Talking Point … Origins Festival

What is Origins Festival of
First Nations and how did it come to be?
First Nations are the original
inhabitants of the lands which were colonised by Western powers in
the past. They are often referred to as ‘indigenous peoples’,
but a lot of them don’t really respond to that label – after all,
everybody is indigenous in some way! The panel of advisors we got
together in 2007 liked the Canadian term ‘First Nations’ – it says
something about why these cultures are important.

The idea of the Festival really came
from a production we did in 2004 – a play called Bullie’s
House by Thomas Keneally. We brought over four Aboriginal
Australian performers to appear in it – and they were quite
brilliant. Working with them, I was very struck how readily
performance came to them – it’s so ingrained in the culture that it’s
just assumed everyone can do it. It felt like a different approach
to theatre, and one to which the English audiences responded
incredibly warmly and enthusiastically. You could feel the
recognition of something very valuable in the culture, something from
which we can really learn.

What are your
highlights?
The Festival has a film programme,
comedy, workshops, talks, an exhibition… but just within the
theatre programme, there are some amazing pieces. Salvage
by the Cherokee writer Diane Glancy is an extraordinary play: at once
a modern, gritty piece of realism and a mystical and poetic piece.
You see – in First Nations cultures, there tends not to be a
distinction drawn between the everyday world and the world of dreams,
the spiritual. They would regard that distinction as artificial –
and that’s very theatrical, isn’t it? Theatre makes visible the
invisible.

Then there’s the Australian piece,
Windmill Baby by David Milroy, which is a
monologue in that Aboriginal storytelling tradition we were talking
about – Rohanna Angus plays an old woman thinking back over her life,
and re-telling it. At the end, she reveals a very deep sorrow, which
resonates with the racial politics of Australia.

Is it all very serious?
Not at all! In fact, Windmill
Baby is very funny a lot of the time. And then there’s the
Maori piece, Strange Resting Places, which is full
of rough and ready comedy. It’s about the Maori battalion’s
adventures in Italy during World War 2 – if you put Maori and
Italians together you get a feast of wine, women and song…
Almighty Voice and His Wife from Canada is also
very funny, in a more bizarre, surreal way. The first half re-tells
a bit of Cree history – the second half is like music hall or a
medicine show, which goes drastically wrong! And then there’s the
Native American stand-up Chuquai Billy, who’s performing late-night
at Soho. He’s unique – truly.

What’s the relevance to
London in 2009?
We’re at a crisis point in Western
culture: the economic system is falling apart – there’s an
enviornmental catastrophe… It’s time we started to listen to
people who have different approaches to living, and ask what they
might be able to teach us. We’ve deliberately chosen pieces which
ask questions of our own culture, and which present alternatives.
It’s a festival about how we can jointly inhabit this fragile
planet.

Who are Border
Crossings?
We’re a theatre company which
specialises in intercultural work – and we’ve been doing it for 14
years now. We like to collaborate with artists from other cultures,
and to open up real dialogues through theatre. The Festival is a
logical extension of that mission.

For more on the Origins
Festival, click here