By KATH GANNAWAY
A NEAR capacity audience had the privilege of previewing Coranderrk at The Memo in Healesville in August.
The Ilbijerri Theatre Company presented the production which is set to become part of Victorian secondary schools’ History and Civics and Citizenship curriculum.
The play-reading draws on the testimonies of Aboriginal and European people who testified at the 1881 official inquiry into the Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve in which Aboriginal people and their European allies took on the Aboriginal Protection Board in a fight for self-determination.
Ilbijerri actors told the story through the recorded words spoken by Wurundjeri leader William Barak and other Kulin men and women, the statements of their supporters Anne Bon and John Green, and the opinions of settlers and members of the Aboriginal Protection Board who opposed them.
Wurundjeri elder Auntie Joy Murphy Wandin said the Coranderrk story portrayed an aspect of Aboriginal history that doesn’t get spoken of.
“This is when land rights began,” she said of the journeys the Coranderrk Aboriginal people made to Melbourne to take their concerns and issues to the government.
She spoke also of the Coranderrk workshops which Ilbijerri had conducted at Healesville High School.
“The children from the high school have played such an important part in the workshops and to them this performance in Healesville is quite overwhelming, but this is the place to have it,” she said.
Director Isaac Drandic said the play, developed under the Minutes of Evidence Project, told the story not only of what happened in Healesville but in many other places.
“This was a public inquiry that for the first time saw Aboriginal people stop being treated as objects, and becoming subjects,” he said.
Many of the audience stayed on for the opportunity to find out more about the production and to provide feedback to Ilbijerri aimed at honing the play for the final production.
Mr Drandic said they had found that when themes within the script were played out on a more empathetic level students retained most of that historic knowledge because there was an emotional connection with the story.
He also observed that doing vox pops in Healesville revealed that most people didn’t know the story of Coranderrk, although some had heard of it.
Darren Wandin was hearing the story of his family, but as someone with a good knowledge of the story.
He said he was impressed with the research and the way the production brought the story to life, but said he was too lost in the moment to think about it from the perspective of someone who didn’t know the story.
“I can’t think back to when I didn’t know the story,” he said.
Audience member Gabrielle Mahony was one who didn’t know the story.
She spoke from the heart and from the response to her comments, spoke for others, when she said: “I knew little about the story, but wanted to weep in my seat at what I was hearing.”
“I will do that later,” she added.
