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Monday, 04 June 2007
The family behind the Festival hit Ngapartji Ngapartji is finding the play is healing old wounds, for the family and the audience.

By Jennie Fitzhardinge, PerthNow (Sunday Times)

February 28, 2007 10:00pm

THE family behind the Festival hit Ngapartji Ngapartji is finding the play is healing old wounds, for the family and the audience.

There are plays that are memorable because they were entertaining and there are plays that change your understanding of the world around you. Ngapartji Ngapartji manages to do both – not just for the audience, but the participants and their families too.


Ngapartji Ngapartji is Pitjantjara for “I give you something, you give me something” and for co-creator Trevor Jamieson, a man of Pitjantjara and Nyoongar descent, that something could be translated as healing.

Ngapartji Ngapartji tells the story of Jamieson’s family and how they were moved off their lands to make way for British atomic bombs to be tested at Maralinga. It also touches on stories of Hiroshima, the servicemen at Maralinga who were guinea pigs for the British scientists and a cloud of radioactive dust that blew over Adelaide (where future British Prime Minister Tony Blair was living as a child). The point being that we are all connected and this was an injury that was done to us all.

“Telling this story is very healing for me and my family,” Jamieson said. “Everyone in my family needs to be healed and it’s good for white people as well because it heals them too.”

And that sets the tone for the two-hour long play. This is no solemn, finger-pointing, guilt-inducing polemic, it is a story that the audience is invited to participate in from the beginning.

The play begins with language teacher Lorna Wilson teaching the audience to say introductory phrases in Pitjantjara, then has us singing Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Pitjantjara. It is a theme of inclusion that continues through to the conclusion when members of the audience are invited on stage to create a mosaic from shattered bone-white pottery.

In between, as with any family story, there is a lot of laughter and tears. Jamieson acting out naked boomerang throwing, left arm dangling between his legs, is the highlight of many moments of the physicality and humour he brings to the performance.

“It is just like stories are told in the desert, there is repetition of certain things until you get the full understanding,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson began working on Ngapartji Ngapartji six years ago with co-creator Scott Rankin who he had met through Black Swan Theatre Company where he had a part in Highlights of the Mamu.

“We started gathering heaps of material and it got a life of its own,” Jamieson said. “It was always my curiosity about what our identity was at the time. We knew both worlds and it was about how to balance them.”

In part he was inspired by the path his younger brother, Jangalla, seemed to be taking. He’d been in and out of jail, and as Jamieson says on stage, “He likes the women and he likes to drink. I was worried that he wasn’t going to be around for long.”.

“Young Aboriginal kids have a problem with communication skills, young people are overwhelmingly shy, they are too embarrassed to get that connection (with culture),” Jameson said. “In many ways Jangalla is representative of that.”

And as he delved into his family background, the story grew. Three years ago Jamieson’s elders invited him into their confidence and told him stories that, while they couldn’t be generally shared, allowed him to achieve the sense of balance which informs the show.

“It would be beautiful for everyone to be able to see - I’d love to share the knowledge, but I just had to step away,” Jamieson said. “Doing this show has allowed me to speak on the elders' behalf, saying ‘here are the basics of our culture’.”

That introduction to culture has proved to be profound not just for members of the predominantly white audiences that have given the show standing ovations for every performance in Perth, but for members of Jamieson’s immediate family too.

“My stepdaughter is 15 and I remember trying to get answers from her about where she stands in regards to her culture,” Jamieson said. “She had been telling her friends at school that she wasn’t related to her half-brother and sister – my kids – because they were darker than her and I guess she didn’t want to be associated with the negative side of Aboriginality, but after watching the show, she came to us and said she wanted to find out about her family over east and how she could connect with them.

“Her friends were with her at the show – it was beautiful.”

The show has been cathartic for Jamieson’s mother, Gail Yorkshire-Selby too. One of the most deeply moving moments of the show is the account of her mother’s murder. To not give too much away, it occurred when Yorkshire-Selby was moving into womanhood.

“I hadn’t been able to grow up with her, but my husband Arnold – Trevor’s father – and I were going to bring her to live with us,” Yorkshire-Selby said. “She and I were going to be together, and I was going to be in control, there was going to be no Government or welfare having a say in how we lived our lives.

“I’ll never forget the saving up of clothes for her. The man who did it had no remorse at all.

“It still pierces me every time I hear the story, but part of it is a healing process even though it has been a painful journey.”

The show is having a deep effect on Jangalla too. He is an unexplained, half-lit figure at the back of the stage, shadow boxing and dancing his way through parts of the performance.

“Jangalla got out of jail two months ago,” Yorkshire-Selby said. “Being in the show has been exhausting for him, because it’s his story too.”

While his ancestral lands are in the Western Desert, Jamieson grew up in WA’s Great Southern and the Goldfields. “I grew up in between Esperance, but spent a lot of time in Kalgoorlie, Norseman and Cundeelee. In all those places and in between there are family.” He graduated from Curtin University’s Aboriginal Music Theatre Program and made his professional theatrical debut in the acclaimed Bran Nue Day.

On stage, he is a charismatic figure acting out the story with humour and grace.

“I just love movement,” he said. “When I was young, I enjoyed the elders painting me up and getting me to perform. They were always excited because I could dance like an old man.

“With traditional dances the first steps are repeated until the climax of the dance. Certain dances you only get shown once and if you don’t learn it then, you can’t dance it again, so you really have to concentrate.”

Having learnt the theatrical techniques of both his worlds, Jamieson is using his skills to translate and bring reconciliation. Perth audiences will have a chance to experience that until Saturday. There are plans for the show to be performed at The Dreaming Festival, Queensland in June and at the Sydney Opera House.

And the story doesn’t end with the show. Producer Big hArt has set up an online Pitjantjara course at www.ninti.ngapartji.org where people can learn the language as part of the preparation for the show, or to continue the connection that it began.
Trevor & Gail HEALING TIME: Co-creator of Ngapartji Ngapartji Trevor Jamieson and his mother Gail Yorkshire-Selby whose story is told in the show.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 01 July 2007 )
 
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