Queensland Performing Arts Centre and Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts present A high-voltage showcase of more than 40 emerging Indigenous actors, musicians, singers and dancers EDUCATION RESOURCES Image by Dylan Evans.
About the Show The next generation of artists from the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts (ACPA) claims the Cremorne Theatre stage in Blak Electric. A high-voltage fusion of drama, dance, music and song, Blak Electric tells the story of three young Indigenous people living in urban Brisbane. All three have different connections to country and culture; all must short circuit preconceived notions about what it means to be an Indigenous Australian in 2014. Channelling a cheeky and irreverent energy, the students forge connections with each other and the wider world around them to explode stereotypes and find a way forward. No compromises. No holds barred. Featuring more than 40 artists and a live band on stage, Blak Electric is a powerful new show directed by Stephen Lloyd Helper (Smokey Joe s Cafe) ) and choreographed by Bradley Chatfield. Curriculum Connections Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives Music theatre Dance theatre Devised theatre Themes/Issues The passions and visions of young Australian Indigenous people Dealing with stereotypes The responsibilities of mining companies to the land Our responsibilities to the land Reconnecting families Cultural separation and reconnection Current Indigenous leaders in Australia 1
About the DIRECTOR Stephen Lloyd Helper Stephen Lloyd Helper has experience on Broadway, at the Sydney Opera House, Theatre Royal, State Theatre Sydney and Australian arts centres around the country as a producer, director and co-writer. He co-conceived Broadway s Smokey Joe s Cafe which ran for 4 1/2 years and is in the top 30 of longest runs in Broadway history. It also played two years in the West End, has toured and been produced all over the world. Stephen also directed a Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof which was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Revival. Currently, he is in the final developmental stage of a groundbreaking Indigenous work, The New Black,, which has been hailed as the 21st Century Bran Nue Dae by The Age from its initial public workshops at Arts Centre Melbourne. This work, co- written with Deadly Award winner Marcus Corowa and Leeroy Bilney, became a twinkle in their collective eyes at the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts when they worked together on the wonderfully received Soul Music presented in the Cremorne Theatre. Stephen has produced a number of successful productions in Australia including the sold out premiere season of Cafe Rebetika! at the Arts Centre Melbourne. Subsequently it toured throughout the Eastern states, including a sold out season at the Sydney Opera House and a by popular demand return season to Melbourne. He also directed and co-wrote Cafe Rebetika! Stephen s play, A Sign Of The Times, opened in Sydney as part of the NIDA Independent season to rave reviews and is now forming an Australian Tour to lift off from a season at QPAC (also in the Cremorne). His production (Director and Producer) of Syncopation n by Allan Knee toured 44 theatres across Australia and premieres Off-Broadway in 2014/5 in a co-production with the York Theatre Company, a company with which he has a long association. Other current productions include The Adventures Of Namakili which Stephen co-wrote with Indigenous actor, Lynette Lewis Hubbard in Darwin. It premiered under Stephen s direction at Brown s Mart (Darwin). His first production as Director and Co-Producer of the Follies Company was the Sydney Opera House concerts of Follies by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman. The four concerts sold out the Concert Hall. It featured the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a galaxy of Australian musical theatre stars. In addition to Follies, he has directed and co-produced other productions with the Sydney Opera House including their commission of Simply Weill a Kurt Weill Cabaret, You re Gonna Love Tomorrow a New Year s Eve Sondheim concert in the Concert Hall and Cafe Rebetika! in the Playhouse. Stephen directed, produced and co-wrote with Scott Rankin, What The World Needs Now,, a new musical with a score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David which was a popular success at Sydney s Theatre Royal and directed major one-person shows for Judi Connelli, Glynn Nicholas and Paul Capsis. Stephen began his career at Yale where he graduated (BA) from its renowned Theatre Studies program in directing, dramaturgy and playwriting. He then went to New York City and immediately began a series of apprenticeships with some of finest Broadway directors, including the late Jerome Robbins. Productions included West Side Story, Baby, Fiddler on the Roof and Andrew Lloyd Webber s Song And Dance starring Bernadette Peters. Off-Broadway he collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on a revised version of Marry Me A Little selling out its initial and extended seasons. With determination and superb people/collaborative skills, Stephen s work is responsive to Australian society. His productions embrace our multi-cultural reality both in production and in mainstream audience development. He sees theatre as an international form of communication and that there is no better way of building understanding, compassion and hope than through cultural exploration and exchange. He received a Distinction in the Multicultural Arts Professional Development course at RMIT. As a teacher and mentor, Stephen has taught at NIDA, The Actors Centre (ACA), TAFEs, mentored in Blackfulla Bootcamp and the Actors College of Theatre and Television (ACTT). At ACTT, he has coordinated the Music Theatre program for a number of years and has helped design their new Advanced Diploma in Music Theatre which just launched in July this year. Steve has received numerous Australia Council Creative Development and Production/Presentation grants for which he is very, very grateful. 2
Q&A WITH THE DIRECTOR What inspired this production of Blak Electric? The students. A common theme among their many and differing experiences as young Indigenous men and women was empowerment. We talked a lot about the sources of empowerment, of energy, of motivation for them. We did improvisations based on scenarios taken from their lives to discover responses that were empowering or self-defeating. We then wanted to dig deeper and identify where these empowering feelings came from. How, when faced with barriers in life, to tap into their unique power sources each of them carries with them, all the time. These incredibly talented students want to share their stories with all of us and it is high time they did. Everyone wants change for the better. How can each of them as well as each of us make that happen. What can audiences expect from Blak Electric? Energy! Passion! Humour! Drama! Beauty! Irreverence! How do dance, drama and music intersect in the show? Dance, drama and music intersect through story. Music is the driving force of Blak Electric rhythm brings dance, melody brings singing, lyrics bring more expression to everything from joy to heartache to social comment. We follow the stories of three young Indigenous people making their way in the world today. We use all of the performing arts to express their journeys. In what ways is working with young people different to working with more experienced artists? How does the role of the director change? Young people are open to the world, filled with ideas and make you rethink the impossible. More experienced artists can also be like this however, their focus tends to be more on the demands of their particular role and less on the whole picture. Part of the mission of Blak Electric is to bring expression to their imaginations. As a director, the job is very much one of an enabler, of a mentor, of an explorer and encourager. With experienced artists, I bring a vision of the production with me that is the product of many months even years of research and a process of collaboration brings it or an evolution of it to fruition. With young people, we build the show together from the first day. I bring a core idea to test out, some images, some ideas about production style. How do you go about devising a performance like this? Was there a script? My job with these students entails a lot of listening, soul searching, seeking out the key themes that underlie or immerge from our work in the rehearsal room. As we clarify the themes, we let them loose with creative play! We then hone the work into a (I hope) unified, powerful and entertaining whole. Sometimes the artists will have done some work previously that is of a very high standard and can be incorporated directly into the show. Without doubt a script has to be created as we work including dialogue, new songs, new music for choreography. The drama that is in young people s lives can be startling and eye opening. We have to build a trusting and respectful atmosphere from the first day. Ultimately we structure the work with a classic beginning/middle/end form. Finishing touches on the production script are made early in the last week of rehearsal. To what extent do the students create and define dramatic meaning in the show? As you can see, a very great deal! What advice would you give to young performers looking to make a career in the industry? Love to work hard. Don t let ambition get in the way of making good friends by which I mean, it is your relationships with others that make the biggest difference in one s success assuming you are training hard and always working on your skills. What about aspiring directors? Find a mentor director someone whose work you really admire. Be proactive in contacting them personally. Also, work with your mates and get busy putting on a production of something you love. Learn about co-op productions, be ready to help writers present readings of their plays. Make sure YOU keep reading plays and musicals and studying history as context for your work. 3
ARTICLE FOR DISCUSSION Indigenous Sacrifice for the Miners Gain by Colin McKinnon-Dodd Few non-indigenous Australians understand the depth of connection between my people, their land and our Dreamtime. It has been interwoven by tens of thousands of years of family life, cultural practice and sacred ancestral burials. Our heritage is the country that we walk on and live with. It is deeply embedded in our cultural identity. Every culture is motivated to preserve their history. Despite being so much younger in comparison to Aboriginal culture, Western culture has serious laws that protect its sacred places and religious sites. This protection stops many activities like abseiling down St Patrick s Cathedral or setting up camp at the Shrine. Yet Western laws do not accord anywhere near the level of respect for sacred Aboriginal land. They allow tourists to climb the most sacred of sites, Uluru, and they allow for mining to occur on sacred land. Can you imagine the extent of trauma experienced by my people when the family/land connection is severed? The impact of this separation can be too devastating for any amount of monetary compensation. In perspective, it would be far less painful for the chief executive of Fortescue Metals, Andrew Forrest, to be forced to give up his house for a pittance, watch his church demolished and his family gravesite dug up. 2011 is a critical time in relation to issues of mining royalties, tax and Aboriginal rights. It is now clear that after many decades of open slather, miners have become used to bloated profits far in excess of what they were entitled to; firstly because of exploitative and unfair treatment of Indigenous people and secondly because governments have seriously under-taxed them in the past. Indeed governments have been paying welfare to traditional landholders to make up for the debt that miners should have been paying. It has led to a scandalously inefficient welfare system that has been weighed down by excessive bureaucracy and a regime of sit-down money that has caused irreparable damage. For too long bucketloads of money has been misdirected and wasted rather than invested in the future. There are two salient facts about mining in Australia: Aboriginal people have been forced to make far bigger sacrifices than anyone else to accommodate mining. Mining has brought fewer benefits to Aboriginal people than to anyone else. Many of these issues, which have been invisible for so long, must now be placed onto the agenda. After several decades of lost opportunities, there are some dreadful imbalances that need to be redressed. There is no question that this conundrum should have been resolved long before the current debate about the carbon tax and the super-profits tax. But unfortunately a combination of incompetence, greed and short-term power politics has sabotaged the solution; which of course has suited the mining industry. The great concern for Aboriginal people is that they will miss the boat that these two highly legitimate taxes will take precedence over the most important tax of all a fair and just royalty system for traditional landholders. It is high time to raise the status of Aboriginal people at the negotiating table. The Mabo decision acknowledged our rightful place as stakeholders. We ve got to stop being seen as recipients and start seeing ourselves as landlords. Miners cannot be trusted in this deregulated environment. They need to be regulated by appropriate legislation to stop them from exploiting Indigenous people. Negotiators for traditional landholders, in our case the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation, need to be reminded that they represent the interests of all tribal people and carry a huge responsibility to negotiate for fair and competent outcomes this has not happened in the past. Currently they are paid either by the Government or the miners and often their loyalties are determined by those that pay them. Negotiating terms also need to be redirected away from welfare handouts and sit-down money, and towards more proactive involvement. Whatever happened to allocation of shares in the industries that service the boom? All future mining deals must include Indigenous people as participants in the service industries to ensure that Aboriginal people receive the necessary training and experience to become self-sustainable. Miners should be permitted access to our land only when deals are equitable and benefits are widespread. One mining company that appears to be the most progressive and balanced is Rio Tinto. Their superior awareness has led them to strike a $2 billion deal with traditional owners and prompted them to commit to employing at least 14 per cent of its workforce with local Aboriginal people. Rio Tinto s chief executive Sam Walsh said: It s good for the Aboriginal community. It s good for our business. It also happens to be the right thing to do. Yet while the deal is impressive, there could be a sneaky devil lurking in the detail. Rio Tinto has cleverly commissioned experts to create a package deal instead of negotiating one mine at a time they have sealed up 40 mines with the one deal. Their public presentation has been cosmetically enhanced by multiplying payments of $50 million a year for 40 years to equal an impressive looking $2 billion. This is the closest that we get to the middle ground. 4
Indigenous Sacrifice for the Miners Gain continued In contrast to Rio Tinto s real slice of pie is an insulting offer of a lonely breadcrumb from Fortesque Metal Group to the Yindjibarndi people. Fortesque s offer of just $4 million cash and $6 million on housing from billions of dollars of profit equates to less than 4 cents in every $1,000. This represents a continuation of the darkest days when mining companies ruthlessly pursued advantage at the expense of traditional owners. Yet Mr Forrest says that he is a friend of Aboriginal people and a philanthropist. He says that the more time he spends with Aboriginal people the more he loves them. In truth all this is making us nauseous and wary. If he genuinely wanted to make a difference he could single-handedly liberate Aboriginal people from third-world conditions. Yet Fortesque is applying for the right to mine more than twice the land of BHP and Rio Tinto put together. Aboriginal people are closely watching Mr Forrest and his close friendship with WA Indigenous Affairs Minister Peter Collier. Mr Collier is soon to be adjudicating over whether or not to grant an exemption to Fortesque Metals and enable mining on sacred Aboriginal land. Where are the safeguards to protect sacred sites and to uphold the integrity of the governmental decision-making process? Aboriginal people want the following to be implemented: We want Mr Forrest and Fortesque Metals to hand their existing leases to BHP or Rio Tinto. There should be an international body that protects the integrity of land negotiations with Aboriginal people. Government decision-making processes need to be fireproofed against the influence of big business interests. Aboriginal people should have equal access to Government decision makers. A second daily newspaper needs to be established in WA to provide diversity of opinion and balance on Indigenous issues. This article originally appeared on Tuesday 19 July, 2011 at http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/stories/s3274867.htm Further reading: http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-sorry-tale-of-lake-disappointment-the-missing-mining-millions-and-warrenmundine-20140711-zt2b8.html YouTube Video: Australian Aborigines demand mining royalties https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo38lugul_a 5
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES Forming Choose one of the central characters of Blak Electric. Write a monologue from that character s perspective that demonstrates your understanding of the play s themes, and reveals information about them not included in the show. Imagine you are an emerging playwright commissioned to write a new work that further explores the themes of the article on pages 4-5. Write a 200-word synopsis that outlines the central characters, setting, and narrative action. Imagine you have been asked to direct this play for a school audience. Write a directorial vision statement outlining how you will manipulate the elements of drama (Character, Language, Place, Situation, Tension, Contrast, Mood, Relationships, Space, Time, Dramatic Focus, Movement, Role and Symbol) to create meaning. Presenting Hot seat Individually or in small groups, assume the role of one of the main characters in Blak Electric. In character, you must respond to questions relating to your actions/behaviour in the play. In small groups, create short improvised scenes using the knowledge gained about each of the characters from viewing the performance. After each improvisation discuss the students choices. Prepare a news report in a small group about a conflict between two groups claiming ownership of a culturally significant and/or valuable area of land. Be creative with context and setting. Responding Every culture is motivated to preserve their history. Discuss this quote from Colin McKinnon-Dodd s article in relation to Blak Electric. Choose one of the central characters. In what ways do they try to preserve their culture and history? To what extent do they create their own? In what ways does the director manipulate the dramatic elements to expose cultural stereotypes in Blak Electric? Discuss dramatic languages throughout the production to reinforce your ideas, e.g. design (lighting, sound, set and costume). What cultural stereotypes of Indigenous people are presented in the play? In what ways did the play use humour to explore its themes? How did the use of dance and movement contribute to dramatic meaning? 6
RESPONDING TO LIVE THEATRE Below is a Responding to Live Theatre Worksheet. It is a way to get students thinking about their live theatre experience and is broken down into sections so they can plot out their ideas easily and simplistically. It can be the beginnings of a review, an essay response or even a short response exam. NAME OF PLAY: WRITTEN BY: DIRECTED BY: CHOREOGRAPHED BY: ORIGINAL MUSIC BY: ACTORS: Recommendation: Why would you recommend this play? Why would it appeal to your target audience? Narrative: Briefly outline the plot in 75 words or less and then evaluate how effectively the play will entertain the audience. 7
RESPONDING TO LIVE THEATRE continued Themes and Issues: What themes and issues are illuminated in the play? Explain how. What questions are raised for the audience? Characters: Why are the characters so engaging? You can elaborate on one character more however you need to address at least 2 of the characters in the play. Dramatic Tension: Identify the major tensions in the play that entertain the audience/elaborate on one of the major themes. Analyse two specific examples. 8
AT THE THEATRE We d like to welcome you to the experience of attending a live performance while we know you get all the etiquette stuff, here s a reminder of some simple information you can pass on to your students. We ask you to get involved in the performances by applauding and laughing at appropriate moments. If you have a question ask your teacher at the interval/end of the show. Live theatre is different to TV the actors on stage can hear and see you and there are other members of the audience to think about. If you need to leave the performance for any reason, please ensure this is done quickly and quietly and at an appropriate break in the action. Switching your phone to silent isn t the only thing to do. Please ensure that you switch off your mobile phone and leave it in your bag before the performance begins. The glow of the screen is obvious to others and is very distracting! 9