AUSTRALIA: 48TH PERTH INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL BUILDS BRIDGES BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE AUSTRALIANS

Record ID: 388931

  • Title: AUSTRALIA: 48TH PERTH INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL BUILDS BRIDGES BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE AUSTRALIANS
  • Date: 16th March 2000
  • Summary: VARIOUS REHEARSALS OF 'JIMMY AND PAT MEET THE QUEEN'
  • Embargoed: 31st March 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: WESTERN AUSTRALIA
  • Country: Australia
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA4ZKWJO8CGHT0NZDIDPK6OKO44
  • Story Text: This year's 48th Perth International Arts Festival has been building bridges between black and white Australian communities.The month long festival celebrated the indigenous population's culture, arts and music - a culture that still faces enormous social, financial and economic problems.
    It's largely through dot paintings such as these that Australian aboriginal culture has become known beyond the shores of this ancient continent.
    Many of the paintings depict the 'dreamtime' creation stories from remote tribes in the Central and western desert regions, tribes often living thousands of kilometres from densely populated coastal cities such as Perth.
    But visitors to the 48th Perth International Arts festival were offered an important window to a range of Aboriginal arts including the visual arts literature and theatre.
    Its presence reflects the broader political debate going on in the rest of the community over the treatment of aboriginals.
    David Imla Western Australian Aboriginal Legal Service Officer says: "To bring it into a contemporary perspective kids are being left in communities, not invariably but they are groups who are abandoned, where the parents have severe problems stemming from unemployment and dislocation themselves, and quite often large groups of 8 to 18 year olds are left to their own devices and their doesn't seem to be good faith on the part of the government to address those basic issues."
    Western Australia covers an area roughly the size of India but with a population of just over a million people most of whom live in Perth.
    Perth Festival director Sean Doran said the Festival organisers made a conscious decision to promote the aboriginal to a prominent role at this years festival.
    Perth International Arts Festival director Sean Doran says: "Our bringing the festival forward this year to Australia Day, January 26th which is a celebration of the white settlement of Australia from the time when Cook arrived but our choosing to do that was to put edge I suppose into the beginning of the festival of who that day should include and the local aboriginal culture for the first time created a survival concert on that day as part of the overall celebrations which I think was a major step forward by them particularly of confidence and their ability to see themselves included on that day so I think its vindicated why the festival should begin on that day and have relevance to being an Australian festival.
    The debate over the history of white treatment of its indigenous people has grown louder over the past decade with the arts playing a leading role as more black artists find their voice.
    Aborigines make up only 1 and ½ percent of Australia's 19-million people but the theme of 'reconcilation' is a major topic at the writers festival as it is in the rest of the community.
    Author Henry Reynolds says: "The Aboriginal was left out almost entirely.When I began teaching 30 years ago I was given a text book, it was assigned to me and it was a general history of Australia and Aboriginals weren't even mentioned, not even an index entry under Aboriginal.So they were written out of the story and we've been trying to write them back in for the last 25 years and it causes many people a great deal of pain because it changes the nature of the story."
    Many aboriginal artists, often in collaboration with white artists, are now telling their own stories in their own way.
    'Solid' is a play written by Ningali Lawford, Kelton Pell and Phil Thomson.It's all aboriginal cast and theme defines an aboriginal reality and identity.
    The script reflects the true life background of both Lawford and Pell.
    Lawford is from Fitzroy Crossing in the state's remote North West.
    Actress Ningalli Lawford says: "If they are going to work with me they have to see where I am coming from.Because I think it is essential whenever anyone is involved in a collaboration, whether they be Aboriginal or Asian or whatever.I think it is respectful if people can go back to their country or their land and appreciate where they are coming from and to know where they are coming from."
    Collaboration between black and white artists, which was the theme of this writers festival session, reflects the complexity of the national debate.
    Phil Thomson co-writer of 'Solid' says: "It's to be flexible if you come in with rigid white fellow ideas you're either going to get broken or your ideas are, so you're taking the time it's being prepared for what white fellows would regard as frustrations and interruptions you know you're in the middle of rehearsals and a new mob turns up in a car and you've got to stop while Ningalli says hi to the cousins and you meet the cousins while everyone susses you out while you're sussing them out and everything gets going an hour later that's all part of the enrichment of doing it if you see it as enrichment you get on very well if you see it as frustration you shouldn't be there.."
    Lawford says: "There's no such thing as a nuclear family in aboriginal society it's an extended family and the extension goes for four towns you know? I come from Fitzroy crossing and I go home to Fitzroy crossing and go to my country out there and I want them to feel my country because it has a lot has to do with spirituality too".
    Responding to a serious topic with humour is often the Australian way.In 'Jimmy and Pat meet the Queen' the Queen of England with her corgis becomes lost in the Australian outback.
    Angela Chaplin Artistic Director Deckchair theatre, venue of 'Jimmy and Pat meet the Queen' says:
    "The play is about land rights and reconciliation and fun.It's about the Queen, through a comedy of errors, finding herself and her corgis lost in the dessert and an aboriginal artist and his white friends find her.Fun ensues from there and gives us a very funny but political message".
    But not all Australians have something to laugh about.
    David Imla Western Australian Aboriginal Legal Service Officer says: "I believe there is (light at the end of the tunnel) I believe there could be and things that are happening out there such as the arts festival.It's a diversion but it also something that exposes them to a whole range of experience that they could get into themselves.I've found they are naturally very talented artists, musicians, dancers and have a natural sense of theatre and those things are very positive but there needs to be long term employment strategies and their needs to be a look at what happens to kids in isolated communities what can be provided to them, rather than a passing show, something they can meaningfully get into, something like the Warburton art project."
    Most Australians conclude the best way forward is to celebrate art culture and reason, while finding a solution to the economic and social problems that plague the Aboriginal community.
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