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Black actors in whiteface? · The Front

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Two bearings into very high levels of audience participation.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: And that makes a chill run down.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, I know, I always sit well back at those shows.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: It's roesque for me.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Claire Harvey. For some of us, summer in Australia
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: means the beach, the cricket and a cold beer. For
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: the sophisticated readers of our review section, summer also means
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: the start of something even more scintillating festival season. First
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: on the calendar is the Sydney Festival, and today I
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  Speaker 2: chat with my colleague Rosemary Neil. She's a Walkley Award
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  Speaker 2: winning writer and a shortlisted author, about one of the
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  Speaker 2: most anticipated shows at the festival, Dark Noon, complete with
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: a cast of black actors in whiteface.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: It could have been a bad Lion King.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: This is Lumba Malango, but through.
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  Speaker 3: The process we chose the West End as our frame.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: He's the co director and choreographer of Dark Moon, which
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  Speaker 2: was created by Danish director To Beering. Dark Noon tells
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  Speaker 2: a story of race dislocation and violence. When Malungu says
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: it could have been a bad Lion King, well that's
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  Speaker 2: the risk you take with an all African caste and
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  Speaker 2: a lot of singing. But this story is set in
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  Speaker 2: of all places, America's Wild West.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: We are the peopleations what we are.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Dark Moon is a retelling of the story of America's
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  Speaker 1: Wild West from an outsider's perspective. In Dark Noon, the
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  Speaker 1: audience sitting up the front almost become cast members. They're
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: called upon to take part in a square dance. They're
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  Speaker 1: called upon, more controversially, to take part in a mock
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  Speaker 1: slave auction. And this is all part of the broader
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: retelling of the settling of America's Wild West from the
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  Speaker 1: perspective of outsiders. The key roles are performed by mostly
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  Speaker 1: black South African actors in whiteface and bad blonde wigs.
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  Speaker 1: And so I asked you about that. I asked, are
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  Speaker 1: you being intentionally provocative there? Because obviously white actors in
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  Speaker 1: blackface is absolutely forbidden, and for good reason. And he
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  Speaker 1: sees it the whiteface as a logical extension of reversing
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the conventions of the history and the storytelling and of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: the cowboy genre, and in particular its romanticized view of
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  Speaker 1: frontier history.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Tue Bearing describes it like this, in Europe right now,
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  Speaker 2: debate is raging about immigration, largely from Africa and the
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  Speaker 2: Middle East, and it's reshaping the politics of the continent.
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  Speaker 2: But it's not so long ago, just in the past
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  Speaker 2: two centuries that vast waves of migrants were leaving Europe
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  Speaker 2: to try and improve their circumstances in America. They encountered
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  Speaker 2: indigenous people and all sorts of other outsiders, Chinese gold miners, women,
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  Speaker 2: and of course enslaved Africans. By using a South African cast,
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  Speaker 2: obviously he brings a whole lot of other history into
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  Speaker 2: this story. What do you think that adds to this
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  Speaker 2: very multilhit story.
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  Speaker 1: Well, the South African cast do tell their own stories
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  Speaker 1: at the end. They take some of the sort of
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  Speaker 1: motifs that you see throughout the performance, So toy guns
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: are going off all the time, for instance, and they
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  Speaker 1: talk about the role of gun violence during and after
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  Speaker 1: apartheid and their personal experiences of it.
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  Speaker 3: I saw many many guns when I was young, and
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  Speaker 3: this is not a Western movie. For me, is different.
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  Speaker 3: It was life people who were slottering each other in
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  Speaker 3: front of me. The most perverse thing about a part
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  Speaker 3: date that it was law that no black person should
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  Speaker 3: hold hands or kiss or engage in that relationship with
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  Speaker 3: a white person.
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  Speaker 2: Another lad that we're going to be adding to it
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  Speaker 2: at the Sydney Festival is Australian audiences watching this in
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  Speaker 2: a place where we have our own very complex history
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  Speaker 2: of violence settlement. Is there particular relevance do you think
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  Speaker 2: for an Australian audience.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, in the sense that it is challenging that sort
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  Speaker 1: of Churchillian idea that it's the victors who get to
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  Speaker 1: tell and control the history. So I suppose an equivalent
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  Speaker 1: would be an aboriginal cast telling a theatricalized story of
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  Speaker 1: the first Fleet and also the dispossession, the frontier massacres,
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  Speaker 1: the good and the bad really come.
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  Speaker 2: That's what the most famous American musical of the past
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  Speaker 2: decade did. Hamilton used a black and brown cast to
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  Speaker 2: tell the storyory of the American Revolutionary War and the
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  Speaker 2: Founding Fathers. Does this bring Hamilton to mind for you?
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  Speaker 1: There are definite parallels there, and I guess it's part
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  Speaker 1: of a broader move to give a greater range of
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  Speaker 1: people voices and a questioning of who gets to tell
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  Speaker 1: what stories. Of course, that can sometimes cross into censoriousness
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  Speaker 1: and political correctness. I feel in that you have people saying, well,
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  Speaker 1: certain groups own these stories, and I don't agree with that,
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  Speaker 1: but certainly hearing from voices that have been excluded or
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  Speaker 1: forgotten or marginalized in riches a culture in Hamilton is
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  Speaker 1: an example of that.
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  Speaker 2: It's a movement that we're seeing play out in all
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  Speaker 2: sorts of different ways in the arts at the moment.
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  Speaker 2: So the new series of wolf Hall, The Mirror and
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  Speaker 2: the Light is going to include a much more diverse
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  Speaker 2: cast than the first season of wolf Hall. That this is,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: of course, is the telling of the story of Thomas Cromwell,
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  Speaker 2: the senior advisor to Henry the Ape in the Tutor
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  Speaker 2: Court in the sixteenth century in England. Ah at last.
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  Speaker 1: A man born in a more lowly state than myself, Cromwell,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I knew to know something about you that I didn't like.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Swear to be true and faithful. What's your view, Rosie,
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  Speaker 2: about diversity in casting and how hung up we are
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: and how hung up we should be.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I think it's been a revolutionary move and on the
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  Speaker 1: whole a good move. Every now and then there might
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  Speaker 1: be a context I can think of an Australian TV drama.
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  Speaker 1: I won't name it. You know, a rough outback town
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  Speaker 1: that years ago you would have characterized as a bit
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of a redneck town that sort of was presented as
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  Speaker 1: this multicultural paradi not paradise, but you know, a melting pot.
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  Speaker 1: And it just didn't ring true to me, much as
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the performances were very good, Michelle, and may I have
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  Speaker 1: this stance. On the other hand, when I watched Bridgeton
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  Speaker 1: you mean my Lord, Initially, you know, I sat thinking, well,
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  Speaker 1: you have black people playing aristocrats here, but the reality
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: is that black people were enslaved by these same aristocrats
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: in America, if not in Britain at the time. And
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: is that historical denihalism a good thing? But on the whole,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it's a fantasy. It's a romantic fantasy, and so I
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  Speaker 1: think it was exciting to see the casting done in
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  Speaker 1: that way. I interviewed a young Australian actress of color
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  Speaker 1: who'd got a lead role in a musical and that
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  Speaker 1: had normally gone to white performers. She'd said at drama
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  Speaker 1: school she just assumed she'd only have a career as
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  Speaker 1: a supporting actress, never as a lead. And when you
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: hear that directly from someone a young person who's full
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of talent, working hard, that that's how they saw their
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: career going as a university student. You think, well, that's
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: just wrong. So on the whole, I think it's a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: good thing. I can understand when people think that perhaps
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the context is being a little distorted, suggesting that four
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: or five hundred years ago in England that yes, there
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: was this multicultural harmony and that racism wasn't the huge
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: disabling force that it was for a lot of people.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: But then a lot of drama relies on the audience's
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief. In any case, no James Bond film
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  Speaker 1: would work if we all sat there interpreting his talent
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: for stunts. Literally, if we didn't suspend our disbelief, we
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't enjoy it.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: No, he manages to emerge from the sea in a
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: wet sea, unzip it and have a perfectly pressed in
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: a suit or underneath.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, here's perfect, exactly, Yeah yeah.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Rosemaryneil is an absolute machine churning out the stories for
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: our review section, and every one of them is told
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: with her characteristic expert touch. You can read Rosie's work
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and all the rest of the country's best coverage of
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: the arts by picking up the Weekend Australian at your
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: supermarket or servo, and anytime at the Australian dot com
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: dot a slash review