We acknowledge and pay our respects to the Elders, Ancestors and leaders of the Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands ILBIJERRI Theatre Company is based.
We extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, recognising their resilience and ongoing connection to land, water and culture, despite ongoing colonial interruption and genocide.
Always was, always will be, sacred Indigenous land.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples should be advised that this website may contain images of deceased persons.
Whose Gonna Love 'Em? I am that i AM
'Whose Gonna ‘Love Em? I am that I AM' written and directed by Kamarra Bell-Wykes is a post-traumatic masterpiece, winning the 2021 Patrick White Playwriting Award.
Starring Maggie Church-Kopp, Corey Saylor-Brunskill and Maurial Spearim accompanied by smallsound with a live improvisational score, Whose Gonna ‘Love Em? I am that I AM is an absurd group therapy session held somewhere in the deepest cells of the collective mind.
A one-act three hander utilising text and movement cycles to create a hypnotising interrogation of trauma, how to move through it, and the difficulty of healing intergenerational wounds on colonised land. It is about grief. How it is held and remembered physically and psychologically; how it becomes written in the DNA of those who experience it, how it evolves us and we it, individually and collectively, across all possible timelines.
Abandoning Western constructs of meaning such as linear narrative, fixed place and individual character the performance is a thesis ceremony. A transformative intersection of text, movement, images, rhythms, ritual and live score, masterfully structured to convey rage, grief, ancestral resilience and the ultimate remembering of our eternal selves as universal beings of light.
The performance shows how this operates at a cellular level to dissect the shadow wound of humanity’s collective heart, cleansing out the toxic pus and redressing it anew. It is challenging, unique, ambitious in its vision and approach to theatricality. The words are written to be spoken aloud, it's ritualistic, a piece that insists on being experienced in a room of people, it's a piece that offers the hope of some kind of collective truth-telling and healing.
A co-presentation between ILBIJERRI Theatre Company and Footscray Community Arts as part of Neighbourhood Festival - 18 days celebrating place, community and humanity in Melbourne’s West.
Tour
Footscray Community Arts
23-27 November 2022
7.30-8.30
The Basement Theatre
45 Moreland street
Footscray VIC 3011
Cost $30
(Wheelchair Accessible)
CAST
Maggie Church-Kopp
Maurial Spearim
Corey Saylor Brunskill
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer and Director Kamarra Bell-Wykes
Production & Sound Design Small Sound
Photographer Tiffany Garvie
