Jandamarra, Perth 2008
“My mother said she cried. She said it was so true. She was very proud of the actors in telling the story so clearly … It was a very proud moment for the Bunuba people.”
– June Oscar, in the Artists at Work Documentary series, 2008
The exact origins are lost in the mists of time, but an encounter with their then Artistic Director, Tom Gutteridge led to the Black Swan State Theatre Company and Bunuba Films, as we were known at the time, entering into a partnership to mount Jandamarra as a stage play at the Perth International Arts Festival in 2008, and I set about adapting the unproduced film scripts I had laboured over into a work for the stage. Little did I know!
I am credited as the writer of the play script. I accept that with pride. But that is only half the story. In one of the most intellectually challenging and stimulating exercises of my life I worked with an incredible team of Bunuba women – Mona Oscar, her daughter June Oscar, and her nieces Patsy Bedford and Selina Middleton, to render and transform my English script into a multi-lingual extravaganza that brought the Bunuba language and the Bunuba world to the stage in a way that we could not have imagined.
If you want to know more, see Jandamarra in Translation, published in the Kimberley Stories Anthology in 2012.
Promotional brochure for the 2008 play
Images from the production and production of the 2008 play
The program from the 2008 play