The visitors are the people on the ships far out in the ocean but moving closer to shore. It’s 1788 and the Elders remember that these people came before. Now they are back.
You might think a play about Aborigines watching the ships sail closer and closer to the Eora Nation would be predictable, or historic, or tragic. It’s none of those things. It’s funny. It’s intelligent. It’s wise. It is not political, does not assign blame and is not divisive.
Written by Murrawarri playwright Jane Harrison, this play has been workshopped, had play readings and several performances over a ten year period with fine tuning all along the way. The play landed in the Drama Theatre September 15 very finely tuned indeed– not a flat note anywhere.
Six Elders and one young man representing an Elder gather from seven clans for a council meeting. One elder is a woman, because, we learn in the Q+A session after the performance, some communities were or are matriarchal. The intent is to have these seven Elders at the council meeting broadly represent all Aboriginal nations.
The council needs to decide what to do about the approaching ships. Fight them? Welcome them? Fear them? Teach them? Help them? People travel and visit other lands, but they always return to their own country. People belong in their own country. That way, there is no fighting. Surely the boats will sail away, like they did before. But what if they don’t? It would be a spoiler to say much about how the council meeting unfolds or what decision they come to.
The actors are Joseph Wunujaka Althouse, Luke Carroll, Elaine Crombie, Kyle Morrison, Guy Simon, Beau Dean Riley Smith, Dalara Williams. The director is Wesley Enoch, a Noonuccal Ngugi man from Brisbane. Wesley is also a playwright and the Deputy Chair of Creative Australia, the new name for the Australian Council of the Arts.
Coincidentally and completely unplanned, the last performance of THE VISITORS at the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera Houseis October 14, the date of the Voice referendum.
THE VISITORS will then move to the Riverside Theatre from October 19 to October 21 and then to the illawarra Performing Arts Centre from October 25 to October 28, 2023.
Tickets and details are at:
https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2023/the-visitors
Production photography by Daniel Boud
