In 1791, Governor Arthur Phillip renamed Rose Hill – a settlement in western Sydney which had belonged to Indigenous people for tens of thousands of years before invasion – the title Indigenous Darug people had given it: Parramatta.
That was more than two centuries ago, but it has been only in the past 20 years that western Sydney has begun developing cultural institutions – the Casula Powerhouse, Riverside Theatres and Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, to name just a few – that reflect and celebrate local talents, and bring main stage productions to the area.
Western Sydney is home to one in 10 Australians, and about one-third of New South Wales’s population. But a Deloitte report released in 2015 shows only 1% of national arts program funding and 5.5% of NSW government funding is spent there.
On to this landscape steps the National Theatre of Parramatta (NTofP), a main stage theatre company that will take residency in Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres with its inaugural show, Swallow, to open in April. Ambitious in name and vision – “Putting the nation on stage” is its official slogan – the theatre aims to reflect the diversity and complexity of Australia by telling the untold stories of western Sydney and beyond.
“Parramatta is the geographical centre of Sydney, so it’s appalling that they don’t have theatre companies making work for their people,” Annette Shun Wah, one of NTofP’s four directorates, tells Guardian Australia.
“When we look at the main stage theatre companies in Australia, we don’t think they reflect what the nation looks like. We are setting our intention to make work that looks like what Australia [looks like] today.”
Although the inaugural season of Stef Smith’s Swallow is Scottish, Shun Wah says it embodies the theatre’s vision of bold, contemporary work that will resonate with local audiences. Written by a woman, and with 13 women in the 15-person production team, it looks at the interconnected stories of three women struggling to overcome the pressure of everyday life, shining a spotlight on mental health in the process.
“NTofP is about how diverse Australia is, not just culturally but economically and in terms of gender, education and so on … It is about making work that speaks to the broader community.”
Shun Wah has written at length about her experience as a Chinese-Australian, and has long identified the need for a company such as NTofP. On the board for Performance 4a, a company that makes Asian-Australian works, she watched many Chinese performers struggle to find work to sustain them. “I decided to take the bull by the horns and start applying for money, and making work,” she says.
Since 2011, Performance 4a has been making work for Sydney festival, Darwin festival, Carriageworks and Riverside Theatres. The company has also worked closely with photographer William Yang, and grown its database of Asian-Australian actors from 40, when it began in 2004, to 200.
What’s a story without a voice?
Shakthi Shakthidharan is a writer, director and musician who sits with Shun Wah on the National Theatre of Parramatta directorate, and who is equally passionate about putting diverse stories on the stage.
Ten years ago Shakthidharan founded CuriousWorks, a western Sydney-based company that uses film, theatre and digital technology to tell and distribute stories of Australians with a migrant, refugee or Indigenous background.
“At that time the version of Australia I lived in and grew up in was not reflected on our stages and on our screens,” Shakthidharan says. “Communities have so many stories to share [but] if they don’t come from backgrounds with the tools and opportunities to share them, they can’t realise their own creative potential [or] their communities’ cultural capital.”
“It has astonished me how little opportunity there has been to grow works of scale and national significance [in Sydney’s west],” he says. That’s one of the reasons why CuriousWorks has found itself drawn to the city, teaming up with Carriageworks, Belvoir and Sydney Film festival. The latter screened Villawood Mums last year, a documentary from one of the company’s rising talents, Giddo Gonzales, which was co-written by Shakthidharan.
With investment from Arts NSW and the Parramatta city council, Shakthidharan sees the National Theatre of Parramatta as “an opportunity to build a cultural institution that is a part of real policy, and real [cultural] building”. He believes the stories staged by NTofP will have global significance, too, appealing to international cities that also have diverse populations.
Bankstown and beyond
For the past three years, Karen Therese has been the artistic director of the Fairfield-based company Powerhouse Youth Theatre. She shares Shakthidharan’s disappointment with how Australia is represented in mainstream art culture, particularly in theatre.
“When you look at what is being honoured as our best theatre, it is work that was made hundreds of years ago,” she says. “Visual artists don’t keep painting Rembrandt. Those stories don’t represent my idea of Australia.”
Therese is in the middle of rehearsals for Tribunal, a new participatory performance piece created in partnership with Griffin Theatre, which will bring artists, activists, lawyers and young leaders together for a “truth and reconciliation tribunal”, presided over by Indigenous elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon in the role of high commissioner. “[The play is] uncovering the unknown stories that the government takes to monitor the asylum seeker community, where people don’t know what’s happening,” Therese says. “[It’s] bringing what life is like down to a personal day to day level.”
One of the benefits of being a small company is that you can keep your ear to the ground for local voices and stories. Thirty years ago, a Bankstown-based theatre company known as Death Defying Theatre staged shows in mining towns (Coal Town, 1984), in factories (Behind the Seams, 1988) and on the streets, to reach new audiences with stories that had political impact.
Like CuriousWorks, the company – now Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) – has had a strong history working with the community. “It has been key to how the company has made work,” its artistic director, Rosie Dennis, says. “It has given us an edge in telling stories that have real social currency.”
In the past couple of years, UTP has staged works such as One Day for Peace, which displayed 27 perspectives on faith, religion and spirituality at train stations and outside Woolworths, in an attempt to shift conversation around belief; and Bankstown Live, which shut down a suburban street to offer a collection of international and local works, and an evening meal. Two more of the company’s commissioned works, Spirit House and The Tribe, have taken on a second life at Sculptures by the Sea and Belvoir respectively.
Of Parramatta’s new theatre company, Dennis says: “Western Sydney is absolutely massive, but it is under-serviced culturally at a state and federal level. The offer of one more company opening up is brilliant.”
It starts at school
“The stories we tell about ourselves and each other marks the health of a civilisation,” says Catherine Lovato-Maguire, counsellor and co-founder of Parramatta’s Treehouse Theatre.
Along with drama and ESL teacher Ruth Hartcher-O’Brien, she initiated the Tree of Life drama therapy program at Miller Technology high in 2006. The company stages work developed from the migrant students’ experiences “to give the refugee experience a genuine and empathetic face”.
Lovato-Maguire believes it is crucial for young people to see members of their own culture on stage. “We have always had diversity but it hasn’t always been acknowledged. Theatres like these [National Theatre of Parramatta] can acknowledge these differences and say they are OK.”
She says these theatres are the key to breaking down barriers, “not just with race and ethnicity but disability and ability. [People need] to know there are many stories, and everyone has a right to have theirs told.”
• National Theatre of Parramatta launches with Swallow at Riverside theatres on 21 April; Powerhouse Youth Theatre’s Tribunal runs at Griffin Theatre from 12-20 August
