Introduction

Black Chicks Talking represents a personal journey by actor, writer and director Leah Purcell that commenced in 1999.

The book - Inspired to seek out and tell the stories of contemporary Indigenous women, Purcell conducted a series of interviews with nine women from Tasmania to the West Kimberley that resulted in the book, Black Chicks Talking.

The documentary - In 2001 a documentary film of the same name and featuring five of the subjects from the book was written and directed by Leah Purcell and produced by Bungabura Productions. The documentary won the 2002 IF Award (Independent Film-makers Award) for Best Documentary.

The play - The stage play of Black Chicks Talking has been co-written and directed by Leah Purcell and Sean Mee. World premier performance - Optus Playhouse, QPAC 12 December 2002.

Portraits by Robert Hannaford

Portraits will be on display in the Optus Playhouse Lounge.

Celebrated artist Robert Hannaford was commissioned by Bungabura Productions and QPAC to paint ten portraits as part of the interview process for the book. The portraits are Leah Purcell; Cilla Malone (mother); Deborah Mailman (actor); Frances Rings (dancer); Kathryn Hay (Miss Australia); Liza Frazer-Gooda (businesswoman); Rachel Perkins (filmmaker); Rosanna Argus (community police warden); Sharyn Finnan (netballer) and Tammy Williams (lawyer).

The artist

Robert Hannaford was political cartoonist for The Advertiser from 1964-67. He won the A.M.E. Bale Art Scholarship (1969-73) and has made his living from painting since 1973 with oil painting, watercolour, charcoal, pencil and pen drawing, sculpture and print works. He has held exhibitions of his work in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and now Brisbane.

Photographs by Jo-Anne Driessens

Photographs will be displayed throughout the Optus Playhouse foyers.

Award-winning photographer Jo-Anne Driessens was commissioned by Bungabura Productions as stills photographer to record the making of the documentary film, Black Chicks Talking. Photographs of the documentary cast include Leah Purcell; Deborah Mailman; Katherine Hay; Cilla Malone; Tammy Williams; and Rosanna Angus. Jo-Anne Driessens returned at the request of the producers (La Boite Theatre, QPAC and Bungabura Productions) to record the rehearsal process for the stage production.

The photographer

Jo-Anne Driessens' interest in photography began in high school and developed through her research work with Aboriginal communities in Brisbane and on the Sunshine Coast. Driessens completed a four-year cadetship in conjunction with the Image Unit of the State Library of Queensland, graduating with a Diploma of Photography in 1999 and winning the Canon Overall Folio Award for the 1999 Graduation Year, South Bank TAFE. Her current role is Indigenous Resource Officer in the Indigenous Services Unit, State Library of Queensland.

The photographic recording of the documentary was made possible with the kind assistance of the State Library of Queensland.

Stage play by
Leah Purcell and Sean Mee

Black Chicks Talking was first produced by La Boite Theatre and QPAC in association with Bungabura Productions and first performed at Optus Playhouse, QPAC on Thursday 12 December 2002 with the following cast and creative personnel.

Cast

Elizabeth Leah Purcell
Janine Nikki Copley
Sophie Tessa Rose
Patricia Kyas Sherriff
Michelle Sher Williams-Hood
Understudy Nadine McDonald

Creatives

Directors Sean Mee and Leah Purcell
Executive Producer John Kotzas
Producers Bain Stewart, Deborah Murphy, Craig Whitehead
Designer Eamon D'Arcy
Composer/Sound Designer Brendan O'Brien
Lighting Designer David Walters
Choreographer Jeanette Fabila
Dramaturg Louise Gough
Assistant Director Lynne Bradley
Stage Manager Sonya Bohlen
Assistant Stage Manager Tanya Malouf
Lighting Operator Tim Scott
Sound Operator Mark Blacker
Audio Visual Operator Wayne Jones

A Lighter Shade of Pale -

Being Aboriginal in 2002

By Melissa Lucashenko

Remember back in the old days when Australian meant white? Just Anglo? Not Chinese or Vietnamese, not Brazilian, not really Irish, not Arab, not Indonesian, not Polish or African or anything. Just plain Anglo. Well, that's finished now, that idea. Cos we all got a history. We all got ancestors. There's more than one way to be Australian - and there's more than one way to be a blackfella, too.

Are you black? Or brown, or yellow, or white? Or just plain confused? What does it mean, anyway, your colour? Your identity? Does dark skin make you black? Or white skin make you white? Maybe you're a coconut, or a banana.. Looks like people getting real mixed up about all this stuff lately. And what about Australian - who's Australian these days? Blue eyes, brown eyes, eyes that see, eyes that don't see, green eyes, round eyes...

There's no single answer to all these questions. The thing is, they're questions that never got asked in the past, not properly asked. So nowadays everyone's talking bout stuff like Who am I and Where do I fit? Lotta Murri people all mixed up and angry from Stolen Generations policies. Lotta whitefellas not knowing who they are, either, and not understanding. Asian, Arab, Polynesian people in there too, in the mix.

Let's make it easy, and start at the beginning. Way back when, (before Eora people discovered that Captain Cook bloke), Australia was all Aboriginal people. Just Us, all different mobs across the continent. We had our different nations, traded with the Macassans, grew pearls and farmed kangaroo and emu. Built wooden huts in Queensland, stone houses in Victoria. Lived in peace.

Then boom! 1788. White fellas started coming in with that stripy flag of theirs. We sorta stopped being Us. Somehow someone decided to take our country and turn us into these other words: Niggers. Natives. Aboriginals. Savages. And pretty soon, in the south mostly, our colour started to change. Human nature being what it is, plenty of brown babies getting around before long. And governments taking these brown babies away, too, to make em whiter and whiter.

Only guess what? It didn't work. Not for everyone anyway. Oh, on some people it worked. Some blackfellas are gone now..assimilated into being whitefellas. That's okay. That's their choice. But a lotta Murris stayed black, stayed Indigenous. Even though sometimes the colour changed, and all over Australia our cultures had to evolve into something new and different.

End of a long story - today. Now us blackfellas still live all over Australia, yeah, Tasmania too. Murris in Queensland. Koories in New South Wales and Victoria. Other words in other places. Some of us still dark, still black looking. Some of us with fair skin and blonde hair, only inside we could be real black. Some of us got our traditional languages. A lot of us mostly talk English, or else Kriol. All of us living in some sort of house, most of us watching TV and going to schools and working in Woolworths and having opinions about Telstra and Kylie Minogue and the Broncos. Cos we modern people now.

Some Murris don't know their mob too good. Might not know the culture, might be feeling like a 'coconut', not black enough, not good enough. Might feel shame that their parents or grandparents jumped over to the white side of the fence, cos it's safer there. Some Murris might need a drink, or a smoke, to feel like a good-enough blackfella. Feeling too assimilated to fit in with other Aboriginals. (People can be cruel, eh, white and black). You might never feel good enough, never know where you're from. Or ya might get through it, like my friend Brendan. I ask him, who your mob brother? He reckons to me, "I dunno - so I just claim the whole continent." He's okay, he's smiling and surviving in his way that's the right way for him. No one can judge him - cos no-one's been where he's walked. That's his Murri way. If it isn't your Murri way, if you know who you are and where you're from, then you're lucky.

Lot of Aboriginal families still hurting, like Michelle hurts in this play. Sad, angry, drinking, fighting. We got that posttraumatic stress disorder eh. Lots of Aboriginal mothers and fathers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and aunties and uncles, all missing their stolen kids. Imagine it - the government comes and takes away your sister, your grandmother, your babies. You never see em again. Or you might be the one taken, not knowing who you are. Stuck in the dormitory, or given to a white family. Grown up in a different kind of Aboriginal way. Maybe treated good, with love and caring. Maybe treated bad, raped and flogged and abused. Maybe knowing you're black. Or maybe thinking you're Greek or Fijian, or nothing at all. Maybe hating Aboriginals, or scared of em.

Might be like Elizabeth - ignorant. Not knowing how to be a blackfella at all, till somebody shows ya. Mixed up inside. Judged, but not accepted. Interrogated, but not given a hand up too often. Like it was all your doing, this assimilation business. Whole communities of Murri people grieving..lost..hurting. Some doing a little bit better than others, if they got their country still and their lingo, like Sophie. Notice how she's got compassion, still got that caring heart? Government never took that off her; missionaries never flogged it out of her..she's got her mob and her Law and language to lean on. She strong still. One day all Aboriginal people gonna be healed, and strong again like Sophie. It's early days yet for our people.

There's a way out, see. There's a hope for the future, cos we survived all this and we'll survive anything that gets chucked at us. Go past survival, get to living like brother Archie Roach says, like we're all sensual beings. Human. And don't forget - its about what's under the skin. Your heart, and your mind. Your spirit. It's about remembering what your old people taught you. Or finding out who your old people are, or maybe about never finding your mob but finding yourself anyway. There's a track leading back, past a dusty outback shack…and it's a bloody hard track too. Don't go thinking it's an easy one. But if you're committed, if you're sure..then start walking. We'll meet you up, somewhere along the way.

Melissa Lucashenko is a Murri writer from Brisbane. Her award-winning novels of urban Murri life include Steam Pigs, Killing Darcy, Hard Yards and Too Flash. The Producers of Black Chicks Talking invited her to produce this essay and these are her thoughts.