The challenges of benevolence: The role of indigenous actors

Abstract

The history of Indigenous Australian participation within the Australian creative industries is one of extended struggle for recognition and respect. Given the struggle by Indigenous theatre practitioners to gain and claim space on Australian stages and within Australian theatre companies, the success of these struggles can seem ironic in the face of the problems facing Indigenous artists on the rehearsal room floor in productions written, directed or produced within flagship or mainstream companies. Actors in particular are in a difficult position, a position that arises from non-Indigenous Australian theatre practitioners' benevolent desire to include Indigenous voices. This article examines some causes contributing to concerns Indigenous theatre practitioners are expressing about cross-cultural theatre work. In the 1960s Oodgeroo wrote a play called The Play That Never Was 1 , an ironic title considering that it was never published and that non-Indigenous Australian theatre companies largely ignored her theatre writings. The piece parodied benevolence and protection by presenting the cross-cultural relations between Indigenous and white Australians in the form of a hospital where well-meaning administrators and medical officers carelessly torture and abuse the freedom and rights of the 'guests' in their care. It is usually presumed, or at least hoped, that Australian cross-cultural relations have progressed from this position of benevolent abuse in the forty years since that play was written.