| Summary: | Research background Rovers is an original performance work, co-created with two of Australia’s most revered performers-–First Nations performer, Roxanne MacDonald and non-First Nations performer, Barb Lowing. The innovative creative practice developed for Rovers is part verbatim, part fictive memory and deliberately draws on feminist tropes of the road movie and the notion of the ‘wild woman’ to celebrate the power of these two extraordinary performers. Through their ancestral memories, Rovers explores Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal experiences of colonisation, reconciliation, memory and aging. The dramaturgy of the work is deliberately non-linear, honouring what Helen Cixious describes as “the laughing Medusa” – the fluid, subjective and embodied experience of the feminine. Rovers is also part of an exciting resurgence of intercultural performance work on Australian stages, as noted by First Nations scholar Alethea Beetson in her recent PhD Continuing ancestral connectivity through performance. Rovers trials an innovative community engagement project to an explore a research question about how community engagement and experiences developed around and arising from the production can promote cultural safety and respect in mainstream Australian venues for Aboriginal audiences and to build ongoing relationships and connections into community between First Nations and non-First Nations audiences. It was also an important ethical commitment that an intercultural work about Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal connection was enjoyed by both communities in the same space at the same time. The learnings from the roll-out of the community engagement from First Nations author Emily Coleman and Kathryn Kelly was published in Social Alternatives: https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.340113329192511. Research contribution National producer Critical Stages won competitive Australia Council Playing Australia funding for a national tour for Rovers in 2020 (Redlands, Maleny, Gladstone, Townsville, Darwin, Alice Springs, ...
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