Aussie

It's a long trek from Melbourne, Australia to Cardiff, Wales, both geographically and culturally, but some things are universal. The need for cake at staff meetings and that phantom of the opera is likely to be playing at a theatre nearby. And, if you come from an Aboriginal theatre community like  I do, and are visiting the National Theatre of Wales, as I am, the imperative to make theatre that makes a difference and leaves a legacy. Hi, I'm Jane Harrison and I'm an Aboriginal playwright and writer from Australia, here on placement at NTW for one week as part of the Accelerate arts leadership program which is supported by the British Council. The idea is that six of us, from a variety of arts backgrounds, visit the UK to focus in our individual leadership aspirations, to learn from the companies and individuals who host us and meet with us, but that we also foster long term relationships that may lead to collaborations. So, as a playwright, I would love to get interest in my next play, First Contact, which looks at the events of 1788 when 11 shiploads of convicts moored off the coast of Australia, but this time re-images that momentous event from the Aboriginal perspective. My seven Aboriginal men, Elder statesmen, are dressed in suits, turning paradigms of 'civilisation' on their head right from the beginning. Any companies interested in staging it, please ring!

I am fortunate that I have already had a play, Stolen, staged in London, back in 2000, and Stolen was subsequently was invited back to tour the UK the following year including to the Manchester theatre, Contact, where NTW's John McGrath was previously AD. Stolen told the story of five Aboriginal people who were part of the Stolen Generations, whereby Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families, community and culture and institutionalised, fostered or adopted into white families. Stolen was my first play but had eight years of consecutive seasons in Melbourne, and toured to most of Australia, the UK, Hong Kong, Japan, and has had readings in Canada, New York and Los Angeles. My second produced play, Rainbow's End, told the story of three generations of Aboriginal women living on the fringes of a country town in the 1950s. It has had a production in Japan and last year toured to 33 venues in Australia, picking up the Drover's Award for best touring production, as voted by the the hosting venues (what you guys call receiving houses).

As well as being a playwright, I am on the board of Ilbijerri, the longest running Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theatre company in Australia. We've been operating for over 20 years, but for the first half it was largely unfunded. Ilbijerri is small compared to NTW, with only 5 staff. It develops, produces and tours at least one major play per year, plus health- related plays targeted to the Aboriginal community, and also runs a Black Writers' Lab. There are only three Aboriginal theatre companies in Oz, but many more dance companies, from small to the internationally renowned Bangarra. There's a number of specific Aboriginal performing arts training institutions, as well as mainstream, so our output of actors and performers is fairly healthy. 

Back to me .... I also write about Indigenous performing arts. (If you want to get some insight into the diversity of indigenous arts practice in Oz, see the inaugural Indigenous performing arts edition, RealBlak, at www.realtimearts.net).

I am visiting NTW, and the UK in general, to explore innovative ways to support play development, and to take those back and share them with my own arts community. The added bonus for me is hearing about NTW's incredibly ambitious and embedded methodology of engaging with the communities and place. WalesLab, TEAM, Assemblies, plus the non building based approach, meaning the performance outcomes are created and performed in communities, and often in the most uncommon spaces, is unique. In Australia, there might be a couple of comparable examples, such as Big hArt, who work to engender social change in at-risk communities, and the Torch Project, which aims to strengthen social capital in targeted locations through the medium of theatre. But I would say that for both those companies social change is their first priority and they do it through the arts, rather than arts first approach. 

I'm learning lots (they're a very generous lot at NTW, both with time and ideas) and wondering how I can possibly extrapolate some of those approaches to the much smaller and insular Aboriginal performing arts industry. Stay tuned.