REVIEW: The Black Woman of Gippsland by Andrea James – Melbourne Theatre Company

The story of the “white woman of Gippsland” is an important one for the Gunaikurnai mob, whose land stretches from what the colonisers call Wilson’s Prom to Point Hicks – and as far north as the Great Dividing Range.

It’s not a story I’ve heard, not surprisingly, because it’s a piece of Victoria’s colonial history that is important to the local First Nation’s community because it was so devastating to them. The search for a white woman, who was shipwrecked off the cost and kidnapped by the “natives”, led to persecution, imprisonment and death.

It’s a stain on our history and, as we should always keep in front of our mind, a stain on our present. Black deaths in custody continue to be one of the shames of so-called Australia.

Playwright Andrea James was inspired to write this play based on a story that was passed down through oral traditions, to interrogate the truths and histories that are and are not taught in schools or remembered beyond the communities it tore apart. Who was this woman? Where did she come from? Where did she go? And who was responsible?

Jacinta (Chenoa Deemal) is an Indigenous Thinker – a blakademic, hoping to write a PhD about this mysterious white woman. She’s challenged by her Aunty Rochelle (Ursula Yovich), who is desperate for help around the house and cannot understand Jacinta’s need to spend years on a story she already knows.

She’s challenged by her faculty supervisor (Ian Bliss, tackling all the white male coloniser roles), who is desperate for her to support the story with already published work of white men and venerated historians. He urges her to speak to the University’s ethics committee before she asks her aunts and uncles to tell their family histories, without thought to how First Nations’ people share these things.

"It's a lot of cuppas," Jacinta explains.

Digging into the past, trying to uncover the truth and weed out the biases of the people who landed here and killed, tortured and displaced the Gunaikurni people, is fascinating. It is the other side of the coin to the excellent The Visitors by Jane Harrison, which told the story of the First Fleet arriving from the point of view of the local mobs around the place now known as Botany Bay. 

Harrison used coloniser diaries to support her imagined history, where Andrea James is challenging the structures of tertiary education and accepted kinds of learning and teaching. She’s digging into history, by telling the story of a woman struggling to find the truth and record it.

There’s added drama layered over Jacinta writing headlong toward a deadline, when she decides to hole-up in a motel to cut herself off from the world. This sends aunt Rochelle into justified panic, scared that something has happened to her. She doesn’t trust the locals to keep an eye out for a black woman – and she certainly doesn’t trust the cops, especially the one who left Jacinta’s mother to die in a police cell, gasping for air.

This conflict with the cop (Ian Bliss) gives us interesting context for the family, their circumstances and rather starkly puts into perspective how First Nations people have been treated by the law for centuries. Jacinta relates the story of police hunting for the “white woman of Gippsland” with the help of Gunnakurnai men, who were in it for the feed.

As the police investigation continues to stall, the constabulary are desperate for answers and ready to pin it on whoever they decide seems most guilty. They run with a story and the consequences are devastating.

The Black Woman of Gippsland is a fascinating window into local history and the impossible situation black historians and writers are in if they want to record the stories of their family and their people. Andrea James has directed her own work and she has a clear vision; the work is expertly crafted.

Deemal’s performance enlivens a tricky dramatic conceit; for most of the play she’s trapped in a motel room trying to make sense of the pieces of the puzzle she’s putting together. AV Designer Rhian Hinkley elevates the motions of drawing a map and pinning clues to the wall into epic digital choreography, drawing us into that room and helping to outline a complex and complicated narrative.

Hinkley’s work is expertly married with Verity Hampson’s evocative lighting. James Henry’s sound design and composition adds further depth and clarity to moments of imagination, dreaming and thinking things over.

Ursuala Yovich and Ian Bliss sparring as concerned aunt and disgruntled cop is potent, but this story thread peters out because we as the audience know that Jacinta is all right – and the real driving force of the play is what Jacinta will uncover about the past. There are resonances between past and present, which dovetail toward the end, but summing everything up at an academic conference is a bit of a letdown.

Small quibbles with the dramatic shape of the show aside, unpicking local history and casting it into a wider context is – in moments – thrilling and decidedly upsetting. This show looks beautiful throughout, as it grows from three simple performances places into a grand liminal space that echoes the thoughts, feelings and dreaming of Jacinta and the Gunaikurnai.

The Black Woman of Gippsland is powerful, compelling and beautifully realised. 

- Keith Gow, Theatre First

The play is on at Melbourne Theatre Company as part of Yirramboi until May 31

Photos: Pia Johnson


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