Culturally Led, Culturally Safe Performance Making

Abstract

This chapter presents the first of the findings from our study into the five health education works led by Kamarra Bell-Wykes and produced by Ilbijerri Theatre Company from 2006 to 2019. These findings draw on interviews conducted with eight practitioners who were involved over the years as performers, production staff, and advisors, a research yarn conducted between co-authors Sarah and Kamarra, and Kamarra’s own critical reflections while putting together this volume. We also analysed documents and data from Ilbijerri’s corporate archive and published works such as those by Clare Keating (‘Chopped Liver’ Evaluation Report. Effective Change Pty Ltd. Melbourne: Ilbijerri Theatre Company. Supplied, 2009) and Blayne Welsh (The Hepatitis C Trilogy: A Case for Indigenous Theatre as a Contemporary Manifestation of Traditional Healing Business. Australasian Drama Studies 73: 20–41. https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.146479491877297, 2018). Here we discuss the first of four prominent themes within the data: the importance of culturally led, culturally safe approaches to making theatre in health education in the First Nations Australian context. This includes the importance of First Nations cultural leadership at every stage from conception through to production, performance, and touring; the need for meaningful community consultation and engagement; and the promotion of cultural safety through protocols and practices that honour the lived experience, cultural obligations, and ‘colonial load’ for creative teams. We argue that centring culture in these foundational ways is essential for the works to achieve their educational goals while also progressing the dramaturgies of wellbeing, strength, and resistance that characterise contemporary First Nations theatre in Australia.

In Australia and internationally, there is growing recognition that Indigenous and First Nations peoples are best placed to take control of those issues that disproportionately impact their communities; and that First Nations led initiatives that are strengths based and culturally focused are more likely to succeed in their goals of educating and empowering communities in relation to health and wellbeing (Dudgeon et al. 2020; Verbunt et al. 2021). Further, wellbeing is considered holistically as encompassing cultural resilience, empowerment, agency, and self-determination (Gee et al. 2014). This includes the importance of cultural leadership at every stage from conception through to production, performance, and touring; the inclusion of community-led, community-engaged practices from the ground up; and the promotion of cultural safety through protocols and practices that honour the lived experience, cultural obligations, and ‘colonial load’ for creative teams. As Liza-Mare Syron (2021, 79) states, contemporary Indigenous theatre (albeit drawing from Western performance forms) is a cultural practice: “Performance is a culturally charged medium through which Indigenous peoples platform, express, and impart their cultural knowledge in a very public way.” We argue that centring culture in these foundational ways is essential for the works to achieve their educational goals while also progressing the dramaturgies of wellbeing, strength, and resistance that characterise contemporary First Nations theatre in Australia as discussed in the previous chapter (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2).

Fig. 4.1

Maurial Spearim, Scar Trees. Image by Tiffanie Garvie (2019)

Fig. 4.2

Maurial Spearim (L) and Sandy Greenwood (R), Body Armour school performance. Image by James Henry (2011)

First Nations Cultural Leadership

The strength of the health education theatre works discussed here lies first and foremost in being designed and delivered by Ilbijerri, one of Australia’s longest running and most recognised First Nations contemporary performing arts companies. With Kamarra as the principal creative driver of the works, production teams have been predominantly made up of established and emerging First Nations artists, with some support from non-Indigenous personnel. With the more recent production of Viral—Are you the Cure? all roles were filled by First Nations or persons of colour. The commissions for these works mostly came from the Victorian state Department of Health, which, while increasingly acknowledging the importance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander approaches, still bases much of its delivery (and notably its evaluations) on Western models for health intervention, education, and promotion. Nevertheless, the content and approach to making the works were subsequently negotiated and honed by first and foremost privileging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences and therefore centring cultural perspectives and practices. Some of the tensions and challenges inherent in this process are highlighted later, however, findings from the data point to the fact that this First Nations artistic leadership ensured that these works came from a place of cultural integrity and strength that were key to their success.

In his 2021 interview, Ngarigo health worker and artist Peter Waples-Crowe observed, “I think just it being Aboriginal led, and for Aboriginal communities makes it work.” Performer Jesse Butler pointed out that this has an impact in terms of First Nations audiences seeing themselves reflected in the performances:

We’re not just performing a show. We’re up there—we’re yarning with [the audience]. We’re doing so many things that are part of our Indigenous culture … because it’s important that they’re seeing themselves up there so that they can relate to what’s going on. (Interview, 2020)

First Nations artistic leadership also makes an important contribution to the wider arts landscape in this country, representing an example of artistic excellence as explained by Peter Waples-Crowe: “I think the whole format, the way we’re using health theatre as health promotion, an Aboriginal company, Aboriginal actors, Aboriginal writers, usually, and then Aboriginal health workers. So you know, we’re showing the mainstream, this is how we do it, and innovation and ways to help promote. I’m just saying, it’s good to bring Aboriginal excellence into White spaces as well, you know.

Audiences watching the early performances of Chopped Liver gave feedback that echoed these sentiments:

It was really good to see some Indigenous performance, and as a Murri, here is a company willing to showcase our talents.

Great to see a play set in a Nunga way of doing business. (Keating 2009, 16–17)

As suggested by these reflections, cultural leadership is vital in ensuring that there is ethical, appropriate, and inspiring representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures on the stage, which in turn contributes to outcomes in health education and builds community strength and capacity as discussed in later chapters. The underpinning of First Nations leadership (and ownership) within these works operates as the essential bedrock for all that follows. It supports efforts towards decolonising the fields of both theatre and health and enacts sovereignty over how health and wellbeing knowledge is translated through culturally led contemporary performance.

Community Consultation and Engagement

To strengthen efforts towards decolonising and decentring practices, there is an identified need to engage in meaningful community consultation and collaboration so that works accurately and respectfully reflect the concerns of communities and will succeed in reaching those communities. This is not only considered best practice in terms of working in First Nations contexts but also reflects best practice in theatre for health promotion and education through theatre (Brodzinski 2010; Low 2020); and global health promotion scholarship more broadly, where the cultivation of community partnerships and capacity is seen as integral to achieving health education and promotion outcomes (Laverack and Mohammadi 2011). Alyson Campbell and Dirk Gindt (2018, 28) note in relation to theatre for HIV education, “This principle, that people directly affected by an issue should be central to discourses, actions and representations about them (‘nothing about us without us’), is the key ethical basis and starting point for the creation of new performance work.” In the five health education works discussed here, creative teams aimed to achieve this community accountability in three ways: through engaging with the reference group of health professionals and partners to inform the development of shows; through consultation and liaison with key community organisations, leaders, and Elders so that audiences would attend the performances and be given access to ongoing health advice and support afterwards; and through workshops where target communities and audiences had input into the development of shows. This last approach was introduced in Viral and developed further through Scar Trees.

As described in Chap. 2, a formal reference group was established for Chopped Liver, made up of professionals from the Department of Health (as principal funders), as well as other partners and stakeholders such as Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) and Hepatitis Victoria. This model continued through subsequent productions, drawing in members from other services and organisations depending on the topic being investigated. The purpose of the reference group was to give advice and guidance in relation to specific facts and information on health issues, technical language, the latest treatments, and an expert understanding of the barriers and enablers to healthy behaviours and seeking treatment. Kamarra acknowledged the value of the reference groups over the years, which had at times played a pivotal role in identifying significant elements that the creative teams may have missed.

Sometimes they’ll point out something that I haven’t thought of that comes from their very specific detailed Community and health information that really helps to pivot a character in an even more empowering way. (Interview, 2021)

Some creative tensions arising from the reference groups’ involvement are discussed later, however, they also provided important advocacy, support, and liaison in communities during tours. They linked the team in with local health workers, or joined tours themselves, to provide information to audiences after the shows. Kamarra therefore described the reference groups as “a multifunctioning health expert think tank … that would perform different roles across the life of the show.” Kamarra did, however, come to realise that the reference group was only one part of the process of engaging with communities.

Once we started performing - doing the yarning circles and getting community responses and particularly doing - performing in the prisons, I started to realise the real reference group for me was the yarning circles. It was the community’s response. Those were the things that I was starting to use as my measures of success. …The reference group informs the work and … is the measuring stick along the way and then the audiences become the measure of success.

This realisation went on to inform Kamarra’s developing approach post-Chopped Liver, which led towards deeper community engagement through workshops and participation as discussed below.

In addition to the reference group, the need for consultation and engagement with communities in advance of touring was seen as a vital cultural protocol to conducting healing business in a particular place and essential to achieving community buy-in that would increase the reach and impacts of works. This was achieved to varying degrees over the years, with interviewees acknowledging the importance of this but also how challenging it can be from a logistical perspective. Mary Quinsacara described community liaison as the “glue” that needs to be applied for there to be community buy-in and attendance (interview, 2020). Laila Thaker highlighted the importance of having “someone on the ground there within the community to be working on the project with you from the get-go” and building meaningful connections and relationships with them (interview, 2021). Although Laila acknowledged how this can be difficult to achieve sometimes, especially trying to do this in a non-Indigenous funding and touring framework:

I think this is why working in the arts as a blackfulla is so difficult and whitefullas don’t understand that either. It’s like, well we’re here trying to produce in a White structure, but actually it’s tough man. We still need to be respectful of protocol and get the right permissions and stuff like that, but whitefullas don’t understand that takes time.

Clare Keating’s (2009, 19) report on Chopped Liver highlighted the need to take the time and find the correct partners and advocates within a community:

Finding the ‘right’ person in the community is key to drawing a crowd. But there is no real formula for finding the ‘right’ person. Unfortunately, shows can be cancelled at the last minute or the team can turn up to put on a show for a very small audience, which can be frustrating if it is known that a larger audience could have been attracted with the right promotion or encouragement or better timing.

The need to consult with the ‘right’ people was evident in one of the Viral performances, where Kamarra and Mary Quinsacara recalled that the team drove an hour and a half to a community only to find just two health workers in the audience. Kamarra recalled asking them, “‘Where is everybody? Where’s the mob? Where’s the community?’ [and they said], ‘Oh, they don’t like coming to the school. It’s not a culturally safe place for them,’” despite having initially chosen that performance space. Kamarra recalled that they had a few shows like that, which Mary observed was highly frustrating and disappointing for the touring ensemble. Nazaree Dickerson also related an anecdote that reflected this issue, where they had arrived in a community recently engaged in sorry business, which had led to a violent conflict within that community.

It actually wasn’t safe for us to be there. … I think it’s important that there’s connections made to find this information out. … With Scar Trees, I was talking to Aboriginal corporations and so I was speaking to their one community engagement officer. They don’t necessarily know everything that’s going on. (Interview, 2021)

She went on to suggest a multi-tiered approach to community liaison that would include community members at both the organisational and grassroots levels, “So that when you’re sending a company in that they’re aware if there’s anything major going down, it’s about safety on all parts, I think.” Kamarra and Melodie Reynolds-Diarra echoed this sentiment in their conversation, where they agreed that successful community engagement was about more than just having a local health organisation representative on the ground, but also other key people in the community:

Kamarra::

Yes, you want somebody that’s in the organisation that’s hosting, but you need to have the Aunties in charge, or the fulla that’s in charge inside [the prison] who’s also a part of that engagement with that community.

Melodie::

Yeah, you find the most respected Elder or person in prison and you’ve got a mob behind them straightaway. (Interview, 2021)

As an example, Melodie recalled one prison performance of Chopped Liver where there had been no First Nations audience members in attendance until an incarcerated relative of fellow performer Isaac Drandic received word that he was in the performance, after which he rallied his peers to attend the show. The two went on to discuss how getting an audience to a show could be as simple as using the community or health service bus to go around and pick people up, thereby removing one of the barriers for attendance— “It’s not rocket science,” Kamarra said. Laila also acknowledged, “Unless someone’s actually got a car or a van to go and pick up people, community engagement’s hard.” The simplicity of this solution was not lost on Kamarra, who has since advocated for this in more recent tours of The Score. Kamarra also identified a need for producers to have some interest or experience in community development practice, which would strengthen their capacity to cultivate the necessary relationships and maximise the impact of shows.

Kamarra’s approach to community engagement evolved over the course of developing the works, so that by the time of Viral, in her role as an Education and Learning Manager at Ilbijerri, she recognised the need to engage more deeply with communities affected by the issues. Viral (written by Maryanne Sam) was greatly informed by the community workshops that Kamarra instigated to find out more about why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were not taking up the new treatment for hepatitis C. She later described how powerful this process had been, not only in terms of developing authentic content for the play but also providing a space for people to openly discuss their experiences for the first time.

We found that through these yarning circles, we also had people though that were telling us things and confessing things and revealing things and connecting in a way about living with the virus and about their fears around the treatment and around the challenges with their broader lives that I - they said to us often that they had never shared these types of things or had these conversations. So we were just engaged in some of the most raw, soul-exposing conversations and really beautiful empowering conversations that we just pulled so much information from, that then went into the writing of the play. I just found that there were things that we discovered through those workshops that I never would have been able to myself make up as a writer and do justice to and that also though, that the workshops were so beneficial and effecting to the Community members that got to participate.

This level of community engagement created high levels of support for the show from community and prison audiences once it came to tour. Jesse Butler described how one workshop participant in prison had informed his character and storyline, leading to a strong sense of connection to the performance for that man and his peers and a conviction for Jesse that the process had been much deeper than just a theatre performance.

You know, he came up to me afterwards and gave me a hug and thanked him for doing his story and stuff, and I was like, nothing can top this. It was just this moment of, ‘What even am I doing right now?’ … this isn’t about theatre right now, this is just about connecting. … To actually see that connection and be a part of it, and to walk into a room where there are a bunch of prisoners or just people from the community centre that are worrying, going, ‘What the hell is going on? I just came in for a cup of tea.’ Then having this thing, just this connection that then you create, and then afterwards they’re sitting around and actually able to open up in front of you. … All of a sudden it became about this connection that we had with people and the message I think was pretty clear … it was pretty impactful.

Kamarra related how this same participant had rejected the idea of seeking treatment during the development workshops, but attending the performance 18 months later, he told her that he had participated in the treatment and recently cleared the virus.

I guess that, to me, was a testament that this was the track that we needed to keep going down and exploring and expanding. Even that was such a small thing, and it was like a year and a half these lads had waited for us to come back. After only two workshops and to see how much gratitude and appreciation and just the disbelief that we’d even come back and that we’d come back with something that was better than they thought.

The community workshops in Scar Trees (adapted from a script by Declan Furber Gillick) were conducted with young people in care to explore the issue of family violence from their perspective. These were less successful in terms of providing a sense of continuity from workshops to performance, however, Nazaree Dickerson recalled how those young people who did see the show “had a real sense of pride” in their contributions. These experiences of engaging with communities through workshops were formative for Kamarra’s developing practice, ultimately leading to her idea for working long-term with communities to achieve more lasting engagement and transformative change through The Score.

Lived Experience and ‘Colonial Load’

First Nations arts practitioners are charged with a huge weight of responsibility in terms of asserting ownership and leadership over projects in the face of mainstream structural resistance and engaging meaningfully with communities and stakeholders to deliver the work. In health and wellbeing-focused projects, they also often must do this while navigating complex social issues that directly affect their own communities (sometimes their own family members). This cultural load—or colonial load—can be difficult to carry without strong self-care practices and effective avenues for support and debriefing. As Bracknell et al. (2021) discuss in relation to creating the work Hecate, “Every stage of the production risked triggering trauma associated with colonisation and language loss” (385). This is true also of works that address the kinds of health and social inequities exemplified in Ilbijerri’s Social Impact Program. In discussing her involvement as a community facilitator with Scar Trees, Nazaree Dickerson highlighted:

[These are] hugely complex issues in our communities. There’s no easy way to navigate them from one community to the next, from one family to the next. So, yeah, that’s where a lot of that weight sits, I think, is the fact that they are so complex.

While performer Melodie Reynolds-Diarra spoke about this in terms of the healing work that the plays aim to achieve:

If the play’s there to heal, it’s going to obviously bring up stuff in order to be healed. … That’s, I suppose, why we do it in the first place is that we want to make a change from this, we want to bring stuff up into the - so that we can talk about it and if this horrific stuff was triggered by what we’ve said, there’s chance for help now.

For Melodie, this meant having to “emotionally guard” herself, and shared a strong analogy for how she approached this:

If someone’s drowning in the water, you don’t jump into that dangerous water with them because you’re in it. … But if you look for a tool to be able to reach out to help them, or if you safely reach out to help them and stuff like that, that’s the way there to pull them through. So, I made sure and not jump in the water with a lot of the stories. Sometimes they get you by surprise and you may have dreams or thoughts or feelings about that person a few days, or weeks, or months later, or something like that, or something could trigger it. But, same time, you just got to remember the initial ‘why’ you went into it, I suppose.

As explored later, much of the plays’ success stemmed from the safe, stigma-free space that they opened for discussion about difficult issues, but this also came with some risks for the performers where, as Melodie pointed out, “Everyone feels like they can tell you stuff.” She therefore emphasised the need for putting spiritual safeguards in place:

Having a template or something energetic to put there like to guard your spirit … [from] what you may encounter, and the fact that there’s I think a lot of people are going to be vulnerable to you but don’t be vulnerable back.

In addition to the weight of the topics being covered in the plays, and the stories and experiences shared by audiences, the research showed a need to account for the different lived experiences of creative team members. Some interviewees had direct experience of the issues under exploration, or direct family or Mob connections with those affected (including incarcerated audience members), whereas others’ experiences of the issues were more arm’s length. Either way, most felt a strong impact, particularly from touring into prisons. Nazaree discussed parallels between the story in Scar Trees and her own lived experience:

Look, I think for me, it comes from a place of lived experience. My own experience as a young person with domestic violence in my house, seeing things, going to visit people in prison that I wasn’t necessarily fond of. A lot of personal memories attached to that, but also having grown up in community that is—it’s very common to have a lot of family members in prison … I can’t even count the amount of brother boys, cousins … and sister girls that I’ve got in jail right now. That’s just kind of their life and so there is this—a little bit—a feeling of guilt because I actually was steered away from that. I luckily escaped that by the skin of my teeth, and it could have easily been me on that side. So, there’s this element of going in there and not wanting to, yeah - not wanting to offend, but just being there out of love, because you understand. But, yeah, it’s a strange feeling. It is, actually, a really strange feeling, but very rewarding and such an honour to do, because the - the response you get is always amazing.

Nazaree’s account points towards the complexities of, on the one hand, having lived experience that raised difficult feelings and, on the other hand, how this deepened her sense of “honour” in addressing the issues and giving back to the community. Melodie Reynolds-Diarra echoed these complexities when she described how it was a shame she had missed the Kalgoorlie show on her tour of Chopped Liver, and that she would have been “happy but sad” to be there because “I see a lot of my relations in jail that way and it’d be probably the only time I get to properly see them is when I take a show in there to them.” When asked if her lived experience strengthened her ability to tackle the issues and do the work, Nazaree replied, “It definitely gives us an understanding of where those audience members and those community members are coming from, especially if you see that there’s something that’s been triggered in them and then they feel the need to unpack it.” But she emphasised the need to take care of herself in these situations as well, “To make sure that I am actually unpacking that as a person myself.” Nazaree also highlighted the need for performers to remain adaptable and not to “generalise” their own lived experiences to other communities: “Yes, you get the same characters everywhere you go, but every community is so unique, so you can never really say, ‘Well, that worked great in Swan Hill, so of course it’s going to work in Pukatja.’”

It was clear that interviewees found touring into prisons had the most impact in terms of cultural and psychological load. Melodie Reynolds-Diarra related a disturbing story about going into the protection unit of one of the prisons, where a convicted rapist had tried to intimidate her through body language and eye contact in a way that Melodie described as trying to “strip me back to the bone.” She responded by standing up to him “energetically” during the introductions to the cast at the end of the show, holding eye contact, and shaking his hand strongly until he introduced himself. Of this incident, Melodie commented, “The story puts you in a place where you have to step up, shape up energetically, spiritually.”

Performer Laila Thaker also related how touring for the first time into adult prisons with Viral had affected her, highlighting in a very real sense just how over-represented First Nations peoples are in the system.

You realise all [these] other … things that you’ve got inside of you that you that you need to deal with, and I think that came to head when I did maybe the first or second show. … I was calculating how many fullas that we’d performed for at that point. … I can’t even remember off the top of my head now, but it was a mass amount. I was just calculating, all of these men are in here, but they could be out with us. It was like, these men are just beautiful, caring, lovely, respectful, funny, genuine fullas and they’re all in here and not out there with us in the community and it just made me really sad. I just remember feeling … really slack. I think that’s when the penny drop happened for me. It’s that reflecting of these mob are here and not with us in our community.

Melodie echoed this sentiment: “To see so many black faces [in prison] was kind of—statistically that was just a bit overwhelming in a way.” For Laila, visiting the prison was confronting on another level as well, where she felt “racially vilified” by non-Indigenous staff:

One thing I found confronting about the experience with Viral, probably - the going in and out of these prisons was pretty intense actually. Having to regularly deal with the really abrasive energies of the guards and the cops that were there was pretty hectic for me actually. … I’m just coming in as a performer, you know. Yeah, I just found that really confronting, each time.

Yet despite the emotional toll of entering these spaces, there remained a feeling that performers had a strong sense of responsibility to get on with the job and were equally gaining a great deal from the energy of their interactions with prison audiences. As Chopped Liver performer Isaac Drandic put it:

I never felt too overloaded. I kind of always just knew that there’s a job to do … And they [incarcerated audiences] didn’t - that kind of heaviness wasn’t transferred onto us anyway. Because they were so, they were full of light … they had light in their eyes. Like my cousin said, … they weren’t there [in prison] for 50 minutes. … That’s what kept us going for 150–200 shows. …That’s what kept the energy up because they gave it to us. (Interview, 2021)

Similarly, Jesse Butler described how, although the prison environment was sometimes intimidating at first, he did not want to be sheltered from it and he always felt safe because he was among other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, and there was always someone to call upon in the Ilbijerri team for support if needed. Laila Thaker echoed these sentiments in describing the experience as “intense in a good way”:

Hearing the stories of, well not just Kamarra’s experience but the experience of some of the fullas, the prisoners. … I found that pretty confronting as well. Then not only having to work with their stories but then you go meet them face-to-face, it just becomes that little bit more real. … So I obviously had to work through that. Kamarra was pretty good. I mean the whole process was really supportive. We always checked in on one another. We had all these really deadly cultural practices in place—meditation practices in place as well. I think that’s what I love about working with Kamarra on this, not only because it’s personal with her experience but also she’s just like – I’ve never worked with someone like Kamarra as a director and a creator. She’s just decolonising rehearsal spaces altogether. So while we were dealing with pretty intense themes and storytelling, it was all really – I felt safe. … I think that’s probably the number one important thing of taking on a project like this, is that the foundations have to be strong and Kamarra and Ilbijerri made sure of that.

Laila’s praise for Kamarra’s methods points towards the need for consistency and ongoing training in attending to cultural safety, where in some cases there may have been different team members working in support roles who did not necessarily share the same skill level and rigorous approach to cultural safety as Kamarra.

The need to ensure cultural, emotional, and physical safety for performers was perhaps most evident in the experience of Shannon Hood, who joined the 2019 cast of Viral as an inexperienced performer who had recent lived experience of addiction and prison. While it had been extremely powerful to have someone in the cast whose experiences so closely mirrored those of the audience (as discussed later), this came with a stronger duty of care to ensure that Shannon could manage the pressures of learning the performance, getting up in front of an audience for the first time, and for some of those audience members to be closely connected to him. Shannon recalled how he had felt “overcome” at the beginning with the size of the role and the number of lines he had to learn in a short space of time. In addition to the pressure of performing, Shannon’s portrayal of Merv brought up emotional connections and resonances that he was unable to set aside:

Playing the old, broken sort of blackfulla who may have thought he’d wasted his life a bit and he had to build some bridges with his daughter before he passed away. Yeah, so there was that sort of emotional side going through it, which I know—you know of a lot of Elders that have passed away and you sort of think that they’ve probably passed away with a few regrets about life and the hand that they’ve been dealt. … I’m not going to say it was easy. (Interview, 2021)

Shannon was clear that he felt well supported by Kamarra and the other cast members throughout his time in Viral, but he went on to suffer a heart attack midway through the tour. Despite Shannon’s belief that the heart attack was not necessarily a result of the performance and was “a long time coming,” it provided a salutary lesson for Kamarra and the leadership team. While having someone like Shannon involved in the Viral was hugely beneficial on many levels, it is equally important to implement strong safety practices at all stages of a project.

Cultural Safety Processes and Practices

The examples cited above highlight the complexity and nuances of how lived experience and the colonial load affected different creative team members in different ways, with an acknowledgement that practices of self-care and care for each other were essential to managing such potentially charged work. The term “cultural safety,” as introduced by Papps and Ramsden (1996) in the context of nursing and healthcare in New Zealand has gained traction in recent years in arts and education contexts, and the concept increasingly underpins many creative development, rehearsal, and touring practices in contemporary First Nations Theatre (Bracknell et al. 2021). The idea of creating “safe space” has long existed in social justice and by extension in community-engaged arts, with Bracknell et al. (2021, 384–385) building on the work of Arao and Clemens (2013) to articulate a “brave space” that could hold a creative workshop or rehearsal process that sometimes asked ensemble members to take risks or sit with discomfort—albeit within a framework for cultural, emotional, and physical safety. As discussed in Chap. 2, we also recognise that the content being explored through the health education works had to be tackled in a way that was both “safe and dangerous”—safely and authentically representing the issues, without shying away from the realities of, for example, confronting lived experiences and risky behaviours.

The benefit of strong cultural leadership in these projects meant that emotional safety, bravery, and sometimes danger could be balanced through a clear set of principles, protocols, and practices where creative teams with diverse lived experiences could thrive and do their best work. Kamarra has developed a strong framework for First Nations dramaturgy that holistically integrates responsibilities around cultural awareness, obligation, and representation when making works. This involves working in ways that are trauma informed and spiritually safe, which includes accounting for the diverse needs and manifestations of colonial load that artists may experience and working with an intentional awareness of the capacity for stories to both trigger and heal artists and audiences. Blayne Welsh (2018, 25) cites Shawn Wilson (2008) in describing how this occurred in the making of Viral, which promoted a sense of “relational accountability,” “By using an exclusively Indigenous team, working via respectful collaborative practice and responsibly drawing from lived experiences and community voices.” This included ritual aspects such as “sweeping” the space with gum leaves before commencing the process for the day (26) and holding space for all the different cultural backgrounds and experiences that are represented within a creative team or ensemble. Hyland, Syron, and Casey (2018, 6) reflect that rehearsal and performance spaces are not “neutral” or empty but “contain a legacy of theatre-making processes and practices that are also historically influenced by Western and European understandings of theatrical practice.” They suggest artists use such methods to “counter the social, cultural and artistic traces of Western and European influences held within a rehearsal context” (7).

For the works described in this volume, these cultural elements and practices were woven to different degrees through every level of performance making from research and development through rehearsal to touring. A strong message from the interviews was the need to consistently support cultural, emotional, and even physical safety for creative teams and ensemble members through every stage. The potential for strong physical, emotional, and spiritual impacts of the performances on First Nations creative teams points to a need for safety, protection, and debriefing practices to underpin the works; and the research demonstrates that this has been achieved with varying degrees of success over the years. We suggest there can be an assumption that creatives can deal with these complex issues—particularly touring in prisons—which may not be the case in all instances. There is a need to not assume that the experience will be the same for everybody and to be responsive to different people’s resilience, traumas, or triggers in developing plans for cultural safety within the works. Our interviews highlighted four ways in which performers were able to maintain a sense of cultural safety: a tight-knit and supportive team on tour and back at Ilbijerri; performers having strong self-care instincts and practices; strong cultural practices to open, close, and clear rehearsal and performance spaces; and formal and informal avenues for briefing and debriefing tours and individual performances.

As discussed in the previous section, several interviewees highlighted how their fellow performers and staff back at Ilbijerri were key in providing support during challenging times. In our yarn with Isaac Drandic, Kamarra pointed out how close the touring team had been for Chopped Liver at that time and that this may have contributed to Isaac’s ability to not become “overloaded” and to just get on with the job. Isaac agreed that this was helpful in coping with the gruelling nature of touring:

I suppose it was kind of about keeping the kind of energy up. It’s a little bit like a long game … using a sports analogy or something. It would be a long-distance race or something that you just have to try and keep the energy up, keep your spirits up during the long tours like that.

Similarly, in discussion with Nazaree Dickerson, Kamarra pointed to the strength of the team on the Scar Trees tour, which helped to alleviate some of the potential risks of dealing with such traumatic material (family violence) with audiences who were victim-survivors:

Thank God the team on Scar Trees was such a tightknit group and really had each other’s backs. Because when we haven’t had that on tours, it makes things a lot harder, and I just don’t know how that show would have kind of been able to finish the tour if we didn’t have such a strong team.

Testament to the strength of that team was their capacity to be responsive to the pressures of touring the show and share the load in terms of participating in the post-show yarning circle. Nazaree reflected,

They’ve just finished a show, they’re processing all those emotions as performers and then having to – there’s that duty of care coming into community, knowing that … you might have someone revealing something extremely private and vulnerable about their own lives and you have to be emotionally available to deal with that, if you’re asking them to sit in a yarning circle and reveal that information or even making the space open for that to happen.

She went on to explain that the cast created a “rotating roster” so that performers could sit out of the yarning circle and “have a breather” if needed.

Referring to his time in Viral, Shannon Hood talked about the importance of “camaraderie” and the need for the performance teams to “gee each other up.” As an inexperienced performer, this was crucial to him gaining the confidence to go on stage. Nevertheless, due to different personalities and group dynamics, a strong, tight-knit team cannot be guaranteed, which potentially puts the emotional and cultural safety of all team members at risk. Facing such a situation on the 2018 Viral tour, Kamarra and Mary Quinsacara discussed the need for carefully managing such situations as they arise, as well as placing other mechanisms and safeguards in practice through every stage of a performance to hopefully prevent such situations from occurring in the first place.

As discussed in the previous section, Melodie Reynolds-Diarra highlighted the importance of strong self-care processes and practices in maintaining the safety and strength to deal with challenging environments such as prisons and to undertake such important work in communities. Nazaree Dickerson spoke about a specific occasion while touring Scar Trees where she had been deeply affected when a woman shared her personal story about being removed from a domestically violent situation. Nazaree felt that her prior experiences of touring with Chopped Liver and other shows in remote communities helped equip her with the necessary capacities for self-care and debriefing and that this included having informal debriefing yarns with other members of the touring party. But again, not all performers—especially those who are young or inexperienced—will have developed such skills and capacities as a matter of course. This suggests that future creative teams could benefit from training and development in self-care and the need for more formalised cultural safety practices, briefing, and debriefing surrounding the work.

In response to Melodie’s experience in the men’s prison, Kamarra acknowledged that although smoking and sweeping ceremonies were often performed at different stages of the tour, there was a need for “more extensive briefing and after care,” particularly for women. This would take the form of mindful, spiritual, culturally based, empowering protective practice that is put in place when performers go in and that is cleared and held when they go out—a practice that is becoming more and more present in Kamarra’s creative work. Mary Quinsacara felt that providing opportunities for yarning and debriefing for performers might have been a missing piece of the puzzle in the 2018 Viral tour, particularly in terms of performers having an opportunity to process the experience of going into prisons. There had been a process in place at the start, but it may have fallen away as the tour went on. For Mary, a non-Indigenous stage and tour manager, there was a lack of clarity around whose responsibility it was to instigate debriefing discussions with Mary understandably wishing not to step on any toes and to take her cues from the cast. Both Nazaree Dickerson and Jesse Butler spoke about how valuable it was to debrief informally with colleagues, but both acknowledged that having a formal structure was also valuable. Nazaree described her experience on Scar Trees, where there were opportunities for a more organic process of yarning and debriefing, combined with a more formalised approach from the stage and production manager:

She made sure that she asked everyone each day how are you doing today? Which I guess is generally part of a good workplace culture, but at the same time it’s actually—there’s a lot of—a lot more weight that comes with it when you’re asking someone how they’re doing after doing a show about someone that’s experiencing domestic violence or Stolen Generation stuff. …So it’s a bit—just tweaking and being more mindful. One thing that I’ve noticed is having to do that stuff in your own private time and it not actually being built into the schedule of a tour or a program, that’s something that’s always been missing from what I’ve seen in so many projects.

Jesse acknowledged that not everyone might feel able to just walk up to their colleagues and talk openly in this way and that a more formalised process at the end of each day might be helpful. Laila Thaker also spoke passionately about the value of debriefing to her during the 2018 Viral tour:

I like debriefs. I’m all about the debriefs. I like to over analyse. I guess a lot of performers don’t as well. So that’s probably where there might have been tension. Somebody’s debrief is just they want to debrief on their own, you know, just want to go home, have a cup of tea in their room or whatever, but I want to yarn about it.

While a formalised debriefing process might be demanding for some team members, the general feeling from the interviews was that to support the cultural safety of creative teams doing “heavy” work, there is a need for at least some kind of regular practice of debriefing that is negotiated amongst the team, and with a clear structure for who leads this process. Nazaree described this as a critical issue in terms of sustaining this crucial community practice:

If that cultural care is not built into the program, you’re having to do that yourself and it comes at a deficit near the end of the tour. You’re worn out … burnt out. And that’s not good, because then we can’t continue to do the work.

Another critical element of this sustainability is the need not only to take care of creative teams but also to recognise the load that they carry with commensurate pay and conditions. As Laila Thaker observed, First Nations artists like those at Ilbijerri are “overloaded” with demand for their work, and the cultural work of telling and holding community stories, although deeply rewarding, can carry with it extra responsibilities, obligations, and burdens. This must be recognised through the more practical and logistical elements of programming such as pay, benefits, tour scheduling, and the timely settlement of contracts.

Conclusion

This chapter has presented the health education performances as grounded in strong cultural leadership and underpinned by principles of cultural safety, collective responsibility, and relational accountability within all stages. These foundational aspects of the works essentially form the basis from which all other elements must spring. While there was some acknowledgement that safety practices and processes could be improved, this provided key learnings for subsequent projects like The Score, as will be discussed in the conclusion (Chap. 7). Also evident among our interviewees, however, was a deep respect for Kamarra and Ilbijerri’s efforts in terms of providing a space in which creative teams’ diverse lived experiences and positionalities could be valued and nurtured to support the work. First Nations ownership and leadership in projects such as these is also vital to the creative process and the capacity to integrate cultural elements respectfully and artfully within performances that speak to diverse Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities’ experiences. This is the focus of the next chapter, which presents findings around key aesthetic and performative elements of the shows that enabled them to artfully walk the line between “education” and “theatre” through the communication of a “gripping dramatic yarn.”