The Season program

TASMANIA PERFORMS | AUSTRALIA | WORLD PREMIERE CO-PRESENTED WITH SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

Photo: Simon Pynt

THE SEASON

THE SEASON DRAMA THEATRE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE 10–15 JANUARY 90 MINS

CAST Ben Duncan, head of the family Kelton Pell Stella Duncan, family matriarch Tammy Anderson Lou Duncan, Ben and Stella’s daughter Nazaree Dickerson Ritchie Duncan, Ben and Stella’s son Luke Carroll Clay Duncan, Lou’s son James Slee Auntie Marlene, Stella’s sister Lisa Maza Neil Watson, Ben’s arch rival Trevor Jamieson Senior Ranger Richard Hadgeman Trevor Jamieson

CREATIVE TEAM Writer Nathan Maynard Director Isaac Drandic Dramaturg Peter Matheson Designer Richard Roberts Lighting Design Rachel Burke Sound Design Ben Grant Elder/Cultural Adviser Jim Everett Production Manager Peter Ashman Production Advisor Frank Harlow Stage Manager Kirsten Marr Deputy Stage Manager Bonnie Walsh Costume Coordination Brynna Lowen

PRODUCER TASMANIA PERFORMS Senior Producer Annette Downs Associate Producers Julie Waddington / Emma Porteus Tasmania Performs is managed by Performing Lines Ltd.

CAST TAMMY ANDERSON (Pakana Moonbird) is an award-winning actor and playwright, and recipient of the Uncle Jack Charles Award and the Uncle Bob Maza Award. Her film, TV and stage credits include 18 years of national and international touring of her powerful one-woman show I Don’t Wanna Play House.

LUKE CARROLL has received AACTA and AFI nominations for his work on-screen in productions including Redfern Now, whilst on-stage he has appeared for STC, La Boite, Belvoir, Bell Shakespeare, QTC, and toured nationally in the acclaimed Black Diggers. Luke is currently enjoying his role as a Playschool presenter.

NAZAREE DICKERSON is a Noongar/Burmese woman from WA. She has worked extensively in the South Australian theatre community, including with State Theatre of SA, No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, Vital Statistix, Kururru Indigenous Youth Performing Arts and Karrikarrinya Theatre Collective.

TREVOR JAMIESON is a previous winner of a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actor. His acting credits include renowned stage productions Black Diggers, The Secret River, Storm Boy, Namatjira, Bran Nue Dae, Ngaparti Ngaparti and many more.

Major Festivals Initiative

LISA MAZA (Meriam/Yidindji/Dutch) has more than 20 years of experience as a professional actor and singer. She has co-written and performed theatre shows including Sisters of Gelam and Glorious Baastards, directed/edited numerous documentaries, most recently Maza’s Got Talent, and is on the board of Ilbijerri Theatre Company and the Advisory Board of the Malthouse Theatre.

KELTON PELL has established a reputation as one of our finest indigenous actors, with a career spanning more than three decades working in film, theatre and television. This year will see Kelton grace the cinema once more in the highly anticipated Red Dog: True Blue.

JAMES SLEE received the 2014 Robertson Foundation Scholarship at the Young Actors Studio, National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). He has appeared in Redfern Now and Black Comedy, and onstage in The Secret River and The Cake Man, amongst others.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc., Ten Days on the Island, Melbourne Festival and Sydney Festival.

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT My family belongs to a community known as the mutton-bird people. We harvest the mutton-bird nests on the Bass Strait islands. It’s a cultural practice we call “the birding”, and every year we go birding for “the Season”.

I come from a proud birding family. We’ve harvested muttonbirds every year since the beginning of time. Before I laid my eyes on Big Dog Island, I had already seen it a thousand times in my head. I knew what it looked like and felt like from all the yarns I had been told by my father, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.

I knew to expect the strong smell of the birds, smashing my nostrils when I first jumped off the tinny and onto the island.

I knew to expect past birders’ names carved and written on the walls of the cookhouse shed.

I knew what to expect when I first thrust my arm down a dark mutton-bird’s nesting hole, on the snake and spider infested island.

All those yarns were the first part of my journey. My initiation finished when I first pulled a bird out of that hole and my training had begun. 2O years on, Big Dog Island may be my physical home during the season, but it is forever my spiritual home.

There is no other place where I feel so strongly connected to my land, culture, history, people, my old people... I feel them with me. When I’m birding, I know that’s exactly where I’m meant to be, amongst my people and the birds. Birds we are eternally grateful for, and hold in our hearts so dearly.

The Mutton Bird takes the longest migration of any animal in the world... past New Zealand, Japan and up to Alaska, and then back home to our islands to breed in the same burrow every year... a migration of 30,000 kilometers. They are simply amazing, and resilient as hell. Just like the people to whom they are forever connected.

The parallels between the birds and us mob don’t stop there.

Many of us migrate back to the same shed year after year.

Many find our life-long partners on the island... many are conceived or conceive on the island... or at least get some practice in. We grow up on the island and lose our baby feathers... and like the birds, our yearly journey starts and finishes on the island.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Music Original recordings of the Brown Boys kindly provided by André Bochenek and A & S Realtime Recording. The artists are brothers Les, Dennis and Norman Brown – “the Brown Boys” – with Daryl Maynard and Laurie Lowery. The recording was originally funded by the Aboriginal Arts Board.

Original Mutton Bird recordings kindly provided by Tony Bayliss.

SPECIAL THANKS Sydney Festival wishes to thank Sydney Festival Associate Producers for helping to make this production possible.

Tasmania Performs wishes to thank the following individuals and organisations for their assistance in the three-year development and realisation of The Season: Wendy Blacklock, Lee-Ann Buckskin, Frederick Copperwaite, Jen Cramer, Wesley Enoch, Rob Gebert, Louisa Gordon, Eva Grace, Jonathan Holloway, Ilbijerri Theatre, Performing Lines Foundation, Robert Jarman, Finegan Kruckemeyer, David Malacari, Ricky Maynard, Rachel Maza, Simeon Moran, Peter Oldham, Marion Potts, Denise Robinson, Thom Smyth, Donovan John Szypura, Marianne Taylor, Fiona Winning, Liz Young and all the actors who participated in various readings.

MAJOR PARTNERS This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals (including Ten Days on the Island, Melbourne Festival and Sydney Festival), by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the Tasmanian Minister for the Arts through Arts Tasmania.

The Season was workshopped at the 2014 Tasmania Performs residency and the 2015 Yellamundie National First Peoples Playwriting Festival.

1967:

MUSIC IN THE KEY OF YES

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE CONCERT HALL 17 JANUARY

SECRET CHORD PRODUCTIONS | AUSTRALIA A CONCERT CELEBRATING AND COMMEMORATING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 1967 AUSTRALIAN REFERENDUM

Major Festivals Initiative Major Festivals Initiative

This Thisproject projecthas hasbeen beenassisted assistedbybythe theAustralian AustralianGovernment’s Government’sMajor MajorFestivals FestivalsInitiative Initiativeinin association associationwith withthe theConfederation ConfederationofofAustralian AustralianInternational InternationalArts ArtsFestivals FestivalsInc., Inc.,Perth PerthInternational International Arts ArtsFestival, Festival,Adelaide AdelaideFestival, Festival,Brisbane BrisbaneFestival, Festival,Melbourne MelbourneFestival Festivaland andSydney SydneyFestival.

Festival.

BLOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 20 21–25 JANUARY

ILBIJERRI THEATRE COMPANY & JACOB BOEHME | AUSTRALIA

“BOEHME IS MARVELLOUS...

AN ENTERTAINING, MOVING WORK THAT ELICITS AS MUCH EMPATHY AS LAUGHTER” THE AGE Photo: Dorine Blaise