Namatjira

By Scott Rankin with Trevor Jamieson and Derik Lynch
Created with the Namatjira family

Themes: Family & Community Identity, Multilingualism, Post-Colonial Identity

Genre: Indigenous Devised Performance / Mixed-media

Key Scenes: Act 2 Scene 5, pp.100-103 (1M, 1F + Narrator); Act 1 Scene 1; Act 2 Scene 15, pp.134,135 (1M)

Number of characters: 7 (5M, 2F) + over 25 minor characters.

Age recommendation: 13+ (depiction of violent acts)

Country: Australia

Original language: English, Aranda and German

Description:
This two-act play tells the true story of Albert Namatjira life in linked, chronological vignettes with interspersed reflections commenting on contemporary Australia.

Albert Namatjira was a man of firsts: the first successful indigenous artist and the first indigenous man to be made an Australian citizen. At the height of his fame in the 1950s, Albert Namatjira's shows sold out within minutes. If you didn't own one of his paintings you probably had a print in your lounge. He also supported over six hundred members of his community, lost two of his ten children to malnutrition, was forbidden to own land, imprisoned for having a drink with his friends, and died a broken man. Namatjira is a whole-hearted tribute to a great man.

Read the full synopsis by downloading the Education Pack below.

This play was written/devised originally in English by Scott Rankin in close consultation and collaboration with the family, as part of the Big hART Project.

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+ DETAILS

Play Title in Original Language: Namatjira

Author(s): Scott Rankin with Trevor Jamieson and Derik Lynch

Publisher: Currency Press, 2012

World Premiere (in the Engl. lang.): Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, Australia (co-directed by Scott Rankin and Wayne Blair), 2010

Essay Writer: Liza-Mare Syron

Education Pack Resource Writer: Alia Alzougbi

Director: Scott Rankin

+ CHARACTERS

JOHNATHAN NAMATJIRA (Western Aranda name: NAMATJIRRITJA) – Albert’s Father. (M)

EMELIE (Luritja name: LJUKUTA) – Albert’s Mother. (F)

ALBERT NAMATJIRA (Western Aranda name: ELEA), indigenous artist. (M)

REGINAL “REX” BATTARBEE (later named UNTJWAARA by Western Aranda men) – whitefella landscape artist. (M)

WILMOT – old blackfella living in the Warrnambool Forest. (M)

PASTOR – at a Lutheran Hermannsburg Mission, speaks a blend of German and English. (M)

RUBINA (Western Aranda name: ILKALITA) – Albert’s Wife. (F)

Multiple Minor Characters: ARMY SERGEANT, ARMY MEDIC, BAKERY EMPLOYEE, MISSION MEN, AUSIE BLOKES (2 tourists), KID, MELBOURNE SOCIETY WOMAN, CHARLES MCCUBBIN, LADY HUNTINGFIELD, MR. T.H. GILL, CUZ (3), WHITEFELLA (2), OLD ARANDA MAN, GOVERNMENT MEMBER, OPPOSITION MEMBER, GOVERNMENT MAN, MAURICE, MAISE (Albert’s and Rubina’s children), SYDNEY SOCIALITE, QUEEN ELIZABETH II, NEWSPAPERS REPORTERS, MAGISTRATE (Mr. Dodds)

+ AUTHOR'S NOTE: Scott Rankin

In 2008, Big hART was touring a show created with the Ernabella community called Ngapartji Ngapartji. In the cast was a shy 13-year-old artist, Elton Wirri, a kin-grandson of Albert Namatjira. Each evening during the bows, the actor Trevor Jamieson would introduce Elton and the audience would gasp in nostalgic recognition. We wondered about this forgotten Namatjira story.

The year 2009 would be the fiftieth anniversary of Albert’s passing, and, sensing its significance, we made contact with the Namatjira family to ask whether there was something that could be done in his memory that would benefit the family. What emerged was the strong desire for recognition and justice.

A collaboration between Big hART and the family clearly had the potential to raise awareness and push for change and so a community engagement process in Ntaria (Hermannsburg) - one hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory - was begun, to understand the community more deeply and design the project respectfully.

For 12 months Big hART ran workshops in the community, exploring the little known aspects of Namatjira’s story and the family’s aspirations. Many iconic issues came into focus, the most vivid being that his family didn’t own the copyright to his paintings. Even though there are many very fine painters still following his tradition, they struggle to find enough income and support to paint and sell their work sustainably.

Big hART’s long term project came quickly into focus after that first year of research and development. We partnered with Ngurratjuta Many Hands Art Centre in Alice Springs, and community workshops began in earnest in both Ntaria and Alice Springs to develop a new theatre show. As well as working on a strategy to raise awareness regarding Albert Namatjira’s copyright and starting discussions to buy it back.

+ PLAY TEXT BLURB

Namatjira & Ngapartji Ngapartji go right to the heart of the intersection between Indigenous and non-Indigenous experience. These stories of family, friendship, land, myth, life and death are contextualised within the social and political framework of their times. They resonate universally, yet at the same time capture unique moments in Australian history and experience.

Namatjira tells the moving story of Albert Namatjira (1902–1959). Namatjira was Australia’s most famous Indigenous watercolour artist and the first to achieve commercial success, but his story is hardly known. Albert Namatjira’s story resonates today as strongly as it did 50 years ago, providing a lens through which we can see the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians both in the past and the present.

Taking its name from the Pitjantjatjara concept of exchange and reciprocity, Ngapartji Ngapartji—co-created with Trevor Jamieson—is a deeply affecting experience of Indigenous history. Exploring themes of dispossession and displacement from country, home and family, the play tells the story of a Pitjantjatjara family forcibly moved off their lands to make way for the testing of British atomic bombs at Maralinga.

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