECRET RIVER AND ME
‘…so close to the flowing waters of the Thames, the gateway to the murky ocean road that set in motion a course of events that saw our distant worlds collide, and in many respects unite.’
June Oscar AO, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, King’s College London, 29 April 2015
What am I doing here? An Australian in England, watching a show at THE National Theatre about the place where I am from. Who am I, where am I, and how am I in the audience for this show? And what was the last show I saw here. Small Island, just a few weeks ago. And before that it was Our Country’s Good in 2015. So here I am.
I grew up in Sydney and in Papua New Guinea. For our holidays we would drive north to the Central Coast, crossing the Hawkesbury, where The Secret River is set. These days I take the train and it is a spectacularly beautiful, watery journey. I moved to London in 1996 and now I live on a farm near the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey, about halfway between London and Portsmouth, the Portsmouth Road still roughly follows the route of the Roman road connecting the naval town to London. Naval town, sailing to New South Wales, geddit? I studied theatre at the Australian Theatre for Young People, and later I appeared in many shows directed by the pioneering Australian director Leisa Shelton. I worked in UK theatre for many years before returning to academia to study screenwriting. And I am a carer of a disabled young adult, carers being the most invisible people in academia, if not all industries. All these things define me. Place and people. I’m also an academic researcher and a creative writer, I teach screenwriting at two universities here in London – the University of Greenwich based in the Old Naval College on the Thames here in London, and at Royal Holloway at Egham, by Runnymede, at the other end of the Thames – and I am writing a historical drama with Indigenous characters. Most Australians are concerned when I say that – some of the responses I get are: are you aware of protocols, what about consultation, you shouldn’t be doing that, are you allowed to do that, and most often they say ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing that’. It’s not supposed to be comfortable.
Whose responsibility is it to tell diverse stories? It’s everybody’s responsibility, isn’t it? So what’s the problem.
My current project is about writing leading roles in historical drama for actors of colour. Black roles for black people, to coin a technical term! Britain is not very good at this in its costume dramas. Britain prefers what is called ‘colourblind casting’. (I have another technical term for this: I call it, ‘Black dudes playing white dudes’.) In this method, Race and ethnicity and ability are considered during the production process. My research argues that these should be considered during the writing process.
My work is inspired by the first Australians to live in England – the indigenous Australians who lived here during the period 1800-1860, even during the period when The Secret River was set. Did you know that Indigenous Australians were living in England at this time too? As far as I know they were not stealing the land and killing people. But they were the first to take this journey and make a new life, and it is a journey that so many of us from Australia continue to do. However, most Australians know about the First Aboriginal Australian to visit England – Bennelong in 1790 – and then they think the next person to come here was Germaine Greer in the 1960s. And I say this to remind us just how we – and we means the Australians and the British – just how much we think we know our history. We don’t know our history. So for me, watching this show, why am I here, there is a continuing thematic connection, perhaps a songline, that started with Bennelong and continued with Germaine Greer and with June Oscar by the Thames. Possibly the next Indigenous Australian to spend time in England after Bennelong was a man called Daniel Moowattin, from the Parramatta district, where I went to school. Thematic connections.
The National Theatre has some responsibility for this. The last show I saw here about Australia was a revival of Our Country’s Good in 2015.
I was really excited about that production of Our Country’s Good and I wanted my teenage son to see it too. He’s not a reader, not bookish, but is proud of being Australian. But after the show I had to tell him that that was not how I wanted him to think of the convicts and of the Aborigines. The main reasons for that was the imagery surrounding the solitary indigenous character, and the casting - which I believe further confused British audiences about their relationship to their colonial past. (Despite the best intentions of the National Theatre’s diversity aims.)
The way I felt about that production of Our Country’s Good is how the Australian director Rachel Maza feels about The Secret River: ‘That’s not the story I want to be telling my kids’. And when you see something like this on stage at no less than THE National Theatre, then you think you’re seeing more than a story. You think you are seeing your history. A play about history has the authority of the historian, with greater emotional impact.
The Secret River is a story that I do want to be telling my kid. It’s the start of the stories I want him to know and the questions I want him to ask and to keep asking. What am I doing here.
Georgia Adamson, Dubs Yunupingu and Elma Kris in The Secret River. Photo by Ryan Buchanan
What they are saying about it in Australia… or rather, what one person is saying about it in Australia.
Rachel Maza on The Secret River at a panel discussion at Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre, as reported in The Guardian Australian edition:
The artistic director of Ilbijerri Theatre Company said the work played on worn-out tropes, such as the mythologised extinction of Indigenous Australians. “That’s not the story I want to be telling my kids,” she said at a panel discussion on Indigenous theatre, hosted by Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney.
I absolutely believe that non-Indigenous people have a role to play in the telling of our story and how we start to reframe our story, because now that we are wiser as a country there’s a sense of we can’t keep pretending [colonialism] didn’t happen,” Maza said.
“We do need to find a way forward and it’s going to be awkward and it’s going to be uncomfortable and it’s going to involve asking a lot of dumb questions, and that’s a great place to be because it’s the only way through.”
What next for The Secret River?
I see that the play text is for sale. Where will the next production be? Who will be in it? Look at Our Country’s Good and who performs it in the UK. And look at the casting.
Is this play text entering theatre’s literary canon? Who will play the indigenous characters in the future productions that I hope will take place in England?
What next for you, the audience and the readers?
I prepared a Reading List and Watch List in advance, but after the panel and in response to the questions from the audience, I think it might also be useful to share my favourite podcasts by about Indigenous Australians. These are not fictional podcasts, these are real lives.