'Namatjira': Beyond the script - visual and performative aesthetics as conduits for the communication of Western Aranda Ontology

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Title 'Namatjira': Beyond the script - visual and performative aesthetics as conduits for the communication of Western Aranda Ontology
Creator Contributors
Abstract/Description This article explores the performative configuration and staging of a Western Aranda 'place to stand' in the inter-culturally produced biographical play 'Namatjira' (2010-13; written by Scott Rankin with and for the Namatjira Family). The author leverages her comprehensive insight into the play's devising and production processes, garnered from extended co-locations and touring with the producing company Big hART. She explores how both verbal and visual expression combine in the play to articulate a culturally coded Western Aranda worldview, ontology (theory of being-in-the-world) and identity. The critical elucidation of the postmodern frameworks that dominate the written script is juxtaposed with an analysis of the visual aesthetics of the play, which convey a distinctly Western Aranda perspective on Country, place-making and holding. The performative influence of these aesthetics is then illustrated in a comparison of three different stagings of 'Namatjira': a 'default' metropolitan staging; a full-scale open-air production for community on Country in the Hermannsburg Historic Precinct in 2012; and a staged play-reading at Parramatta Riverside Theatres in 2018 that aptly confirmed the significant bearing of visuality on the overall assertion of an Indigenous 'place to stand' in 'Namatjira'.
Related Works
Source Australasian Drama Studies, ADSA, VIC
Issue 73
Page 130-159
Date Issued October 2018
Language English
ISSN 0810-4123
Citation Susanne Thurow, 'Namatjira': Beyond the script - visual and performative aesthetics as conduits for the communication of Western Aranda Ontology, Australasian Drama Studies, 73, October 2018, 130-159
Data Set AusStage
Resource Identifier 68790