Presented by Carriageworks and Moogahlin Performing Arts, this second Yellamundie Festival showcases the works-in-progress of six writers drawn from urban and regional areas. If you missed out this time, attend the festival in 2017 as not only will you be assured of lively and exciting entertainment but also you will be, as audience, a crucial part of the process of forging the creative aspirations of Aboriginal Australia.
Rodeo Moon (writer, David Milroy) is a Jack and Jillaroo musical theatre play set in 1969 in the northwest of WA. In the weeks leading up to the federal election between Gorton and Gough, a travelling rodeo hits town, and while the ensuing action is very funny, at the same time it exposes old attitudes to a changing Australia. Skylab (Melodie Reynolds-Diarra) is a science fiction comedy set a decade later when the American space station Skylab crash-landed off Esperance, WA. Telekinesis and telepathy afflict the town’s population resulting in amazement, confusion and fear. When President Jimmy Carter rings Balladonia Roadhouse to formally apologise, Auntie picks up the phone … culture crash!
The contrasting Masterpiece (Glenn Shea), while a thriller set in a remote location, is at the same time both lyrical and richly layered. Telling a story of Aboriginal trauma and resilience at a time of potential change, hope emerges with the realisation that the “masterpiece” is not a painting but rather the immediate image as it is reflected in a mirror. Tooly also draws upon a central and symbolic image – a soft rain which sensitively caresses the skin. The rain brings with it a message, understood by the two closely bonded sisters, but which brings a deep aching grief to their loving granddaughter. While Life’s a Suitcase (Tessa Rose) powerfully conveys the confusion and pain of an Aboriginal woman who grew up in non-Aboriginal families, whose adolescence was traumatic and who suffered the devastation of domestic violence. At the same time, it is a moving testimony of the will to survive.
The 2015 festival appropriately concluded with The Season (Nathan Maynard), a comical rumbustious insight into the dynamics of a family mutton bird shed on Dog Island (part of the Bass Strait Islands) during the six-week harvest season of the mutton birds by Aboriginal Tasmanian people. The audience departed, still laughing, deeply impressed by the originality, meaningfulness and verve of Indigenous play writing.
Yellamundie Festival provides a nurturing environment in which writers workshop their plays with established Aboriginal playwrights, actors, dramaturgs and directors, and ultimately, the opportunity for their plays to be chosen for full production. The artistic director, Frederick Copperwaite, and his co-director, Andrea James, must take great satisfaction in the high quality not only of the writing but also of the many talented readers who brought the scripts to irresistible life.
