Presented by Carriageworks and Moogahlin Performing Arts, Winyanboga Yurringa translates from Yorta Yorta as “Women of the Sun”. Andrea James, a Yorta Yorta/Kurnai woman, was inspired by the groundbreaking TV series of that name co-written by Hyllus Maris and Sonia Borg and first televised in 1981.
While the original series gave insight into the lives of Aboriginal women from the 1820s to 1980s, James’s play portrays the experiences and problems of contemporary urban Aboriginal women. At the same time, she seeks to highlight how the profundity of the personal and cultural connection between these women, brought together by a camping trip “on country”, can give them the strength and resilience to meet current challenges to identity and the complexities of modern life.
On entering the theatre the audience is invited to contemplate a mystical place. Long pale clusters like spectral trees are suspended in space, drifts of mist suggest remoteness and solitude, and a mysterious stone disc compels us to question its significance. We contemplate also the figure emerging from darkness to stand upon the disc; a powerful figure, who represents in every sense, the living presence of an ancient culture.
However, the wonder of this opening is quickly dispelled by the entry of the grumbling and argumentative would-be campers. They present amusingly as readily recognisable urban “camping types”: the nervous Carol (Pamela Young) who is afraid of creepy crawlies, the cheery Margie (a very funny Kylie Coolwell) eager to display the latest camping gadgets including a sleeping bag that converts to a tent if it rains, the easily angered Wanda (Angeline Penrith), the moody mobile-dependent adolescent Chantelle (Alexis Lane) and the very late-at-night drop-in, Jada (Matilda Brown). Interpersonal conflicts create a tense atmosphere.
The initially compelling figure becomes an exasperated Auntie Neecy (an excellent Tessa Rose), trying to achieve a moment of harmony in which she can reveal her purpose in summoning her kin to her grandmother’s special place. Gradually each of the group reveals the challenges in their daily lives from feeling inferior in the workplace to violence within the home, from boyfriend troubles to being in a lesbian relationship. The troubles of the late arrival, the fair complexioned photographer Jada, are shown through a nightmare sequence referencing Bindi Cole’s photographic series Not Really an Aboriginal (2008).
Eventually the resolute Neecy achieves her several goals. Chantelle, symbolically lost and found, is given a more substantial sense of herself as other than a self-obsessed teenager and the interpersonal conflicts of the group become less significant than their common cultural heritage. The bravery of Carol in taking back her grandmother’s cultural objects from the museum where she is employed is revealed and in a final deeply moving and resonant scene, these valued objects are restored to their ancestral and rightful place.
