Each year Belvoir Street Theatre stages one of the main Sydney Festival theatre events in its main upstairs theatre. For the 2008 Festival, Belvoir Street Theatre put on the Koori production, ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji’. The Koori title translates as ‘I give you something, you give me something’.
The play tells the story of the Pitjantjatjara tribe. Its a painful story. For two thousand years the tribe lived in the Western Desert until the people found themselves caught up in the Cold War. Many in the tribe were rounded up in cattle trucks and taken away as their traditional lands became a test site for British atomic weapons.
‘Ngapartyi Ngapartji’ poignantly comes some way to describing the pain and hell that its people went through but the play is also much more. The show was also a celebration, inviting the audience to directly engage with one of the world’s oldest cultures through the medium of song, dance and language. As a result of the impetus of the play, there has been a drive to bring to the public’s eye some of the history, the culture and the language of the Pitjantjatjara people! The show has already been well ‘travelled’.
Spinifex man, Trevor Jamieson, was the pivotal performer, and held everything together beautifully. He was helped by a huge, diverse range of talent, with the ensemble featuring a cast of Pitjantjatjara elders and young people, and Japanese, Greek, Indian and Anglo performers.
This was a a special, warm, stimulating evening in the theatre.
