To one side sit the narrators, Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor and her daughter, Nadeena Dixon, in comfortable communion at a small table with teapot and cups. Nadeena weaves and at her feet lie a bundle of natural fibres. Her mother has a bright red flower in her hair. As a tableau they represent themselves, two indigenous women with interweaving stories to tell, but also suggest the concepts of generation, change and continuity. Behind them three stark columns, suggesting the sacred, asymmetrically arranged, and each bearing a delicately woven ‘capital’ of varying patterns, rise far above the human participants. The ‘capitals’ are to provide, as the stories unfold and the lighting angles change appropriately, a wonderfully evocative array of shadow shapes, a metaphor perhaps for Creation contextalising the importance of what was at stake.
The space between the columns is at first a blank rectangle, a tabla rasa, but as the drama unfolds it will tell the story of Chicka (Charles) Dixon (1928-2010), political activist, a leader in the decade long campaign for the 1967 referendum to include Aboriginal people in the census and the 1972 erection of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. A hero of epic stature the trajectory of Chicka’s campaign and achievements is comprehensively presented through the projection of official photos, newspaper reports, magazine articles, passport and other documents, transcripts of interviews and video footage. His voice is heard, his gestures captured, his vision for his people undoubted.
Visually interwoven into this valuable archive are family pictures: Chicka at the Wallaga Lake mission where he grew up, Chicka with his wife, with his teenage daughter, Rhonda, and Chicka with Nadeena in his arms. The stories of Rhonda and Nadeena are the stories of the cost to family life of having as a grandfather and father an influential man much in demand. There are a few precious memories, for instance, Nadeena’s charmingly recounted story of receiving Black Barbie, and the doll’s importance to her, and Rhonda’s haunting recollection of finding a photo of herself, a red flower – given to her by Chicka – in her hair which he had kept in his wallet.
But the two women are frank in their account. Chicka would not intervene to prevent Rhonda’s husband from beating her, and she and Nadeena, selling beads in a Brisbane Park, to support themselves, were ignored by Chicka as he passed them with an official party. The blanking out of his family from his life is effectively conveyed by having Nadeena absorbed as it were by the screen after which she emerges as Chicka. They tell their stories without animosity and take the vicissitude as if it were as inevitable as the weather. We experience their sense of lost opportunities and deprivation but in the end, can this tension, universally experienced, between the public and private life ever be resolved?
As mother and daughter open The Fox with the fable of the bat who wished to be friends with both fur bearers and wing bearers and conclude it with traditional dance movements the audience feel the importance of their culture to the weft of their lives. The freedom to own it may be worth their sacrifice, but it has to be asked why was this sacrifice necessary?
A beautifully unified production (director Liza-Mare Syron), enhanced by appropriate music selection, with engaging highlights, such as two solos, the first delivered so poignantly by Rhonda and second, with engaging exuberance by Nadeena. Another memorable touch was the use of portrait cushions as the women simulated male voices. Thank you everyone.
