If you could see history through their eyes … The Visitors opens Clancestry
Since its debut in 2020 The Visitors has offered audiences riveting insights into how communities respond to change, which is exactly what this play continues to do – with its latest iteration about to open this year’s Clancestry.
Imagine for a moment that it is 1788 and you are watching a mysterious fleet amassing on the harbour. This is the premise for the play, The Visitors, that open’s QPAC’s Clancestry this year – the monumental events of 1788 from an Aboriginal perspective, giving audiences an opportunity to see these events from a viewpoint not covered by history books.
It’s a responsibility that actor John Blair, a Gamilaraay man, takes to heart every time he performs, standing on the harbour rocks on stage that form the foundation of this story. He’s played various characters since The Visitors first debuted in 2020, with the play evolving and touring the country since.
“We’re all humans and in terms of Aboriginal culture we have been here for 65,000 years. We had rules to learning and psychology, to be a group of people to survive in abundance,” says Blair. “And then everything changed massively in 1788. There was a lot of terrible things that happened, but we are still here and we want to be part of this place now called Australia, and we want to be included.
“We had very complex laws respecting Mother Earth and Father Sky and Grandfather Sun and Grandmother Moon, and everything is in nature and we need to live here.”
He says The Visitors has extra resonance given current events.
“The world is changing quite a lot – we’re all connected,” Blair says. “We want to still be here for a long time for our grandkids and great-grandkids and pass all of that on. People can learn. If you can empathise and put yourself in that place and feel emotions that can connect with you on a deep level to how you learn and change, and to start to think about that from a different perspective to yourself.”
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Also overseeing the evolution of The Visitors is director Wesley Enoch, a Quandamooka man and the newly appointed chair of the Australia Council Board of Creative Australia. He’s well known for his contribution to the arts in Queensland as a former artistic director of Queensland Theatre and is internationally acclaimed for his thought-provoking work.
Enoch says he’s thrilled to be the custodian of another work by playwright Jane Harrison, a Muruwari woman, who he’s worked collaboratively with for more than 30 years. He adds that this production is pertinent to the times.
“The notion in this play takes us back to 1788 and the idea of what the alternate path could have been for the relationship between Black and White Australia. This play says the alternate path could have been where the Aboriginal people pushed these people back out into the ocean,” Enoch says.
“I was artistic director of the Sydney Festival when we commissioned this play, with Moogahlin Performing Arts, in its first iteration back in 2020. This notion that another culture comes in who believes in the ownership of land, who then dispossess people. We go, `but you can’t own it anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you put a fence on it, you don’t own it’. There’s this cultural clash.
people who are challenged by the idea of seeing historical events from an Aboriginal perspective are exactly those who should come to see The Visitors
“Maybe the lessons we all have to learn about living on this continent is to go back and understand what the First Nations relationship to place is. What’s great about this play is how it keeps talking about the protocols, the important protocols that get played out, the Welcomes to Country, the idea of consensus decision-making, not a singular leadership. We all play our roles.
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“This production also looks at the power of women in decision-making. The original production in 2020 was all men.”
Enoch believes that people who are challenged by the idea of seeing historical events from an Aboriginal perspective are exactly those who should come to see The Visitors.
“Let’s be honest, every time we talk about environment, every time we talk about international trade, every time we talk about the identity of Australia internationally, we are talking about Aboriginal Australia. We are talking about this land and our custodianship of it. So a play like this is so important to remind people,” he says.
“NAIDOC week was last week. And we’ve seen a state government take acknowledgements of country off letterheads. We’ve seen the disallowing of the Aboriginal Cultural Centre here in Brisbane and in Cairns. There’s a different rhythm that goes on in Aboriginal communities. It is incremental, it is intergenerational. It moves at another pace.”
The Visitors gives a riveting insight into how communities respond to change and the unknown
Actor Zoe Walters, an Anmatyerre woman, takes on the role of Jackie – one of the two new female characters in The Visitors – in her first theatre gig fresh from acting school. She says this play has been an incredible opportunity.
“All the history we know about is from the White perspective, the colonisers’ perspective,” Walters says. “So it’s been really wonderful to be able to step into the shoes of ancestors and be able to live in this world pre-colonisation and think – this is what it was like and this is how we talked and this is how we interacted. We had our rules, we had our protocols, we had our own civilisation before colonisation.”
Co-produced by Moogahlin Performing Arts and Sydney Theatre Company, The Visitors gives a riveting insight into how communities respond to change and the unknown. It’s part of a rich Clancestry program at QPAC, a specially curated First Nations program that began in 2013 and which this year includes concerts, workshops and children’s events.
Other events include composer and pianist Paul Grabowsky performing with Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Yolŋu songmen Daniel Ngukurr Boy Wilfred and David Yipininy Wilfred, as well as Bangarra Dance Theatre’s new theatrical experience Illume, and a performance from Electric Fields also, with the QSO.
Zoe Walters hopes that those who come to see The Visitors will think of it as an opportunity to connect and develop a mutual understanding.
“I hope that anyone who comes and see the show comes with a listening ear, an open heart and can see it for what it is – history,” Walter says. “It’s true. It’s real. And to be able to take that on board and then hold hands and walk forward together. Let’s right the wrongs and let’s move forward together.”
For information about Clancestry, July 23 – August 10, go to: shorturl.at/Mwz54
See The Visitors at QPAC’s Playhouse, July 23-26, go to: shorturl.at/YEJz0