Ngapartji Ngapartji, the headline Indigenous act at the Sydney Festival this year is currently in discussions with European festivals to tour the show next year.
Countries up for discussion include Portugal, the UK and France with others also in negotiation. 
From the Pitjantjatjara language from central South Australia, the title roughly translates as “I give you something, you give me something.” But that ‘something’ could be anything from a cup of water, to a shared experience. There is no limitation on what that ‘something’ is.
It is a beautiful production which begins with audience participation. Not the type of audience participation which causes red faces of ‘don’t pick me, don’t pick me’ but rather it asks the audience to stand together and do the actions to ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’.
Challenges will no doubt face the production company, as they work out how the show which shifts between English and Pitjantjatjara will be translated into Portuguese or French.
The tour will be great news for production company Big hArt, who recently turned down a $750,000 grant from the Australia Council. In the report which was first published by Simon Ferguson of the Daily Telegraph, creative director Scott Rankin explained that it would cost Big hArt $15,000 just to process the bulky application for the grant, only to be offered a comparatively paltry $750,000 over six years - a grant which would then cost the small company $25,000 each year to process the necessary paperwork.
Friday, 8 February 2008
Talk of a European Tour
Posted by Nicholas Pickard at 10:16 am
Labels: Indigenous Arts, News, Sydney Festival, Theatre
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4 comments:
Melbourne here - I can't help pointing out that the stage show (Ngapartji Ngapartji is a complex project, of which this is only part) was in the 2006 Melbourne Festival...and if I recall correctly, an earlier version of the show was shown at MIAF 2005, courtesy of Robyn Archer...
Thanks Alison.
Details about the new and improved version of Ngapartji Ngapartji under Big hART and Company B, that will be touring can be found HERE
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Can someone tell Moran that this is the show that pretty much every Australian needs to be able to see. I know we can't make it compulsory viewing...but we should give it the widest possible exposure.
Alison - yes, I have heard this is the show that already will not die, and its creators obviously have plans for it to live a lot longer.
But chris t - I wish I agreed with you about this show. I think it was much overhyped, clumsy, unfocussed, and for a show that has been in development for years I would have thought they could have worked out which bits work and which don't. I was really looking forward to this, especially after Jason Blake's review, which essentially said that for a show of so many seemingly disparate elements it was amazingly cohesive. To me it was an almost random patchwork of truly disparate elements creating a dazzling series of missed opportunities.
The moment when the women came into the audience to invite other women on stage should have been an unforgettable moment. But it had no context at all. It had nothing to do with the text being spoken. I didn't understand the ritual they were recreating. What were those bits of tile representing? Nothing to me. At its worst it was embarrassing. I think it is generally poor taste to air your brother's dirty laundry in public in the name of art. I was embarrassed. The script seemed unfinished - the number of times Trevor Jamieson said "I just wanted to make a film about my brother", well, why didn'y he just make a film about his brother instead.
I wanted to love this show, and I have spoken to at least one person who said they didn't think they were allowed not to love it because it was an Indigenous show. I want this show to grow and develop and be wonderful, but I wonder if anyone agrees with me about the inherent merits of this piece?
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