Shepparton: Welcome to Country through Storytelling
Ebony stepped out on stage to greet a sea of familiar faces. Before she could speak, however, she choked up. Tears came. Despite spending her whole life in Shepparton, she’d never used her ancestral language in a public performance:
"I started off with a Welcome to Country in Yorta Yorta. I got very emotional through that. I kind of froze a little bit. And then I cried a little bit... But it was good! Everyone felt my passion and my love for the language. My primary school teachers were in the audience, and I was, like, woah! ... It was my first time, which is why it was so emotional for me. In a setting like that, it was huge."
After Ebony's moving welcome statement, the show was underway! We listened to local people speaking in Yorta Yorta, Nepali, Dinka, Visayan, Tobelorese, Dari and Hazaragi. Everyone stayed on long after the show ended to talk and to enjoy food prepared by the storytellers.
Nine months earlier...
Back in July 2018, David Chew – a Shepparton local, and a keen member of the Shepparton Theatre Arts Group – learnt about this program of language parties, and contacted me:
Hello,
My name is David. I’m based in Shepparton and have come across your site in a rather curious fashion. A story perhaps for another time. However, the idea of storytelling in a person’s own language and then explaining it in a English I think helps a community like Shepparton in so many levels.
Shepparton is a small rural city in Victoria within the lands of the Yorta Yorta and Bangerang peoples, with a high migrant population, including Dari speakers from Afghanistan, Persian from Iran, Samoan, Tongan, Rotuman, Thai, Dinka, Albanian, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Tobelorese from Halmahera, Balinese, Indonesian....this is off the top of my head. We also get seasonal workers from all over the globe. ...
I have some connection to the Shepparton Theatre Arts Group, who have a space called the Bakehouse that can seat about a hundred people. There is provision for lighting and sound as it is set up like a small theatre. It would be something out of the usual box for STAG to do, but I think it would be a benefit to the community.
Steve, if enthusiasm counts, I reckon I have that...
The "information session"
Fast forward to November 2018. I was driving through the hills north of Melbourne, on a two hour trip to Shepparton. Meanwhile, David and co-producer Liz Arcus were driving around Shepparton, collecting local people and bringing them to Lutfiye's restaurant, which opened especially for us. There were 16 faces around the table. No-one knew what to expect! Everyone was curious to see what would happen.
We began by learning to greet each other in language. Soon we were laughing at the strangeness of hearing Visayan in the mouth of a Dinka speaker, or Tobelorese in the mouth of a Hazaragi speaker!
Later conversing in English, we shared the personal journeys that brought us to Shepparton. We shared the reasons as to why language was important to us, connecting us to places and to key people in our lives. I invited people to retell the story in their own languages. We quickly found our rhythm, hearing several personal narratives, each in a different language, followed by summaries in English. We also heard favourite words from people learning their ancestral language.
Though too shy to speak initially, now Brishna spoke up in Nepali. We tried to guess the topic from her gestures. But when she explained in English, we discovered she was telling us about a challenge she faces, deciding which traditions to pass on to her children: she would not be following the taboo against preparing food during menstruation. The room erupted! Once the laughter died down, we heard more personal stories, deeper stories. Everyone shared, and we all connected. We knew we had a show!
More gatherings, more rehearsing, more memorising, and our show came to life! A Twist in the Tale, with our cast of first-time storytellers, opened Shepparton Festival 2019. Afterwards, Ebony said:
"I haven't spent much time with new Australians in Shepparton, so it was really cool to hear their languages as well as sharing my own. I didn't even know there were that many! The other storytellers were really happy to hear Yorta Yorta, because they haven't heard it before. It was good that Belinda and I could give them a more meaningful welcome to our Yorta Yorta country. They really enjoyed that, and it was nice to feel that from them."
–Steven Bird
The details
Where: Bakehouse Black Box Theatre, Shepparton
When: 16 March, 2019
Format: Theatre performance, part of a local arts festival
Storytellers: Ebony and Belinda, Yorta Yorta (Australia); Ramzan, Hazaragi (Afghanistan); Brishna, Nepali; Abraham, Dinka (South Sudan); Edith, Visayan (Philippines); Frans, Tobelorese (Indonesia); Zahra, Dari (Afghanistan).
Production: David Chew, Liz Arcus, Ebony Joachim
Photography: Liz Arcus
Sponsorship: Aesop Foundation, CDU Foundation
Program: pdf
More on Shepparton's Language Party
https://www.sheppnews.com.au/@entertainment/2019/02/13/442457/news-community1111-sharing-native-treasures-as-part-of-a-twist-in-the-tale
http://www.sheppartonfestival.org.au/event/a-twist-in-the-tale/
https://www.facebook.com/events/bakehouse-black-box-theatre-17-wheeler-st-shepparton/a-twist-in-the-tale/412569922620695/
https://ethniccouncilshepparton.com.au/?p=1028#more-1028
https://www.sheppnews.com.au/@entertainment/2019/02/13/442457/news-community1111-sharing-native-treasures-as-part-of-a-twist-in-the-tale