Writers In The House

The Ilbijerri Writer’s Residency is a partnership that premieres this year between Ilbijerri Theatre Company and La Mama Theatre, which provides a platform for some of Australia’s emerging Indigenous writers. This year’s writers are Jacob Boehme and Katie Beckett.

Mary Helen Sassman tells us of a long history of mutual appreciation that’s existed between the two organisations, with artistic directors and young writers teaming up on numerous occasions in the past. “Our raison d’etre is to support the creation of new work and especially new plays. On the top of our priority list is working with minority voices to make sure their voices are presented on stage.”

The new residency aims to give emerging writers access to a supportive audience to test their work, something inspired by successful theatre visits to La Mama for Aboriginal writers La Mama and Ilbijerri have organised in the past. “This is the first of its kind and hopefully it is the beginning of something ongoing. For an audience, there’s something really special about witnessing the process of how the work is made.”

An intimate theatre space in Carlton with a very relaxed atmosphere, La Mama provides writers and performers the chance to sit around a fire before or after shows to discuss their work in its infancy with a receptive audience. Sassman attests to the nurturing environment of La Mama that allows them to feel less isolated and intimidated when they create work.

The residency involves an intensive workshop process, allowing writers to work with directors, dramaturges and performers. Writer and performer, Katie Beckett explains how the workshop has assisted her own creative process. “I went out to a farmhouse with no reception for about nine hours a day. I only went with ten pages and was performing in a show, so that first workshop we isolated ourselves and generated material.” Beckett’s story focuses on the relationship she had with her father as a child, their ups and downs and what it’s like to be an Aboriginal single father.

Themes in Beckett’s work include family relationships, childhood, parenthood, Aboriginal history and identity, connection to the land and how all this shapes culture. She believes a lot of our ideas of culture, history and identity come from the family. “I don’t want the audience to walk away feeling sad or depressed. There’s comedy, there is sadness, there is grief and there is joy. I want people to see a different side to Aboriginal men. They can be portrayed in the media as quite violent, drunken people. I want people to see what I grew up with, which was a gentle giant of a father.”