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Anticipated production looms
October 13: It is one week before Scott Rankin’s highly anticipated
production of Ngapartji Ngapartji (Nap-ar-gee, Nap-ar-gee) opens as part of the Melbourne
International Arts Festival. AussieTheatre.com's Christina Cass caught up with Rankin....
Ngapartji Ngapartji: “I give you something, you give me something”
An Aboriginal Nation’s Narration
We are sitting in one of the green rooms of the mazelike Melbourne Theatre Company
rehearsal building in Southbank. Scott is squeezing my interview in between his lunch and
giving notes to his cast of 37, before rehearsals resume in half an hour. But you’d
never see the stress show as he folds himself into a chair opposite me.
Scott Rankin is widely known for his directing and playwriting in comedy, mainstream
theatre, experimental community based projects, film and television. His work has been
included in Tasmania, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Edinburgh festivals and his plays
have set box office records and received exceptional reviews. Among his many awards, he
received the 2004 Green Room Award for Best Direction for Beasty Girl and the
2000 Premier’s Literary Award in Drama for Box the Pony.
 Scott’s production company, BIG hART, was established in 1992
with John Bakes and has initiated, mentored and/or created over 20 productions - working
primarily with disadvantaged people in regional, rural and isolated areas of Australia.
Which brings us to his first meeting with Ngapartji Ngapartji’s co-author
and principle performer, Trevor Jamieson, a descendant of an ancient Aboriginal culture,
Pitjantjatjara (Pit-jan-jara).
Trevor came to Scott six years ago with an extraordinary family story. Scott was well
known for his indigenous works through BIG hART and Trevor was hoping his own story could
somehow be shaped and translated to a wider audience. It wasn’t easy, and “It
became clear a few years ago that there needed to be a better approach – instead of
viewing indigenous theatre as a voyeur from the outside where you pay for a festival
ticket, come along and [say] ‘that’s lovely’ and then go have a latte.
There needed to be a different kind of transaction for a story as intimate and
overwhelming as this one.”
Which is how they came up with the complicated and ingenious concept of Ngapartji
Ngapartji. Ngapartji Ngapartji is Pitjantjatjara for “you give me
something, I give you something.” It is this type of ancient barter transaction
– used globally, in every caste system – that is the spine of this unique
theatrical production.
“[Trevor’s story] is the most vital untold story I’ve come across,”
says Scott. It is a story about the Cold War and Britain’s permission from then Prime
Minister Robert Menzies to detonate six atomic bombs in the territory of Maralinga,
Australia – to test and record radioactive fallout in the 50’s and 60’s. It
was all very top secret and Menzies did not even consult Parliament before telling the
British Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, ‘Sure, nothing’s out there.” He,
along with most Australians, were unaware that a vast nation – the Pitjantjatjara,
which is larger than Great Britain itself – lived and had lived in deserts of central
Australia for hundreds of years and the Maralinga tests would take place in the middle of
this nation.
So why Australia? “The British needed to do (these tests) because MI5 was riddled
with Russian spies and the Americans wouldn’t share their secrets with (Britain)
because they didn’t want the Russians to get them… they only had a couple of
years jump on them. The British had no navy left, no steel and limited coal – the
Empire was crumbling. Menzies was scared of the ‘yellow peril’ and Asia’s
susceptibility towards communism,” says Scott. “All these world factors are
descending on this great nation.the Pitjantjatjara nation is huge.”
The Pitjantjatjara were astonishingly isolated from global events, “here is this
incredibly sophisticated and intact culture that 50 years ago, had had some contact with
the Western world. But they had no idea about the Second World War… or that there was
something called the Cold War or that an atom had been split.” Scott continues,
“Which makes this a riveting Cold War story. It was only 20 years ago that
Trevor’s family came out of the desert for the first time and met white people.”
Fortunately missionaries were able to warn a few Pitjantjatjara to flee their homeland
– but the rest of the Pitjantjatjara were unable to read the warning flyers dropped
by the RAF – they were written in English. “The British had also set up fences
across water hole tracks. Disastrous for desert-dwellers because if you know where water
is in the desert and you start walking in that direction, you can’t turn back.
You’re trapped and die of thirst at the fence with only one patrolman to watch an
area the size of Great Britain. All these were illogical events happening to a nation that
didn’t even know Britain existed,” explained Scott.
“From this experience the… Pitjantjatjara story is a story of Diaspora. These
are refugees who’ve lost their country – making them the most fragile refugees
in the world.” Ngapartji Ngapartji makes many parallels to this story. There
are Afghan stories; Japanese, English and Greek stories included in this production, which
makes this specifically Australian story vital to the modern day, international audience.
There are also classic David Bowie and David Byrne songs from the Cold War era that are
performed in Pitjantjatjara and other languages, once more making this story of Diaspora
global and timely.
What interests Scott as a playwright is, “narrative and the way narrations turn into
nations. That is how a nation gets a sense of who it is. There is a fight on to eliminate
the narrations that don’t fit conveniently with those who are trying to write
history.” Trevor’s story of viewing the Cold War through the prism of his
family’s stories is a whole missing section of Australia’s history – this
nation’s narration.
Like many of Scott’s other projects, Ngapartji Ngapartji has an agenda. He and Trevor
hope to create more awareness about the tragic language loss within Australia: “This
continent has the greatest language loss in the world. We’ve perpetrated cultural
genocide in the past and there is a lot of apology about that, but we are currently dong
the same thing and we will be apologizing again soon. For instance, we spend
[approximately] $29 million a year making sure Indonesian can be taught in Australian
schools and $4 million per year for 150 indigenous languages. We are perpetrating language
loss politically through social policy.”
Hopefully this project will create a ‘tipping point’ about this problem. The
basis of much of BIG hART’s work is that in order to achieve behavioral change, you
need attitudinal change to create a cultural shift. “We want to get 5000 people
learning the Pitjantjatjara language and then ask them to write to their local politicians
to begin to look at this [country’s] language policy.”
BIG hART has set up an online language course where one can learn the very physical
Pitjantjatjara language and about their culture. For $285 you get the course, a
Pitjantjatjara dictionary and a ticket to Ngapartji Ngapartji: you give me something, I
give you something. Simple exchange.
Another part of Scott and Trevor’s agenda for this project is to funnel as much money
as possible back into the Pitjantjatjara community – you can see the breakdown on the
website. Money so far has gone towards making short films and putting them on the website.
In essence, “This community is becoming the teachers of a broader Australia.“
Scott also notes that this community development aspect is still quite fragile. These
people are dealing with a lot of survival issues at the moment while becoming our
teachers. So each of our steps within the greater agenda must be taken mindfully and
carefully.
Finally, the production itself, along with its tale of Diaspora, is translatable
internationally. Lincoln Center in New York has been very interested in Ngapartji
Ngapartji’s development since it’s sold out workshop performances at the
Melbourne International Festival last year. Scott and Trevor have worked intensely in
taking the show to the next level – but Scott makes it clear that he wouldn’t be
sitting here on the eve of this highly anticipated event without the help of numerous
angels who “work much harder than I do.” Special thanks goes to Kristy Edmunds,
Artistic Director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival, who, when everyone else
said this was too ambitious and too difficult a project to produce, said, “let’s
do it.”
“It’s a very important time to be taking action, focusing on social change. The
thing about BIG hART is that we don’t lose the art for the sake of social change and
we don’t lose the social change for the sake of art. The challenge is how do you not
make a piece of crap on stage because you’re dealing with a whole lot of agendas. It
means you have to be more virtuosic than less.”
Finally, Scott insists this a story, not a lecture about ‘the agenda’, and that
it is very funny. With regard to his long-time collaborator, “It is an undeniable
treat for a writer/director to have this level of skill in an actor to work with.”
Personally, I can’t help but hope Trevor’s skillful storytelling – both his
and this nation’s narration – sends tremors around the globe. |
