Arts House production explores cultural fear

Indigenous performance group Marrugeku is bringing a dance theatre production, which explores the connection to high Aboriginal incarceration rates and detention of asylum seekers, to North Melbourne’s Arts House.

Titled Jurrungu Ngan-ga – which translates into English as “straight talk” – the production is inspired by perspectives on incarceration shared by Yawuru leader Senator Patrick Dodson, Kurdish-Iranian writer and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani and philosopher Omid Tofighian.

Senator Patrick Dodson inspired the work when, in his role as a Commissioner into Aboriginal deaths in custody 30 years ago, he linked Indigenous imprisonment to the indefinite detention of refugees in onshore and offshore processing centres.

During the Royal Commission, Senator Dodson noted, “we lack the ability to straight talk to one another about cultural difference, dear grown in each generation, holding community and society back in multiple ways.”

Through movement, spoken word, installation, and a powerful musical soundscape, Jurrungu Ngan-ga explores Australia’s deep-seated fears to ask: who’s really in prison here?

Marrugeku co-artistic directors Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain said Jurrungu Ngan-ga is a darkly humorous and ultimately transformative portrayal of fear.

“White Australia was founded on a dream of imprisonment and that mission has evolved into a fixation with locking people away,” Ms Pigram and Ms Swain said.

“This work reveals how a range of perspectives can address this burning issue of our times and pave a way forward together.”

Arts House artistic director Emily Sexton said the theatre “was so proud to continue a history of collaboration” with Marrugeku.

“This critical new performance features one of the best dance ensembles you could assemble in this country, wrapped around by a dazzling team of creatives,” Ms Sexton said.

“Marrugeku’s recent inclusion in the Australia Council’s National Performing Arts Partnership Framework cements their status as a critical intercultural company, working across indigenous and non-indigenous cultures as well as remote and urban communities.”

Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] by Marrugeku will be performed in the Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall from August 18 to 22 •