[Ngapartji Updates] Ngapartji Ngapartji Sydney Festival Review

[alex kelly]

Australian Stage Online
Monday 14th January
Written by James Waites

Wantinyalana! Once in a Life Time!

A few days back on a Festival blog 
<http://www.australianstage.com.au/blogs/show,Art-Can-Save-Our-Souls.html/> 
entry I waxed lyrical over the rich treasure of the Kev Carmody tribute 
concert. There I mentioned how some of us were ready to cast aside our 
White Supremicist arrogance, sit down at the feet of Aboriginal Elders 
and listen to whatever it was they saw fit to tell us.

How could I know that the Carmody concert was but a warm up for *Big 
hArt's* enthralling drama -  /*Ngapartji Ngapartji*/ - about the life of 
the Central Desert's Spinifex people and, in particular, the joys and 
sufferings of lead storyteller, *Trevor Jamieson* and his immediate 
family. Do the gods really ever listen? Maybe totems do. For here I was, 
a few days later, not just in the presence of a truly major work of art 
- brimming with ideas and emotions, and exquisitely realized - but in 
the form of the very 'sit down and listen' I had asked for.

In a style that bounces joy and sometimes even reckless laughter off the 
cold walls or wisdom, grief and sadness (found also in the film /Ten 
Canoes/ to those who saw it), I was among the second-night Festival 
audience who, first up, learned how to sing the kindergarten song 'Heads 
Shoulders Knees and Toes' in Pitjanjatjara: 'Kata alpiri muti tjina'. A 
great ice-breaker. All of us being little kids again. The child in us 
brought to the surface, we were sat down again and so the lesson began.

Much recent Aboriginal expression deploying western theatre forms has 
been reminiscent of grief counselling: where the victim initially 
unleashes the horror of the experiences that is holding their healing 
back. The story has almost always been personal and, however compelling 
and sometimes hilarious, we whitefellas cannot help but come away 
'shamed'. I'm thinking of works including the plays of Jack Davis about 
the 200-year-old 'White Problem' in West Australia to the solo shows of 
Ningali Lawson and Leah Purcell, /Seven Stages of Grieving/, and many more.

*Ngapartji's* writer and director, *Scott Rankin*, worked with Purcell 
on her excellent one-person show, /Box the Pony/, which premiered at the 
Festival of Dreaming in Sydney in 1997. A decade later he is one among a 
vast tribe of artists, volunteers, language teachers, activists, web 
specialists, and others, known as *Big hArt* -- who have brought the 
elusive dream of 'community art' practice to a level artistic 
sophistication that rivals Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.

*Big hArt's /Ngapartji Ngapartji/* project centres on the concern for 
lost language, the glue that holds any culture together. Australia has 
already lost half of its 300 indigenous languages; and 110 of the 145 
surviving are on the critically endangered list.

You could say the current production at Belvoir Street (where, for a 
Sydney season, this show belongs) is the above-surface component of the 
*Big hArt Ngapartji Ngapartji* iceberg; the bulk of the cultural 
activity taking place beneath this surface. Perhaps it's better to 
imagine Uluru as the tip of a mountain rising bluntly out of its 
shimmering Central Desert surrounds, with the bulk of its meaning, 
history and purpose lying beneath the surrounding red-earth surface.

Nearby Alice Springs serves as the centre for *Big hArt*. As the program 
notes, this location on Arrente country is along way from  the Jamieson 
family's Spinifex nation to the south west. But much of this land is 
uninhabitable, even unapproachable, due to the poison that lies in the 
soil since atom-bomb testing which took place, most infamously at 
Maralinga.

But *Big hArt* has worked on projects across the length and breadth of 
Australia, including sites in Tasmania, the troubled Sydney beach 
community of Cronulla; and even Northcott -- the daunting Housing 
Commission estate that raps its loving and sometimes troubled arms 
around the Belvoir Street Theatre.

In development is /Gold/ a Murray-Darling basin project which is looking 
at the effect of water (or lack of it) on communities from the 
Queensland border and along the course of the river system down into 
South Australia. It is *Big hArt's* first foray into the matter of 
global warming. And in typical fashion it is coordinating opportunities 
for those effected to share their stories, and by whatever means appear 
appropriate, art-making will emerge.

In yet another most fortuitous merging of opportunities, Big hArt's 
National Creative Director and Cofounder, *Scott Rankin*, was invited to 
give the 2008 Rex Cramphorn Lecture, included for the first time in a 
Sydney Festival program and delivered yesterday. *Rankin* offered an 
extraordinarily insightful commentary -- again, like all *Big hArt's* 
work I've now seen, swinging artlessly from sombre fact-telling to 
self-deprecating joke-telling, taking in both big-picture vision and 
microscopic and respectful observance.

*/Ngapartji Ngapartji/* is the perfect example. The production's central 
performer, *Trevor Jamieson*, explains that he began on this project 
because he wanted to make a film about one of his brothers, *Jangala*, 
who - like so many dispossessed - was having trouble holding his life 
together. There is some stunning footage of this film where family, 
including *Jangala's* own children, gather round after his release from 
jail to discuss, quite animatedly, where he might go from here.

This story of one young man's troubles is used to personalize the big 
version of the Spinifex people who were driven from their land after the 
Australia agreed to Britain's request to use nearby country to test atom 
bombs. We are all aware, to varying degrees, the impact this had on 
those who were poisoned. While physical illness in terms of cancer is 
widespread, so was the dispersion of community and consequently 
language. To quote Cape York elder, Roger Hart, "When I speak language, 
it makes me feel home". And Rita Mae Brown: "Language is the roadmap to 
culture. It tells you where people are coming from and where they are 
going." So this is the story of profound loss.

And it helps explain why, if you dip into the *Big hArt* website, you 
can find out how to enroll in Pitjanjatjara, the language of the 
Spinifex people. This company is not just out to point the finger of 
blame, it is rolling up its sleeves and getting into the business of 
helping with the healing. On the matter of radiation poisoning, the cast 
includes Japanese-born *Yumi Umiumare*, who contributes her own people's 
version of this catastrophe; and we are reminded too that Australian 
scientists stole the bones of hundreds of infants for years, both black 
and white, to test for the effect of pre-natal radiation poisoning. So 
white people have also been abused.

Drawing on the malleable language of western theatre practice, this 
production takes the previous work (above mentioned) of Davis, Lawson 
and Purcell, et al, a step further. Here we go beyond identifying the 
crisis and releasing some of the pain, to a new phase of learning and 
healing - the beginning of. That we start with rehearsing the most 
simple kindergarten song is fun, but no joke. Most of us really do have 
to go right 'back to the very beginning' to make our start. In a stark 
reminder touched on during the production: we all know how to go to 
France and say 'bonjour' to the locals. But how many of us can do the 
same in even one of Australia's 150 surviving traditional tongues? As 
*Rankin* reworked this alarming fact into his lecture: John Howard sent 
in the army to help but, after jumping off the trucks, not a single 
soldier knew how to say 'hi' in the vernacular of the people they had 
supposedly turned up to help.

By familiar western theatre standards, /*Ngapartji Ngapartji*/ is a 
profound and moving drama, exquisitely told. *Trevor Jamieson* carries 
the weight of the production with such a gift for movement and 
story-telling that you imagine he is carrying around a feather. He 
share's the stage with a fine supporting cast including artists and 
artisans, Australians of other blood-lines, and half-a-dozen women 
elders. Their presence proffers, in equal share again, both laughter and 
gravitas.

Already eight years in the making, /*Njapartji Ngapartji*/ is, at its 
core, the unfolding of one family's story. Without giving too much away, 
now is an amazing time to catch where this family story is at. Let me 
just say this: I called my response to the Kev Carmody concert: 'Art Can 
Save Lives'. /*Ngapartji Ngapartji*/ is living proof.

To hear the David Byrne/Talking Heads anthem, 'Once in a Lifetime' wash 
over you in Pitjanjatjara is a once-in-a-life-time experience. So is 
this show: the bold little foal I mentioned last week is now bolting 
around the paddock. Go take a look. Such beauty can make you weep!

Further Reading www.bighart.org <http://www.bighart.org/>


Company B, Sydney Festival and Big hART in association with Melbourne 
International Arts Festival, Perth International Arts Festival and 
Sydney Opera House present
*Ngapartji Ngapartji*

*Venue:* Belvoir St Theatre, 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
*Dates:* 12 January -- 10 February 2008
*Times:* Tuesday 6.30pm, Wednesday to Saturday 8pm, Sunday 5pm
*Duration:* 2hrs, 20mins, including interval
*Tickets:* Full $54
Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) & Groups 10+ $45.
Concession $33.
Student Rush $25 for Tuesday 6.30pm, available from 10am on the day 
(subject to availability)
*Bookings:* Belvoir St Theatre on (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au 
<http://www.belvoir.com.au/> | www.sydneyfestival.org.au 
<http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/>

-- 
Alex Kelly
Creative Producer
http://www.ngapartji.org
http://www.bighart.org
0422 777 590
NGAPARTJI NGAPARTJI
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