[Text on screen: We recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. We pay respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieves their potential through education.

Thomas E.S. Kelly - creating SILENCE

A resource for Stage 5 dance

Who is Thomas E. S. Kelly and how did Karul Projects begin?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

My name is Thomas E.S. Kelly. I'm a proud Minjungbal, Wiradjuri, and Ni-Vanuatu man, and I am artistic director of Karul Projects Dance Theatre.

[Music playing]

I started off not dancing anything other than traditional dance I came into. Probably around 8, 9, 10 was when I started doing cultural dance with family. It then led into my first job, which was dancing with the cultural group at Currumbin Sanctuary.

And then I went into high school for dance, and I didn't really quite figure out how to stick out all the different types of dancing. And I kind of withdrew from that, but stayed in the cultural group all through high school.

And then when I came to the end of high school, I actually wanted to be an actor. And I was going to audition for NIDA, the National Dramatic Arts School. But the head of the performing arts at the time, at Kingscliff High, where I went, Robyn Ludeke, she said, you could go to NIDA, or you could go to this place called NAISDA, which is the National Indigenous Dance College of Australia, which is where we are right now.

And I thought, wow, that's sounds awesome. They do a bit of dancing. They a little bit of music. They do a lot bit of dancing. They do a little bit of acting. They do a little bit of music.

It's First Nations, it's the life that I lived, but the next step after high school kind of thing. So I auditioned. I went down for a week to the central coast, where it's based, and I got in. I was like, what? How do I get into a dance college? I'm this big football boy who's only done cultural dance. I've never done anything else.

But I jumped into it, and I got in, and then that kind of kicked off my journey. I did four years of study, and I just fell in love with storytelling. And I kind of always been storytelling from a young age. I would always write stories and little poems and all these random things, plus doing all of the cultural dance.

So getting into a performing arts place, teaching me how to be on stage and to craft stories, it kind of seemed like this was the perfect place for me. And it really led to the foundations of what I then went on to become.

And so then this opportunity came about from a theatre in Sydney called Pact, which is for independent artists, and it's a place where emerging artists and senior artists. it's this hub. And they were opening up the organisation to have an opportunity for emerging companies to become resident companies at the theatre.

And I was like, this is what I want, because as much as I loved telling the stories, I didn't want people to dance for Thomas E.S. Kelly. I didn't want it to be about me. I wanted to create a space for other people.

And that's how Karul Projects was born. I didn't do it on my own. It's me and my partner, Taree Sansbury, who's a proud Narungga, Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna woman. So her people are from South Australia. We very much built this company together.

When we chose the name Karul, meaning everything, because we will use everything we need to use to tell whatever story needs to be told. That's kind of like the thought process around our name and the works we wanted to tell. Growing up, doing traditional dance, coming to NAISDA, learning a whole bunch of things, pushing myself, doing ballet and contemporary and jazz and music composition and acting and cultural dance and then moving into the industry, working for some First Nation artists like Vicki van Hout and then a lot of non-Indigenous companies, and then starting to tell my own stories to the point of we reach 2017, where I got a logo and got a website and registered a name and applied and was the successful recipient of the emerging company in residence at Pact Theatre, and then just growing from there to today.

[End transcript]

[Text onscreen: What is your approach to Cultural Protocols?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

Protocols in the way of doing it can be complicated in its own right, but it is still very simple for me. I only work with the ideas and the story and the Knowledge that I know belongs to me. So I work with stuff from my family that my family knows the information about.

For example, I'm not going to grab a book that tells me a story about Noongar people from Western Australia and then doing a show about that. That's not my People. I'm doing stuff where my elders are in the room with me, and they see the works and they offer stuff.

I would go and have conversations with aunties and uncles and grandparents and cousins of my family to make sure that this information is right for us. And I don't put it in the show unless I know that I can stand and deliver the information appropriately, that if someone was to come and ask a question about it, and however way you can ask a question, that I can also answer it and stand by my decision to place it in the work.

That's for me what protocol is – understanding that I have the permission or the responsibility of holding that information. And when we talk about – if I talk about that book with that Noongar mob, for example, they're not my mob. I'm just as foreign to them as it would be if I was to be from Denmark or to be from Germany or China. That's a whole other country over there.

We have a shared history. So the content in my show they might understand. The content in my show might – they might feel does represent them. And they might see themselves in the story, and they might feel proud and uplifted from the content. And that's great. And I'm really happy for my work to be that for them.

If they were also to say it and go, oh, that's not really what we do over here, and I'm like, probably, because I'm using my information that's from over there. And I also hope that it's being brought across in a way that is still also respectful.

I choreograph my show. I make pretty much all of the material. I don't task with my artists. I'm on the floor, and I choreograph. The joke in the company is I do 90% of the choreography, and then Taree does 5%, and then the company collectively does the other 5%.

What I do in that, that 90% is I build the whole show. I build the foundation of the work, the whole thing. And this is the base that we have.

Then I allow the artists – because all of my artists now are First Nation artists. Then there's opportunities for them to place their own story in the work, their own identity in the work. So another example, I'm not Torres Strait Islander, so I don't put Torres Strait Islander stuff in my work.

One of my artists is Torres Strait Islander, and he has in his solo done some Torres Strait Island stuff that he feels it's his work that section is about him. So he places it in there. For one of the seasons that we did, he had to be removed.

So the dancer that I replaced him with wasn't Torres Strait Islander. So I told that dancer to learn my base phrase, not what that artist did,

Because now we can't do his story. He's not here. So you go back to my story. You learn my story. And then if you want to add something in, you can add something in, if it's appropriate. Because I don't hold other people's culture, that's inappropriate protocol.

And so that's what it is for me, right? Protocol is who I am and who I represent and the Knowledge that I know that I'm responsible for. So then I have to present that appropriately. I can't appropriately represent anyone else's Knowledge or information. And if I was to do someone else's story, it has to be led by them.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: What is your perspective on learning cultural movement?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

So speaking of protocol, then you also come into the conversation about learning, especially around seeing something and then trying to do it. Now, we're not so much just talking about the making and the placing of Knowledge and stuff into shows. But when you see it – if you watch the trailers or you watch the videos and then wanting to learn the dance, how do we go about learning that stuff?

And again, for me, it's pretty simple. Your blanket answer is, you shouldn't. You shouldn't because it's more than just a move. That move connects to this move, which connects to this move, and they connect to this song line or this part of the story, which is this information that you don't get just out of nowhere. You have to get that information because it moves all the way over here with this information.

So this one step, this one move is so much bigger than just placing your foot on the ground. There's a whole connection to Country and a songline. And the way that we think about it is that this connection is to our – since that – all the way back to the first sunrising. And that connection is to be respected, that it can continue to that last sunset, and that you need to understand all of it to appropriately do it.

So if you do it out of context, it could be physically unsafe as well because it's not just a move. It's a part of a whole technique. It could be spiritually and culturally unsafe because you don't know all the elements that are feeding into that movement, which then moves into it being if it's spiritually unsafe, then you it might move into this like emotional and health unsafe. You don't know what you're inviting in as a part of the story. So just seeing it and doing it on a video is not appropriate.

From Karul, we have created resources that are online for teaching. Some are not necessarily in line with some of our shows. They're a whole other program that we have. One in particular is called Shake a Leg Series.

It's a whole thing that we've got out on YouTube that that's me sharing what I know can be shared. I'm not providing anything that's going to physically or culturally harm anybody. Along with that, there is then professional videos around the traps that have done different – that I've had different opportunities to teach. I believe that there's one floating around where I've actually have taught a section from SILENCE.

And so when I teach those things, that's – when you see those videos, that's when I am providing what can be taught and learned. And from a good, as I said, general blanket rule, if you're not being taught that information, then just enjoy the story for what it is.

Don't try to put that in your body, because especially with contemporary dance from almost anybody, there's so many layers. It's not, oh, they do this one thing. There is a lot of different things that – it's like a tree. You're seeing the tree, but the root system is vast. And all those things have to connect appropriately and properly to make the tree grow.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: Why did you want to create SILENCE?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

After creating a couple of shows in my journey, I reached a point where I wanted to make a show that was going to be a bit more political. I felt that, yes, although as a First Nations person, what I make and my body on stage is political.

If I was to remake Swan Lake on the Australian Ballet, and I'd do it exactly the same way that they did it last time, it's still political that a First Nations person done it. But my show's previous with [MIS]CONCEIVE and CO_EX_EN and Sand Circle, they were kind of more around identity and place and cultural spaces. They were not really hitting an important issue in just a very obvious way. So I wanted to make a work that was political.

And first off, what I wanted to do was to get a bunch of dancers in the space because I still wasn't sure what it is I wanted to say yet. I wanted to get a bunch of dancers in the space, and I wanted a drum kit, and that's all I really knew. My people use boomerangs and possum skin drums. And so to represent the possum skin drums, I just brought a whole drum kit into the space and then wanted to just make really awesome, loud sounds in the space.

[Drumming sound]

I wanted to see what we could cut through. It was a little bit about white noise, and it was about making something that overtakes your senses and maybe makes you be a bit disorientated. But behind that, we're really telling the story. And the two things that I came into this development with was the emu in the sky. So the emu is not made up of the stars. It's made up of the dark spaces in between. So it's not what's drawing attention. It's what's amongst, around, behind. That's the image.

And also the cut – in cultural dance, the cut happens. So everyone's doing their dance. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, boom. Everyone hits a cut, and they stop. And they stop. And it might be the end of the dance. It stop, it might be in the middle.

And they freeze for a bit, and then they look around, and then they keep off dancing again. The cut for me, as has been shared with me and talked with me from family. That's one of the most important parts of the dance, because that's where you see everyone who's performing.

In the stillness is when you see the physical and the ancestral in the space. So everyone's off doing fancy stuff. Shake your legs happening. You've got your emus. You've got your birds. And then, boom, in the stillness, you see everyone who's there.

So that concept of not what's drawing attention, but what's in between and what's behind, that's what I was interested in. And what we could do with a drum kit with six dancers, how we could move and dance in the spaces in between the track or dance with the track or the drums and what could be happening underneath it.

And then through conversations about what was happening in the world, and I felt that I was really seeing these conversations around treaty happening. And I was seeing a – I felt like I was seeing it in visual arts and in theatre and in music and in literature, but I didn't feel like dance was doing it. I didn't feel like dance was being really political.

I felt like we were doing these things about identity and cultural spaces, which are important. But I didn't feel like we were really making these works that were coming in and throwing something on the table and continuing that conversation. And I spoke with a few different people, and one of them was with Vicki van Hout, who's an incredible choreographer and performer. She's been my mentor and my teacher. And then she joined this particular project as dramaturg, along with Alethea Beetson, who also was on as dramaturg, who's an incredible Indigenous artist.

Between those two, we were chatting about treaty. And Vicki, I always remember she being like – she said, oh, I danced up about treaty like 30 years ago for people who were doing stuff about treaty 20 years ago. And I was like, wow, when I could do something about treaty now and it's still just as relevant.

The conversation, it's almost one of the first things when the government talks, the First Nations communities, what should we have? And a treaty is always around the time of being placed on the table, around the top of the list. Then eventually it always gets pushed off the table or swept under the rug.

And so I felt that was the conversation behind the white noise that's not fully being listened to, but the fight we keep pushing for. And even through my own research of what a treaty is and what a treaty could be, yes, places like New Zealand and Canada have had treaties. And the United States has had treaties that have kind of also not been seen to – the full breadth of what the relationship should have been.

But Australia is the only Commonwealth country that's never had one. And whether or not it's a treaty or it's something else or something that doesn't even exist yet, but what we don't have is an agreement on how this land is to be shared. And so that's when I was like, this is the conversation I want to push forward. I want to push forward the conversation of a treaty.

We constantly ignore that the relationship between the Commonwealth of Australia and the First Nations Australians, that relationship never happened. And we've gotten so far because it was just constantly ignored. It was constantly pushed away. We don't have to deal with them.

Yes, up until 1967, the referendum did. We were still seen the same as we were since. Since '88, and so 1788. So that's where I settled on the name SILENCE. And then to play on that. I also never wanted the work to be silent. I wanted something to always being heard and being spoken.

And then underneath we're trying to have these conversations. Sometimes we get out in front, and it's very obvious conversations. Sometimes something else blocks it, and then it's the conversation happening behind. So that's kind of like a big, long spiel on how I got to then wanting to and naming and the conceptualising of what became SILENCE.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: Overview of 'Lore' section]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

So to create SILENCE, I created three chapters. So the first chapter is called 'Lore,' L-O-R-E lore, not L-A-W. And that one is setting up who we are as First Nations people, our connection to Country, our responsibility to Country.

So that's the whole beginning section we see. There's this fun text stuff with Uncle Bunyip who kind of gets to do this. His one is more about setting up his own character and about who he is as the Songman, but playing around by bringing the song into the space, but in a way that also does represent the fake art trade of First Nations art. But then he brings out these boomerangs, and then he turns that into song.

Actor

Woo! Oh, no. It's not any of that [Inaudible]. This is that proper, deadly [?Oka?] [? Docka!?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

The song that we sing in the show is our – it's our lore of the land song. So it talks about us coming from the land. We belong to the land. We look after the land and respect the land because we are the people of the land. And we protect it because we will return to the land. In a summary of it, that's what we're saying.

We are the people of the land, and that we look after it because we return and we belong to the land. So we sing that song as our promise and our understanding of where we are and our responsibility to this place. So that's that beginning part.

And then that takes us into a section that we call Heart, which has the heartbeat, that thump, thump, thump, thump, thump because we are connecting to this Country. As First Nations people, our heart belongs to our Country. [Drums thumping]

When I am not home in my community and in my water or in my mountains, you feel that. And I wanted that inside of the work for us to feel that connection. And so we begin that. We sing that song. We have a whole heartbeat that brings us into the space. And then we move into the second section, which is called Treaty.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: Overview of 'Treaty' section]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

What I wanted to do was I made a decision to not make the show just about 'Treaty.' We wanted to make the show a treaty. We have about 7 to 8 principles of what a treaty. And actually, when you come to the show in person, it's a document that is there for the audience members to take. And I've signed each one. It's called Karul Projects Treaty.

So those principles of the treaty then inform this next section. And it's not one big long scene that we see journey once. It's a bunch of different sections, but they all link into each other, and they're all the different points of this treaty.

And so we go on the journey of a bunch of different elements that this treaty could represent. We start off with one that's about this bringing back and this revitalisation of culture or revitalisation of the mother tongue. And it starts off with this dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt, dunt, dun, di, di, di, di dun, di, di, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, da, dun, da, dun, da, dun, da, dun.

That rhythm is the rhythm of a song that my great-great grandmother has been recorded singing. And I have been working on transcribing the song and figuring it all out, and which in my family we have done that now. But I wanted to put that in there because, in the start of it, you hear that rhythm really clearly. And then as we move on, it starts to really get layered with a lot more different sounds, a bit more electronic sounds.

And as the performers earlier on, when we started touring the work, it actually was really hard for us to keep the rhythm because we lose it. It is there in weird ways, but it's hard to hear when you're being like – all these other sounds are coming. And then at the end, the very last time we do it, we hear the phrase very clearly again.

So that's another one of those layers on top, the noise on top. And the information is underneath. That's culture being strong. And then the song or the language then beginning to be a little bit buried, buried from the world that was being built around it, not being built for it. And that was English layering on top.

English is now my first language, but it's not my mother tongue. My mother tongue was being buried. But then at the end, we've been bringing it back. And we're starting to see it in pockets across the country for those who are fortunate enough to have enough remaining to be able to rebuild it back. And we're starting to see it come back in a lot of places.

I mean even, yes, places like what was formerly known as Fraser Island, now being called K'gari to go back to it's – seeing that happen, but also understanding that there's a lot of places that are already Aboriginal names for the towns that you live in, and then just even learning what that means.

And so beginning with this bringing back and bringing culture and language back into the space with our songs and with our rhythms and with our stories. And so we see elements like that through this show. We've got talking about our connection to Country.

Part of the treaty is looking after the land and the waterways. And we're talking about the saltwater running through our veins and the freshwater, and that our feet have climbed these hillsides and these mountains. And that section in the treaty, specifically talking about how the government needs to look after the environment.

Actor

These veins have saltwater running through them, but not these ones. These ones have fresh water. Do you see?

Thomas E.S. Kelly

And then we have how we want to be respected in – we're strong, and we're proud, and we have this thing to offer that's uniquely Australian. You cannot find my songs and languages anywhere else in the world. You can't even find my language on the other side of Australia.

What First Nations Australia has is uniquely Australian, and it should be represented in more places than just on the sporting field, or when the Olympics comes, then all of a sudden, First Nations art is being doled out everywhere. It should just start becoming a part of the identity of this is my belief, a part of the identity of the country, that then if Australia is your identity, then it's also becoming – it's becoming us. It's what we have here that's uniquely us.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: Overview of 'Always Was' section]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

The third chapter is called 'Always Was.' And I think we all know the rest of the line, 'Always will be Aboriginal land.'

[Chanting]

That section is about going, whatever happens in this treaty conversation, if you sweep it off the table again and push it under the carpet, we're still going to be connected to Country. We're still going to hold stories that we hold. We're still going to be protesting down the street when it needs to be. When our voices need to be heard, we will be down that street protesting. And when it doesn't need to be heard, there's still going to be people fighting for it.

The show is called SILENCE but there isn't one moment of silence in the show. Even when you think it's silent, we still have a sound going. In the premiere season, we were able to put speakers underneath the seating banks to keep playing sound. And the sound was like a representation of we were trying to represent the idea of treaty from – especially from Yothu Yindi's perspective, like from musical but this kind of constant call for treaty. That was the biggest call for treaty was that.

And so we wanted to figure out how we could represent that in the space. And so it's down so low that you have to listen for it, but you're probably not listening for a sound that's happening beneath you. So you think it's silent. But even when you think there's silence, there's someone still calling for something.

In this case, someone was still calling for treaty. So that's what 'Always Was’ is about. It's going, regardless of what is going to happen, we're still going to do this.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: What are some important ideas throughout the work?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

Now there are a couple of things that move throughout the entire show. One in particular is there's this three women. There's four women, there's a solo of one woman, and then there's three that move slowly diagonally across. And then we see them at different points.

Now, I remember speaking with my grandfather, Uncle, and he was telling me about entering into grandmother time, and that these stories of grandmothers holding the information. And he's like, remember, when we're doing culture and stuff, you have to respect the grandmothers. They are the ones that hold the information that we're all getting. So I spoke with him about having them ever present throughout the work.

And then my contemporary abstract – I'm a professional performer brain. Well, if those grand, those three grandmothers are the highest ones who are holding this information, who's their grandmother? So I placed that grandmother in the space, and there they appear early on in the beginning, moving, traveling across country, holding Knowledge. And they appear at different points to just kind of constantly culturally ground us to have the grandmother's information present as we move through the show.

[Vocalising]

These choreographic decisions – and this is some of that stuff with protocol of making sure that we're holding, we're grounding ourselves. We're staying culturally safe with the work. That's why you can't just take something out of context. It's been pieced through. Its holding space.

We also wanted to reclaim Country throughout the whole, we wanted to reclaim land throughout the entire work. So at different points early on, there's a moment that I – it's my character. I'm being an emu, and they come and they're throwing dirt at me, but as if kind of like I'm busking.

Well, they're throwing it like I'm on country. And then I culturally dance an emu, and they throw dirt at me as if I'm busking. And then I become the emu in the sky, and there's a big mound of dirt.

So there's dirt just slowly starts to trickle in. And then through that solo, it kicks out and goes everywhere. And then we dance, and it spreads out more. And then at the very end, we pick up that dirt, and we place it in the hands to represent Gough Whitlam handing back country to Vincent Lingiari.

[Vocalising]

One of the big overall themes of a treaty of that's probably our biggest one is land back, but not in the concept – yes, in the concept of getting some physical land, but also in the concept of our land holds those stories, and it holds those songlines, and it holds the language and the history and the tens of thousands of years of history. So getting it back is, is giving back our opportunity to reconnect to who we've been again since that first sunrise until that last sunset.

And that image was so powerful that that's why we wanted to reenact it by placing it. And because I've brought back that protocol conversation, I've just even mentioned that, yes, representing that picture and representing Nicky Winmar. But I'm not telling their story. I'm not telling that story of Vincent Lingiari getting the land back.

And I'm not telling the story of the abuse that Nicky Winmar received and why he did it. I'm sharing what those images evoked on me and the feelings that I had. That that's the feeling I want in this work. And from my perspective, bringing their immersion into the space.

And so those are the land back and the grandmother's. Then I start to thread them through. And then choreographically, it's just looking at what physicality matches each section for me, playing around. When we did the Power one, we have this movement of surging power, this kind of always swapping hands, this throws into the body, comes out of the body. We stomp and we hit because it's this power surging from country coming up.

When we're protesting, we move forward on a diagonal the entire time. We come back around and the whole – and then when we break out, and we dance a little bit, and then we come back to the diagonal. It's those marches down the street that keep going.

And in the sound score, you hear this sound score of "always was, always will be Aboriginal land." And we took that during the Black Lives Matter marches that was happening. The sound designer and all of us was at the marches in Brisbane, and we were recording. So we're all doing it along with everybody else is chanting it, placing that into this continuation of the march, this continuation of going down and coming back, that the protest is still happening.

We didn't just do it once and then stop. And then we went and did stuff, and then we kept going again and going again and going again. And my technique with most of the base principle for all of my choreographic stuff, is a connection of my soul to the soul of Mother Earth through the soles of my feet. Connection to Country is the a principle of my movement.

We don't jump. We don't do big jumps. We don't do lifts. There's very little touching in any of my choreography. I don't point my toes 'cause my feet cramp. So we don't do any of that. It's all flex foot, or it's the Barbie.

And it's all about being down. It's all about being down. And if we want to go up, you go down to come up. For me, the connection to Country is the constant. It's the guarantee. It's the that will happen.

If you do a lift and you lift someone up, yeah, I think you're pretty confident in believing and trusting that they're going to do it. But what if they don't? What if they lift you and they drop you? Where do you go? You go down. You hit the floor. The floor is always going to be there. You might not always get up, but you'll always get down. So all of my stuff starts from down. Even if I send the arm up, it comes from the feet to send my arm up and then hits down and then comes back down.

It's not just hands. This is my hands without anything. Or if I bring my body into it, I'm bringing my body. That comes from my feet out, and then my feet pull me back down. So choreographically, we're connected to country.

And I think it's – I see it. And I think for everybody, they see it pretty clear, especially in this show. We're down. We're grounded, and we use the mother to move us in this story and tell this story.

[End transcript]

[Text on screen: How have you used theatrical elements to communicate ideas in the work?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

Each artist has multiple layers of costumes because this conversation is not – it's not like that. It's not simple. It's not black and white. There is so many different layers. So we're wearing different layers in the costume, and we're trying to peel back to find the base layer.

But even then, I've got little Easter eggs through the show. So at the end, when we're all got all of our costumes, and we're on our base layer, one performer still has a backpack on because that backpack, as all First Nations people are, and a lot of people who go through trauma, we carry it still. There's intergenerational trauma. And so even though we've all made it down to our base layer, one of the artists is still carrying the continued trauma from wherever that experience began through the DNA until now.

And when we have those grandmothers, there's the grandmother of the grandmothers. She has a symbol on the back of her shirt and then the three grandmothers. That symbol has been broken into three different parts, and then each one of those other three grandmothers all have one of those parts on their back. And any time they perform the grandmothers, they have that shirt on. So sometimes they take it off, and then they put it back on again when their grandmothers. So the symbol is ever present as well.

So these choices of choreographically and artistically through costume, through lights, it's a light-heavy show that tells so much a part of the story as well. When we're doing the one – when we're doing white noise, where we're like, boom, boom, bah, bah, bah bah, and we're going for it. And we wanted it to really just – it's pretty much the halfway point in the show. And we wanted to have a moment where we just kind of almost trick people into where we're going.

We've kind of, oh, yeah, this is the same, and then we wanted to jar it. It's the most heaviest drum. It's the most insane chori. The lights come on, and they're like, foom. It's also the – we have the – they all yell numbers out. And these are all fact numbers, too. I've had people kind of be like, are those numbers, what they represent is pretty intense. And I was like, Yeah, well, it's also fact.

Actors

76, 8, 15 552, 6, 2.

Thomas E.S. Kelly

And I know because every time we do the show, I have to go back and double check who's left parliament, who's come into parliament, what number are we up to? But it's all fact. I'm not making it up.

Actor

253 years since Cook came, 122 years since Federation, 76 senators, 8 current Indigenous senators.

Thomas E.S. Kelly

And if you're upset about that, that's not me you're upset about. It's the history of what has happened here that you're upset about. But we made the decision to really snap everyone's thought process of what's happening, where we're going. This is something different. The Constitution is different as we move through what we have and how representation and how long we've been here and our numbers in parliament.

[End transcipt]

[Text on screen What do you hope audiences will take away from experiencing this work?]

Thomas E.S. Kelly

When I watched this work on video, because I'm in it, I still have these moments of being like, whoa, I made this. It's still so relevant, and it's so powerful, and communities are responding to it so beautifully.

And because one of the things with my work is I don't like the idea of hitting on trauma to tell our stories. I am wanting to create intergenerational healing and intergenerational empowerment in my shows. And I want the First Nations audience to come here and be proud of being First Nations and be like, I see myself there. And I want the non-indigenous people who are seeing it to be like, yeah, I get it.

[Singing]

I know that people would have come to the show not knowing what a treaty is, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. I didn't quite understand it before figuring it out. And I wanted people to leave with just a couple of points of what a treaty could be so that conversation can continue post-show.

[Singing]

[Music playing]

[End transcript]