A Dramaturgy of Feeling: Exploring Indigenous concepts of knowing through multimodal aesthetics

Abstract

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists are developing dramaturgies that immerse audiences within multimodal stagings, resonating with and imparting an embodied experience of Indigenous Australian ontologies. While use of onstage multimodal expression­­–combining verbal storytelling, dance, visual art, craft making and song– has been a feature of performance traditions the world over, here, it is expressly deployed at the service of reinforcing ancient storytelling traditions as distinctively Indigenous forms of performative expression, in opposition to Western conventions that centralise dialogue as carrier of dramatic exploration. As a celebration of survival and resilience of the Eora Nation (i.e. the 29 First Nation clans of the Greater Sydney Region), the radical dramaturgy of Anita Heiss & Wesley Enoch’s play I Am Eora (2012) centralises emotion as the key vector along which performers drew audiences into the cosmos of Eora community building. Rather than engaging dialogue as a source of information and orientation, Enoch’s staging relied on group choreographies, musical delivery and monologues that were accompanied by evocative visual design and inscription practices. These triggered an oscillating trajectory of emotional engagement that took audiences on a journey that produced an emotional connection to the concept of Eora communal identity. The article closely traces the activation of senses in I Am Eora’s staging, encompassing olfactory, visual and auditory stimulation and kinaesthetic resonance. It considers their integration within the play’s dramaturgical framework, connecting it to Bill Neidjie (Gagudju)’s philosophy of feeling and theories of relational identity as relayed by American-Australian scholar Deborah Rose. The article explores how perception is leveraged in I Am Eora to shift audiences’ habitual relation to First Nation subjects, developing coordinates for a reconfigured socio-political engagement beyond the theatre space.