Yirramboi First Nations Arts Festival is set to return to Melbourne next autumn, with the biennial festival announcing its 2021 dates. Yirramboi will return to the city from May 6 to 16 and has announced the first works commissioned for the festival.
Yirramboi creative director Caroline Martin said: "It’s an honour to lead our country’s best and brightest creative minds and talents in this festival and while our cultures belong to us, Yirramboi represents a chance for everyone to celebrate together.”
The new works commissioned for the upcoming 2021 festival span theatre through to circus and highlight some of the most exciting new First Nations creatives. The works include:
Our Fight for Survival
This cabaret from Yorta Yorta and Wemba Wemba artist Lyn Thorpe and multi-clan creative Nick Hayne showcases the closure and reopening of Northland Secondary College in the 1990s following funding cuts from the Liberal state government.
Soul of Possum
Wamba Wamba creative Brodie Murray's theatre piece about the survival of his people also explores the contrasting relationships First Nations and settlers have held around Country, ecology, leadership and spirituality.
Coconut Woman
Meriam Mer artist Maryanne Sam (who you may know as the founder of the Ilbijerri Theatre Company) is presenting a comedy/drama musical about finding peace and place.
What Mothers Do
In What Mothers Do, Bibbulman Noongar/Burmese creative Nazaree Dickerson uses theatre to explore the ways in which colonial interference in Black motherhood has caused intergenerational trauma.
Invisible Lines
Waka Waka artist Harley Mann uses circus (namely acrobatics) to explore invisible connections and what it's like to be part of the oldest living culture in the world.
Yirramboi will run from May 6 to 16, 2021.