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00:01We keep it moving so tight
00:04No matter what style we're flowing right
00:06We keep on dancing just like
00:09Under the stars we sing
00:12We sing until sunrise
00:32Stay awake until our eyes will dry
00:36We sing until sunrise
00:41Stay awake until dark turns to light
00:45In generations we sing
00:51Hello, hello and welcome to the first episode of The Whole Table,
00:55a collaboration between NITV and Sydney Theatre Company.
00:59I'm Shari Sevens, a Barty-Jubba-Jubba person,
01:02a theatre maker and current resident director
01:04at Sydney Theatre Company.
01:06I'd like to begin by acknowledging the people of the Eora Nations,
01:09the traditional owners of the country where both Sydney Theatre Company
01:13and NITV are situated.
01:15We pay respect to their elders past and present
01:17and all First Nations people.
01:19It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
01:23So, this is The Whole Table.
01:29Each episode we are honoured to be joined by a group of phenomenal artists and leaders,
01:34as well as a special guest or two.
01:37So, let's welcome our regular guests.
01:40Outgoing artistic director of Sydney Festival,
01:43the first Aboriginal person to hold the title
01:45and Deborah Malman's first full-blown crush.
01:47Proud Quandamooka man, Wesley Enoch AM.
01:50Head of First Nations programming at the Sydney Opera House.
01:53Widjable Bundjalung Queen, Rhoda Roberts AO.
01:57One of Who Magazine's sexiest people of 2020.
02:00Although she did miss the photo shoot and had to do her own in her lounge room.
02:03Writer, actor, director.
02:05Camilleroy and Torres Strait Islander woman, Nakia Louie.
02:08Also joining us tonight are two exceptionally special guests.
02:12First up, we have two-time Logie winner,
02:14stage and screen actress extraordinaire,
02:16writer, producer and karaoke legend,
02:19Larrakia Tiwi woman, Miranda Tapsall.
02:21And finally, he was named New Zealander of the Year in 2017
02:25and in 2020, he won an Oscar.
02:28Give it up for the brother, Te Fano Aapunui Man Taika Waititi.
02:32Welcome everyone.
02:34What a pleasure it is to be surrounded by such legends.
02:37I am digging this vibe.
02:39Shall we get down to it?
02:40Let's do it.
02:41Let's do it.
02:42Okay.
02:43In 2020, the national conversation about statues and memorials
02:48in relation to Australia's colonial past gathered momentum.
02:51What do these monuments represent?
02:53Are they reminders of a shameful history
02:55or a celebration of colonisation?
02:57And how does that conversation relate to Western classics
03:00in our theatre canon?
03:02Before we move into the theatrical convo,
03:04as a First Nations person,
03:06what do these statues or memorials represent to you?
03:09It's interesting, isn't it,
03:11that we have these wonderful statues of big white men
03:14all around the country.
03:15And I think, wow, and they're there because they've actually
03:19discovered a water hole or a town or a place.
03:23And yet there was the Aboriginal tracker that showed them the way.
03:27So I've always had a bit of a distaste for the monuments,
03:32but I also think that perhaps because they've taken down so many trees,
03:36they do provide an opportunity for bird life.
03:41But the great thing I saw over the last few years was when Canada,
03:46I'm just trying to think of the date,
03:48but when they celebrated their 150th,
03:51they really looked at the statues across the cities
03:54and wondered what they would do with them during this celebration
03:59of, you know, Columbus and so forth.
04:02And they engaged quite a number of artists across different rural areas
04:07and cities where these monuments were.
04:09And so they went and did artwork on them to the point
04:14where they made masks or they had textiles from artists.
04:19Yeah.
04:20So they re-cloaked them, they re-clothed them.
04:22And through that they were making an incredible statement.
04:26Of course, the local non-Indigenous community got very upset about it.
04:31But what it did do was really remind their country
04:36that they did sort of have a cultural amnesia
04:40when it came to the mapping of history.
04:43I don't want to pull down a statue because it's like burning a book.
04:48I want a statue to remain so I can, you know, the humour of it for a start,
04:53the misrepresentation of the history so we have a talking point
04:58but then enable us to have our say on it.
05:02Yeah, that's my point about it.
05:03Like, put the statue up, sure, it's a moment in history,
05:06it's one person's perspective of history.
05:08But for me it's the idea of going, what's not being told, you know?
05:11Yes.
05:12And we're having this conversation at the moment
05:14around Aunty Ujuru Nunakul and this notion of,
05:17it was her 100th birthday just in November,
05:19and this notion of should we put up a statue?
05:21And this conversation of going, but that's not our way necessarily.
05:24No.
05:25That is a statue.
05:26Yeah.
05:27But how do we actually celebrate in our way
05:29and make sure that our storytelling is happening on the public record?
05:32Yeah.
05:33Because these things, these statues for me are just, they're a hardening of history
05:37and they're trying to stay there like those Confederate generals in America,
05:41trying to say this is what history is, this is an object of history.
05:45And I'm lucky, I don't want to pull them down,
05:47but I want to make sure that the stories that we have to tell
05:49also have equal space.
05:51Absolutely.
05:52I think that they're not the same as books though, because I feel as if with books,
05:59you can provide a lot of context, historical context.
06:03I believe that's what a lot of people are doing with Mark Twain's books in America.
06:08But when it comes to statues, I feel like they're different.
06:12People aren't, these people are revered and celebrated.
06:18And I feel as if when we look at these statues, when we look at Governor Macquarie's statue in Hyde Park,
06:26we know that history.
06:28But when people, when non-Indigenous people look at that statue,
06:32they look at him and go, well, we wouldn't know this country if it wasn't for him.
06:37And I think...
06:38I reckon they look at that statue and say, it's a bloody ugly statue.
06:41You know, because it's ugly as you.
06:43Yeah.
06:44But I just feel as if, yeah, that person is celebrated.
06:49And I don't want to celebrate Governor Macquarie.
06:52Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:53Taika.
06:54Statue, bro?
06:55Statue.
06:56What's the...any comment you said?
07:00I mean, I like the idea of not tearing them down, but doing something, changing them.
07:04Yeah.
07:05Or bringing, like, maybe a contemporary sculptor or an artist to...
07:09Yeah.
07:10To sort of reimagine it or add something to it.
07:14Like imagine the...
07:15Mm-hmm.
07:16You know, I like to imagine.
07:17Or even, you know, allowing people to paint over statues.
07:20Yeah.
07:21And turn them into more of a conversation, I suppose.
07:25Yeah.
07:26Reclaiming.
07:27Yeah.
07:28Reclaiming the combo.
07:29We talked about it, but it can represent, you know, symbols of violence and genocide.
07:35And that's the history that, you know, is kind of celebrated within a lot of the statues
07:39we're referring to, which are a lot of the times of, you know, white colonial guys.
07:43I have to say, though, watching some of the clips of having, like, seeing statues get torn
07:48down overseas makes me think that the act of tearing down a statue can actually be like
07:54a catharsis or that in of itself is a radical act.
07:57There was one that a bunch of young people tore down in the UK during the Black Lives Matter
08:01marches.
08:02And it was really funny, but also kind of joyful.
08:05I found myself, you know, getting really overwhelmed when I watched it.
08:08Because you saw all these people just jump and start stomping this statue.
08:12And it was really...
08:13It was...
08:14To me, it's like that, you know, in a world where we do have systems of power and different
08:19voices have, you know, more dominance over others and all the people who are pushed
08:23to the fringes whose...
08:25Those statues are these kind of celebrations of the violent histories that have oppressed
08:30their family.
08:31To then have, like, an action of tearing down a statue.
08:34I think in a way that can kind of...
08:37Where we are at the moment as a country, as a society, I think that in of itself is an
08:41interesting...is an interesting thing.
08:44That's a really good point, actually, because when you do look at the Middle East, for example,
08:48and the situation that was occurring over there, when you saw those statues being pulled
08:53down of those great dictators and oppressors, you did cheer.
08:57You're right.
08:58It was sort of like they shouldn't belong because they rely on themselves for their roles as presidents
09:05or, you know...
09:06But I don't know about the eradication of history.
09:08That's my bigger issue.
09:09Yeah.
09:10Like books, you go, you can't burn a book.
09:12Can you actually rewrite history and remove things from history?
09:15I'm more in the kind of...
09:17Well, I even like the idea, let's smash that statue and put it back up again so we can see
09:21it smashed, as opposed to the eradication of things.
09:24You know, like, taking them all out, you start to go, oh, well, are we saying that that history
09:29didn't exist?
09:30Where, in fact, I think sometimes it's good to have a reminder that the history's there
09:34and how do you recontextualise it?
09:35Yeah, it's very easy for...
09:37It doesn't take very long, just because humans are inherently stupid.
09:42But it doesn't take very long for us to forget our history.
09:46And, you know, like at the end of World War II, the big slogan was never forget.
09:51And I think it was 2016, The Guardian did a poll, they did a study in it, and it turned out
10:00that I think it was 63%, a huge number of young Americans had never heard of Auschwitz
10:10and had no idea what that word even meant.
10:13Wow.
10:14When it's over half of the population, and that's only 80 years ago.
10:18Well, in Berlin, they've done some extraordinary new sculptural work, I guess, which is like
10:23statues, where, to remind young people of the actual history and the truth-telling during
10:28that war period, where, you know, where all, they were put to put all their shoes in the
10:33suitcases.
10:34And so there were hundreds of thousands of shoes, and the markers are all across town
10:39where they picked up people with the yellow star or where the shoes stacked.
10:44And they do those sorts of things in schools as well to remind people just...
10:48Well, what do we do in this country then?
10:50How are we going to save in Australia?
10:52How do we build our memorials?
10:53How do we actually reshape that history to say that these statues are not actually representative
10:58of the whole history?
10:59How do we make sure there's a context?
11:01And I think that that's something we need to consider, because culturally, I think, these
11:05kind of memorials, and they are memorials to these people, and their dominance, if you
11:12like, of the landscape, we have to then go, well, what do our memorials look like?
11:16And maybe we have to take...
11:17Is it now rock art?
11:18Well, let's make sure that we're looking after it and making sure that it's in front
11:22of everyone's faces as well, and that they know those stories.
11:24Because I think that's what the statues are, aren't they?
11:26Yeah, but the statues, they're symbols.
11:27And I think what's really interesting here is going, how do we not eradicate?
11:30How do we not forget?
11:31And so instead, you know, looking within like a very kind of local context here with, you
11:35know, the Morrison government wanting to put up a big new statute of Cook, instead of putting
11:39that money towards the statue, why not put that into schools?
11:42Of Cook.
11:43Yeah.
11:44You know, instead of arguing about statues, it's teaching in schools.
11:46Absolutely.
11:47Please do.
11:48Bronze, those bronze statues, they're designed, bronze by its very nature is designed to live
11:52for 120,000 years.
11:54Those statues have their integrity for over 120,000 years.
11:59So you can't tell me that they're not trying to plant that history up there and keep us
12:03reminded of it.
12:04When we return, we'll be talking about classics in the Western theatrical canon.
12:07If we're knocking down statues, should we burn the books?
12:27What about a statue of books?
12:28Any particular kind of...
12:29A statue made of books or a statue, just a big bronze book.
12:46Where do we draw the line?
12:47Where?
12:48I reckon...
12:49What about...
12:50What about...
12:51What about...
12:52A book...
12:53What about a book about statues?
12:55Okay.
12:56I think there might be...
12:57Do we burn that?
12:58Taika.
12:59Or do we knock it over?
13:01Got a question for you?
13:03Yes.
13:04Based on nothing to do with your question to Nakia.
13:07You studied theatre, what's your relationship to the Western theatrical canon?
13:12Come on, how do you feel about that?
13:15How do you feel about it?
13:16My relationship.
13:17Yes.
13:18Complicated?
13:19It's a love-hate relationship.
13:22It was almost like an arranged marriage, really.
13:24That relationship.
13:25I did study it for a little bit.
13:27I mean, I learned to love it.
13:28That's what I mean, you know.
13:30I think I actually learned more outside of university.
13:33I didn't actually pay much attention when I was there.
13:36A good place to make friends.
13:38I'm serious.
13:39And I've met a lot of the people that are theatre practitioners and people that I've worked
13:44with for many years through university, but we did all of our work outside of that system
13:51because, and to be honest, my relationship with the classic Western canon is flimsy at best.
13:59Yep.
14:00Because we were never invited to do any of those plays.
14:02Yeah.
14:03And we all wanted to.
14:04Yeah.
14:05My mates and I, but no one would put us in their plays at the fancy theatres, like this one.
14:10And so we, instead we just went and wrote our own stuff and that's how I really learnt
14:17to write for theatre and film and how to direct and how to make our own costumes and be in
14:23our own stuff and direct each other.
14:25And that's really how I learnt to do everything is through being rejected.
14:30Great.
14:31All right.
14:32I'm going to try and get you a general audition.
14:33I have played.
14:34I have played the moor.
14:35The moor.
14:36The moor you know.
14:37I have played the moor.
14:38Not in Othello, just in a different moor.
14:39A different moor.
14:40Yeah.
14:41In an ad.
14:42Yeah.
14:43No, I have.
14:44I'm still talking about me.
14:45Okay.
14:46You know what?
14:47It's the whole table.
14:48It's like a table.
14:49You guys all got to talk about your statues and stuff and you ask me a question and then you
14:55kind of only want half an answer.
14:57Yeah.
14:58That's how we do things here.
14:59Okay.
15:00Tapsule.
15:01Miranda.
15:02Yes.
15:03Thank you, Tyka.
15:04Miranda.
15:05Come on.
15:06Well, you and I actually went to drama school.
15:09Yeah.
15:10I was a year ahead.
15:12Older.
15:13Weird flex.
15:14But that was the thing though.
15:25I was constantly failing my classes because I just felt like such an outsider in this,
15:34you know, inherently white institution.
15:38And I couldn't relate to these, even though I had to study all of these, you know, Shakespeare,
15:44Chekhov, Brecht, there was just something about it I couldn't quite connect to.
15:50So my concentration on them was terrible.
15:52And so, yes, I got through that with the skin, like through the skin of my teeth.
15:58Yeah.
15:59And in some ways I was grateful because, you know, we ended up going out into an industry
16:06where those plays are constantly being put on and that's, and that's fine.
16:11But yeah, it was good to come in with that knowledge.
16:13But yeah, I think, for me, I just don't know what, I think I failed to understand what we
16:22could learn as a society studying these old texts.
16:28Totally.
16:29Classics are a great way of understanding how a culture works.
16:32I mean, I grew up a good Bible boy.
16:34So the idea of trying to understand those classic stories as a way of understanding
16:38how society works was kind of the way I grew up.
16:41So understanding how those narratives and stories form what the society is that we're
16:47in now.
16:48But I, you know, I loved a whole lot of Greek and Roman myths and stories as well.
16:52And then you didn't then see, you know, from Sanskrit and the Mahabharata and the whole
16:58notion of then how a First Nations kind of creation stories.
17:02I mean, I think the thing is that these classics shouldn't be seen in isolation.
17:05They're not alone, that they're not dominant.
17:08They're just one of a much bigger kind of set of stories.
17:11The problem is that we, like the statues, we just hang on to them and think they're the
17:15only thing.
17:16And we've got to make sure that there's more than just one voice around this stuff.
17:19I did a, what do you call it, an adaption, if you like, of Medea.
17:24You did.
17:25You know, called it Black Medea.
17:26And it started from the idea of going, I wanted to talk about violence in the home,
17:30the violence against women, and this notion of how women are demonised.
17:35And using that kind of classic story of Medea, I was able to then go, okay, well, let's go
17:40into that story and expose it.
17:42Because when I was talking to elders about telling the story, they said, oh, look, no,
17:45you cannot air our dirty laundry in public.
17:47You're not allowed to do that.
17:48And so I said, oh, well, let's go into a classic.
17:51So you get that kind of Trojan horse effect, where people think they're coming to see a
17:55classic.
17:56They're coming to see Medea.
17:57And then you realise that, well, hopefully the audience realise, I don't know, but that
18:01they're actually seeing something deeper that's talking to us.
18:05And every classic, I reckon, is just the starting point and that the artist who's adapting it
18:10should take it to where you want it to be.
18:13Not where you inherit it, but you say, why do I want to even look at this classic?
18:17I want to do it because I've got something to say through this classic story.
18:20Yeah.
18:21Great.
18:22I think we need to change the way we refer to like the language when we speak about it,
18:26though, because what was interesting, what you said, Miranda, was when you said, I never
18:30really connected with those things.
18:32I think about it like, you know, some of the classics and I've like, I do connect with
18:37them.
18:38What I what I think is kind of missing is it's not just them.
18:41And when we talk about classics, we're predominantly talking about works that are by white males,
18:47usually starring white people.
18:50And but we label them as those being the classics.
18:53I think we need to kind of start talking about the race within it as well.
18:56They're not classics.
18:57They're maybe they're white classics.
18:59But if if the whiteness is allowed to be invisible or the neutral when talking about,
19:03I guess, the value of our work and what our canon is, I think we kind of I think we need
19:08to start talking about that a bit more.
19:10It's also that terminology that we use.
19:12I always smile when people would say, so contemporary Aboriginal traditional Aboriginal culture.
19:19And, you know, we walk daily with our ancestors.
19:23So what is traditional and what is contemporary?
19:26So I've started to try and reframe a lot of what we do, because, again, if you think of the
19:32so-called myths in those productions, whether it's Midsummer Night's Dream or whatever, there are these fables and stories,
19:39whereas our creation stories have the tragedy, the moral, you know, the war, etc.
19:47All those sorts of human issues that come up in what we label the classics.
19:52And so it's not our old song lines that told stories at ceremonies.
19:58They are the classics of our world.
20:00Absolutely.
20:01And we need to ensure they continue.
20:03Absolutely.
20:04This notion of this traditional and contemporary is such a kind of dichotomy set up by a kind of white frame of seeing it too.
20:11Yeah.
20:12Contemporary is a timeframe.
20:13Tradition is a practice.
20:15Why are those two things antithetical?
20:17They're not.
20:18You can actually have tradition in a contemporary framing.
20:20And so there's this constant thing that also something that was written, let's say, Shakespeare 400-ish years ago, and saying, oh, that's a classic.
20:29Well, these stories that we're talking about are hundreds of thousands of years old.
20:34How come they aren't treated with the same kind of reverence?
20:37And there's just that kind of, I think, Nakia's point, you know, saying just because they're black classics, they're not given the same value as a white classic.
20:45And we don't even call them white classics.
20:47It means that our whole conversation centres around whiteness.
20:50Oh.
20:51You know, our whole arts practice centres around whiteness.
20:53Yeah.
20:54And it's liquid paper.
20:55It starts to block out everything else too.
20:56Good.
20:57And we spent so little time on Aboriginal plays there.
21:02Were there any productions that you studied at NIDA?
21:05We studied, I think there was one day where we kind of dedicated.
21:10One day.
21:11One day.
21:12Well, that must have been during NAIDOC week.
21:14Yeah, it was.
21:15No.
21:16But I...
21:17A white taggy.
21:18No, and I agree with you, Nakia, I think using the term classics without calling them the white classics is kind of normalising it.
21:28You know, Thor is a classic story.
21:30Sure is.
21:31And you just recast the bastard into something that's very much about a First Nations experience.
21:36Yes.
21:37Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:38Hey, Nakia.
21:39Okay.
21:40You have used the rom-com structure for Black is a New White, the Frankenstein myth for How to Rule the World for both of your plays.
21:47And I guess, yeah, that kind of Trojan horse thing that we were talking about.
21:51What attracts you to these well-known story devices?
21:53I really like playing with genre, mainly because I think you can be subversive with already known tropes.
21:58Sometimes I think, you know, people have expectations going into, like, let's say...
22:03Like, I'm fully aware if people buy a ticket to one of my plays, they're buying a play by an Aboriginal playwright, there's an expectation when they go into that room.
22:09I guess what they think they're going to see.
22:11Mm-hm.
22:12So I think it's always really fun to then kind of try and play with tropes.
22:17I think you can do a lot with it.
22:18I think it's really, really hard to get people to engage with conversations or ideas if they already have, like, an ideological bias.
22:30That's why sometimes I think comedy is a bit easier than drama because you can trick people into laughing with you.
22:35Whereas it's really hard to kind of...
22:37Sometimes it feels like a bit of an argument going in with something a bit heavy, if that makes sense.
22:41I don't know if that's a great analogy.
22:42It's also depressing.
22:43Yeah, it is depressing.
22:44After all these years to keep going to see plays where we're just, like...
22:47Yeah.
22:48At the end, you're like...
22:49Trauma.
22:50Life's shit. Great.
22:51Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:52And it's nice to be able to take those things and switch them and...
22:56Well, you keep re-traumatising.
22:57And laugh at ourselves and laugh at our situation.
22:59Yeah, you re-traumatise the community over and over again by telling these stories in that particular way.
23:03Yeah, yeah, that's right.
23:04Especially the weight on the actors, you know?
23:06Every night reliving that trauma, reliving that pain.
23:09Yeah, yeah.
23:10It's not sustainable.
23:11And also, it makes it for whitefellas.
23:12We're telling stories for whitefellas all the time.
23:14And then we come across as just being serious and...
23:17Yeah, absolutely.
23:18And all of our art is just dark and it's just...
23:22And all we can be bothered talking about is that.
23:25Yeah.
23:26What happened to us.
23:27And that's all we want to talk about in our plays and our art.
23:29I bet it's all we're pointing at each other.
23:31Yeah!
23:32Yeah!
23:33Yeah!
23:34Yeah!
23:35Yeah!
23:36Yeah!
23:37Yeah!
23:38Can I say it here?
23:39Okay, well...
23:40Raised a thing about...
23:42When he started doing productions, it was like, oh, you know, don't air the dirty laundry.
23:46Ooh.
23:47Mm-hmm.
23:48And your production, I mean, just, again, taking the situation but giving it that little
23:53twist where we were able to laugh and it wasn't as worthy if we're going to talk about
23:58massacres and that horrible history that we all have, and yet you were still attacked,
24:04even though it was in that genre, about airing dirty laundry in a way.
24:10You can never win.
24:12We can play.
24:13You did a play.
24:20Do you know this?
24:21Well, Blackie Blackie Brown, that was definitely something that...
24:24I think Blackie Blackie Brown is a classic in the making.
24:27I think Blackie Blackie Brown is one of those classic plays in the making.
24:29I agree.
24:30And that there's so many neglected things in the canon of Aboriginal writing anyway.
24:35When you think about Kevin Gilbert's The Cherry Pickers, you go, that was a classic play
24:39that started very much that kind of autobiographical work.
24:42And I think Blackie Blackie Brown is, in its genre, it's the kind of taking hold of it and
24:48shifting it in a way that is just... I think we will look at that in 20 years from now and
24:52still think of it as relevant and still powerful.
24:54Well, I think it will be.
24:55Comedies usually last longer.
24:57Yeah, I agree.
24:58And they're taken, they're not taken seriously as art, art forms.
25:03You see, like, you know, there's no best comedy at the Oscars.
25:07And even though it's way harder to write a comedy, it's way harder to make a comedy.
25:12Drama is basically, in my mind, it's like, just don't make the audience laugh.
25:18It's like, do half of your work.
25:21You put in half the effort and then you're good.
25:24But in comedy, it's like you're constantly trying to have a conversation with them.
25:28Why didn't this work?
25:29And if, you know, the pain of having no one reacting to your stuff is, it's like soul crushing.
25:37We're going to go to a break.
25:38And after the break, Rhoda, I would like to ask you about the establishment of the Aboriginal
25:43National Theatre Trust.
25:45Exciting.
25:46See you all soon.
25:48To the new day for you and I.
25:53We're fearless.
26:04Welcome back.
26:06Okay.
26:07A question for Rhoda Ro.
26:09In 1987, you co-founded the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust with Lydia Miller and Kevin Gilbert.
26:15What were your programming ambitions at the time?
26:17We were tired of playing the gin.
26:20Yep.
26:21The drunk.
26:22The prostitute.
26:23We wanted to show that as actors, we had this enormous emotional level we could go to.
26:28And we recognised also that very much there was this huge gap in the theatre industry.
26:37And I think this was reflected globally.
26:39But it was Brian Siren, the late Brian Siren, Justine Saunders, looked at developing the first National Black Playwrights Conferences.
26:48During the Playwrights Conference, they recognised that we needed a Sydney-based national theatre company.
26:55And so Ant was born.
26:57It was quite interesting when I reflect now.
27:00And I hope that I have learnt the lessons from them.
27:03Because their big push was, we've written the plays.
27:06But you young people work in this industry and you know about administrating and you know about setting up a theatre company.
27:13So these incredible playwrights, like Uncle Kevin Gilbert, Ujuru Noonuckles, sat in front of us and gave us this, I guess, three-year plan that we would develop a theatre company.
27:26We were put on the second Black Playwrights Conference and they wanted us, because they obviously thought just putting a show on was like that, five productions in three years.
27:38That's fantastic.
27:39And so we did that.
27:40We achieved that mandate.
27:41Wow.
27:42And it was Lydia, Michael Johnson, Justine and Brian were there as our mentors.
27:47Our patron was Ujuru Noonuckle and Vivian Walker, one of the greatest directors this country has ever seen.
27:54However, in Sydney at the time, there was no theatre company that would enable us to have a venue except the performance space.
28:05And like you were saying, we didn't want to be on the fringes.
28:08We wanted to be on the main stage.
28:10And so Sue Natras, who was working at the Melbourne Arts Centre, offered us a venue there.
28:16So we would take our productions to Melbourne.
28:18We would sell out, do extremely well, you know, productions such as Munjong by Richard Wally, which ended up doing a world tour.
28:26And then we would come back to Sydney.
28:28A few years later, Christine Westwood became the general manager of Belvoir and she sort of lifted that sort of mandate there, that an all Aboriginal production could come and produce and have a venue there.
28:42And she enabled that.
28:44Sadly, after her demise, the new board sort of still had this situation that Aboriginal people couldn't possibly produce their own product.
28:54But we had proven it.
28:56And Ant went on to do the second Playwrights Conference.
28:59And I'm indebted to that knowledge we learnt.
29:02But one of the first artists who walked into the room as we're administrating this huge undertaking was a gentleman from WA who threw an envelope with 54 pages of different paper and songs on them.
29:17And I was reading and I went, oh, I know that song.
29:20That's cuckles.
29:21And in walked Jimmy Chai.
29:23And so during that two week period of that Playwrights Conference, we blocked that we had the songs.
29:30So we put a series of actors, Ernie Dingo, Leif Charlton, Kylie Belling, Lydia, myself, a few others.
29:38And we worked out what the dialogue would be between the songs and the play Brand New Day was born.
29:44Oh, my God.
29:45I should say, too, that almost all the existing Indigenous theatre companies now have come through from that period.
29:50Like from when Ant was kind of, oh, well, it was for lots of different reasons, falling over, not getting funding and whatever.
29:57The state jurisdictions.
29:58So you think about Mughlin a little later, but Ilbidjeri, Yirriyak, and Kwemjadara.
30:03Yeah, they all came out of.
30:05So Ilbidjeri actually was formed during that second Playwrights Conference.
30:10So people were coming, hearing and seeing structures of a model that was working.
30:15Yep.
30:16And so going back to their own states and territories and looking at opportunities.
30:19And it's really important.
30:21It's really, really important that that gap of playwrights was filled because the next decade, and that's what you're doing now, and it's just inspiring.
30:31I can't tell you that we're seeing the new mantle and, you know, our dialogue.
30:37Some of the plays you've written, Nakia, some of the work you've done on television in particular, we possibly never would have thought possible in 1987.
30:48It's progress.
30:49It's not resilience.
30:50We're progressing.
30:51But do we think that, I mean, the big thing, too, is should an Aboriginal play be directed only by Aboriginal writers?
30:58Directors, sorry.
30:59Like, where does it all come through?
31:01How is it kind of collaborating?
31:02When is it actually an Indigenous work?
31:05I mean, I think we've been playing with that sense of definition for a few decades now, too.
31:09True, true.
31:10Like, when is it collaborative?
31:11When is the white fella in charge?
31:13Like, you talk about Brand New Day and Andrew Ross, then white fella, was then in charge as the director.
31:18Does that make it less black?
31:20I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to work it out myself.
31:22Well, it's interesting because, you know, that play was an Aboriginal National Theatre production and then he was able to buy the rights to it.
31:29It's the same with Radiance.
31:31We set a brief.
31:32It has to be a play about three women who return to their mother, who's all corked up, for her funeral and they haven't seen each other in ten years.
31:39And that was the brief.
31:40We actually didn't want the word Aboriginal mentioned because we wanted to have a play that any diverse actor could play.
31:48We were very mercenary.
31:50And I think having Ant and all those elder writers behind us gave us a level of confidence I don't think we thought we had.
31:58Because we went out there and said, OK, let's select a playwright and we will commission them to write what we want.
32:05Who's the flavour of the month?
32:08And that year it was Louis Nowra.
32:12And so hence we went to him and said, we want this play written.
32:16It was a collaboration with Louis because we commissioned him because we knew it would get attention.
32:22If it had a black writer in that day and time, we would not have got the funding and the support, basically.
32:29So was that an Aboriginal play?
32:31Does it really matter?
32:32As long as they are pretty much understanding of the cultural perspective.
32:37Taika, I know that you did something similar.
32:42You collaborated on a little theatre show titled The Untold Tales of Maui.
32:46And look, I know no matter how any of us feel about adapting Western classics, I think we can all agree that we'd be terrified of potential hidings that we might get from aunties and uncles for going near our creation stories.
32:57You did that with Jermaine, Clement.
33:01Was that something that, you know, the backlash from the community, was it something that prompted you to push it further?
33:07We've always made fun, Jermaine and I have always tried to make fun of what I'd say is like, you guys.
33:17Serious artists, artists, practitioners, anyone who has a dramaturg.
33:29What I'm getting at is, I don't know if you know the theatre company Takirua.
33:36And so, you know, they were like the sort of big powerhouse of serious Māori theatre.
33:46And we were never in their place.
33:48They didn't want us in their place either.
33:52And so we were like, we always used to make fun of how serious the plays were.
33:56It was always like a monologue.
33:58My dad worked on the docks.
34:00My mum sold me for a washing machine.
34:02And he was like, you know, that kind of writing.
34:06And it's like, you watch those plays, like, here we go, an hour and a half of this, okay.
34:12Take me.
34:14We used to just like, like to make fun of that stuff.
34:17And so we wanted to, sort of like a piss take on that list of even just real serious Māori theatre.
34:24And just, as you were saying, like take those tropes and like, and we presented it as this really serious piece of Māori art.
34:32And it was like the untold tales.
34:34But you just say untold meaning like, you've got heaps of something.
34:38Yeah, yeah.
34:39Untold, you know.
34:40Untold tales of Māori.
34:45Was there a thing where like, did the Parkingham mob know when to laugh?
34:49Like, did they have a, was there like a, we're about to?
34:52Yeah, yeah.
34:53But that happens with most of my stuff.
34:54Yeah.
34:55It's a little while before people go, okay, it's all right.
34:58Yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:59Was there in New Zealand at the time though, when you talk about those productions, and we saw many, again in their 80s and 90s,
35:06the very serious worthy stories being told.
35:10And I sometimes look at them now, and you sort of cringe a bit because, you know, we've grown so much.
35:15But I go, was it necessary as part of the education for the broader theatre audience to understand that this history, or what a mission was, or what a Mirai is, to understand the history in a way?
35:29I mean, for us, I mean, you know, I was saying before about how we felt about that, that kind of theatre.
35:35It was really just, I mean, I've always loved it, and I, you know, was always into doing serious theatre when I was young.
35:42Yeah.
35:43I just grew out of it.
35:44And, uh, I grew up.
35:46Yeah.
35:47You grew up.
35:48I got that shirt.
35:49I got that shirt.
35:50I got that shirt.
35:51I got that shirt.
35:52I was supposed to dress like an auntie's commercial producer.
35:53But that point about commissioning to laugh is interesting.
35:55I did a show at Sydney Theatre Company.
35:57Yeah.
35:58I did the cherry pickers at Sydney Theatre Company.
35:59Yep.
36:00And we said, from the very outset, you need to make sure there's blackfellas in the house, or people will not know that they're allowed to laugh.
36:05Absolutely.
36:06And they'll take it too seriously, and that notion of an old auntie would be there laughing their guts out, and next to her would be some white person going, oh, am I, am I?
36:15Right.
36:16And then, you know, and especially the beginning part of Cherry Pickers, Kevin Gilbert's Cherry Pickers, it was, it's all about making fun of the archetypes.
36:24And it's kind of out there, and there's old aunties, and there's a, you know, drunk old drone.
36:29There's all these kind of things going through.
36:31And if it's only whitefellas kind of watching that, they go, oh, this is documentary.
36:37And you go, no, it's not documentary, love.
36:39It's actually making fun of things.
36:41Yeah.
36:42And it's that kind of sense of our presence in the room actually gives people more permission not to be as white and uptight as they are too.
36:50Yeah, that's right.
36:51And they were allowed to just loosen their sphincter and have a good, fun time.
36:54No, but I get in trouble all the time when I'm like it.
36:57Well, loose sphincter?
36:58No, not from loose sphincter.
36:59I don't know what you're talking about then.
37:00Yeah, they still feel that even though, like, the blackfellas on stage are having fun and they're performing, it's still seen as like, you know, even, like, that was Barbara and the Camp Dogs.
37:11Oh, man.
37:12But poor whitefellas.
37:13Poor whitefellas.
37:14But STC has actually shifted a little bit, I think, when I think of the shows I've seen, you know, over the last couple of years there.
37:23And it's just like, because I loved you, I loved you when you were in Black is the New White.
37:30And, and there was that shift that we were placing it in a setting that the white audience was very familiar with.
37:36Yeah.
37:37Absolutely.
37:38Yeah.
37:39Yeah.
37:40And so the response sitting in an audience, because I tend to watch the audience, was quite intriguing that they understood the environment.
37:47They felt much more comfortable hearing the story.
37:50True.
37:51Yeah.
37:52We have a video question from Ali Murphy-Oates.
37:54Hi, I'm Ali Murphy-Oates.
37:58I'm a Niamhra Wawon woman and Managing Director of Mooghalan Performing Arts.
38:03My question for the panel is, what blackfella plays or performance works do you think should be part of the Australian canon?
38:10And why?
38:11Who wants to answer that one first?
38:13Oh, bang.
38:14Cherry Pickers, number one.
38:15Go on.
38:16My thing is like Cherry Pickers.
38:17There's some things that are, that are ignored.
38:19And so you'd go, there's of course the Jack Davis and the Jimmy Chai and there's Eva, Eva Johnson maybe needs to be remembered.
38:25For a lot of her work, for Murrah's in particular.
38:28And I think that there are some works that will always sit there like, like Seven Stages Grieving, goodness gracious me, can people get over that one?
38:35That's 25 years old.
38:36Hey, that's my gig next year.
38:38Your big Untold Tales of Maui.
38:41A classic.
38:43More Untold Tales of Maui.
38:45But I think that Blackie Blackie Brown, just going back to this, is it was one of those moments where things shifted.
38:50You know, it was actually moved the conversation on and that's why it should be remembered.
38:54Mm-hmm.
38:55Yeah.
38:56It certainly moved the conversation.
38:57Absolutely.
38:58Yeah.
38:59I mean, I would say all of my work.
39:01I agree.
39:02All of it.
39:03All of it.
39:04Both of our work.
39:05Both of our work.
39:06Both of our work.
39:07Any comedies should be, anyone who's brave enough to do it.
39:11Brave enough.
39:12You know?
39:13I think as though it's interesting, I think I don't, I don't really know what the Australian canon is.
39:17I think that, I find that question a bit hard to, I'm trying to figure out what is the Australian canon.
39:22I think what tends to happen is, you know, a lot with plays by Aboriginal playwrights, it's very rare that you see Aboriginal playwrights get beyond a first work.
39:32Mm-hmm.
39:33Yeah.
39:34It's very rare that you have an Aboriginal playwright do more than free plays.
39:37Mm-hmm.
39:38And it's very rare that you see new Australian writing and then even rarer still with new, like new Aboriginal work.
39:47And I mean, I'm using really big generalisations here, but I'm referring to, I guess, by Aboriginal writers, very rare to see that work tour.
39:54Yeah.
39:55You know, I've, I've written about ten plays in the last seven years.
39:58I've been writing for about seven years now.
40:00And, um, out of those, I think maybe two have toured.
40:04Mm-hmm.
40:05And most of them have sold out.
40:06Like, not to be like humble brag, but what I'm saying is that you have to work.
40:10I think it's really hard as Aboriginal artists working within, I work within a lot of mainstream companies.
40:16And I don't think it would really shift if it wasn't necessarily mainstream companies either.
40:19No.
40:20For people in executive positions and boards to have faith in you.
40:23Agreed.
40:24And that's the key point.
40:25Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:26And so getting, having work that's then seen, having it have life, longevity, making sure that we're skilling people up for long-term careers,
40:33but also having people who have power and money.
40:35Decision-making.
40:36Trust you because they don't automatically trust you because you're not a white guy.
40:39Well, can I say, too, they're happy to give you the first play because it's your story.
40:44It's the autobiographical story.
40:45Expo.
40:46The second one is the follow-up.
40:47Black quotation.
40:48But the idea that once in time that you empower yourself as a writer or a maker,
40:53and that you're saying, now, this is what I want from you, that's where you see these relationships end.
40:58And then you start to go, you know, so why is it that you can count the number of Aboriginal writers
41:03or even Torres Strait Islander writers on one hand that have written more than five plays?
41:07It's because...
41:08And to it.
41:09And to it.
41:10Because once you get empowered, they actually get a little scared of you or they don't want you to tell them how to do it.
41:16We could talk about this for ages and hours and hours.
41:18No, we can't.
41:19But...
41:20We've only got one.
41:21Yeah, we've only got talking for one.
41:23So...
41:24More black women.
41:25Yeah.
41:26We could talk about it for ages.
41:27If we wanted to.
41:28We wanted to.
41:29We're going to go to a little break.
41:30And when we return, we're going to talk about colourblind casting.
41:34And we'll see you after the break.
41:49Welcome back to The Whole Table.
41:51Okay, this is a question for Taika.
41:54So, I feel like your work holds power.
41:57I feel like your work holds power in that it feels so unique to the Māori experience,
42:02yet your stories are so accessible to an international audience.
42:05And you've previously spoken about the importance of casting Indigenous people in normal roles.
42:10What is a normal role to you?
42:12And why is it important to make sure Indigenous people have access to these roles?
42:17Answer now.
42:22I'm not repeating it.
42:24Fantastic question.
42:26Are Indigenous people normal Taika?
42:29Come on.
42:31They are.
42:36Of them, the ones I've met, they do seem very normal.
42:39They're just like us.
42:40Yeah, I mean, I think I've always wanted to cast Māori.
42:50Because it's the same as, you know, in your show, it's like the one that you went to see.
42:55You can just feel it.
42:56There's a feeling.
42:57I don't know how else to describe it.
42:58It's just like, there's just a feeling.
43:01There's a vibe.
43:02Yeah.
43:03You know?
43:04That's on your sets and your casting and stuff.
43:06And you know, it's like having you around on Thor.
43:09Even just, they just made you run through a forest a few times.
43:12True.
43:13I hated it.
43:14It was awful for you.
43:15But I'll do it again.
43:16But it's just, you know, it's just, I like having people who think like me and who've
43:21had some of their life experience.
43:23And, you know, it's all about relationships and my work environment is so much better when
43:32there are young people, people of colour, you know, there's a decent amount of women on
43:40the set or in the writer's room or anything.
43:42And it's just because it's such a dude heavy industry and you're so bored of it.
43:49And it can be quite draining being around.
43:52There's something for me about the translation of experience too, isn't it?
43:56Where you go, do I have to then translate everything so that you can understand it,
44:00whichever you are, but if you have more like-minded people in the room, you get that kind of
44:05sense of better, you can go further I found.
44:09Like I've worked on an all-Indigenous cast and you just feel like you go further.
44:14Whereas if you're working with an all, you know, whitefella cast, you kind of go,
44:17oh, I just have to just translate what I mean.
44:20When I say gammon, this is what I mean.
44:23That idea of going how you kind of go through this process of translation for everyone all the time.
44:28Wesley, you're working on Appropriate, which is by a black writer, which is an all-white cast.
44:33So speaking to that kind of shorthand and everything you were talking about,
44:36how are you going to do this, Bob?
44:37Well, get you involved as assistant director straight away.
44:40No, but that whole idea of going, yeah, it's scaring me a little bit.
44:43Because I kind of feel like the play itself is about whiteness.
44:47It's about deconstructing whiteness in many ways and using the tropes of the kind of American canon
44:53to then say, you know, what's missing in this story.
44:56And it's pretty interesting in that way.
44:58And what I'm trying to do now is I'm trying to share meals with people.
45:02I'm trying to have proper chats with people along the way.
45:04So I can kind of build this rapport and try to understand who they are.
45:08Yeah.
45:09And, you know, well, maybe just all I'd have to do is just make them ornery blackfellas
45:12for a little while to understand who they are.
45:14Give them skin name, but just make it up.
45:16No, just make it up.
45:17You are dogshit.
45:18You are guttier.
45:19You are gubba.
45:21You are muppy lover.
45:22No, don't.
45:23What's your black name?
45:24I can't relate to anything you've asked.
45:27Is the character they have an awareness of history and cultural nuances
45:33or are they coming completely ignorant of that?
45:38Look, I think that like all actors, they want to do the research,
45:40they want to understand all the kind of stories and stuff like that.
45:42And it is set in the south of America.
45:44So there's trying to understand that cultural context.
45:47And, you know, we're used to the idea that there's allegory or metaphor
45:52that people can kind of tell a story, but it means something different.
45:56For different people.
45:58And so I want to say, yeah, it actually has a lot to say about Australia.
46:02And I know, Nakia, you did Octoroon.
46:04And that sense of that translation process is interesting,
46:07where can you shift those stories?
46:09How do you shift those stories?
46:11And how do you create, in this case, an all white cast?
46:14How do you get a depth of understanding for what it means here in Australia?
46:18I don't know where they'll get it all,
46:20but at least they're open to the conversation more too.
46:23And you can use that as a foundation to then use a conversation
46:26that they've had, I found with an Octoroon,
46:28conversations that they were having about race and performance
46:32and history.
46:33And then maybe we didn't encapsulate every,
46:36like the cultural translation wasn't always,
46:38it didn't always carry over,
46:40but we were able to create something different
46:42that we weren't able to have here.
46:45Yeah, yeah.
46:46If that makes sense.
46:47Nakia, can you just sort of,
46:48give us a little brief on what Octoroon was?
46:50Yeah, so an Octoroon was,
46:51is a play by Brendan Jacob Jenkins.
46:53I think it might have been,
46:54oh, I don't know, maybe his second play.
46:56Yep.
46:57Um, and it's an adaptation of a play called The Octoroon by, uh...
47:02Dion Boussico.
47:03By Dion Boussico.
47:04Uh, Shari was in it.
47:06Um, and it's about a playwright trying, called BJJ,
47:11who is then trying to, uh, all of the white actors
47:14in the play drop out,
47:15because they don't want to be portrayed as racist.
47:17Has one of the best lines I've ever heard,
47:19which is like, you know, the white guy crying
47:21because they have to do a monologue
47:22about how hard it is to be a racist.
47:24I'm a racist.
47:25It's hard.
47:26I'm a racist.
47:27It's really great.
47:28With the monologue.
47:29Oh, it's hard to be a racist.
47:31Um, which is pretty much,
47:32you, like, watch a lot of, you know,
47:34movies about slavery.
47:35There's always that white guy who's like,
47:37oh man, slavery's real bad.
47:39There's black people in the fucking movie
47:41don't realise that anyway.
47:42Yeah.
47:43Speaking of racists.
47:44Taika.
47:45What about you?
47:47Hitler.
47:48Well, I mean, I just thought it was,
47:50it was just time that his story was told.
47:53You know?
47:54It's from his side of the, of the story.
47:56You know, we just heard this allied sort of take
47:59on the war this entire time.
48:02Yes.
48:03How was the, did you receive, uh,
48:05was it all good responses about that?
48:07It was all good in the hood.
48:08Was it all good in the hood?
48:09Uh, it was pretty good.
48:11There were definitely people who weren't ready for that,
48:14who, you know, with that subject matter,
48:16with the Holocaust and, um, and, you know,
48:19and having humour.
48:20I mean, however, Charlie Chaplin did it in 1939.
48:24Yeah.
48:25Yes.
48:26It was amazing.
48:27But, but most people who, they had reservations before
48:35they had seen it.
48:36And so once they saw the film, then, uh,
48:39then they changed their minds.
48:40Yeah.
48:41And that's difficult too.
48:42People making their mind up before they even go to see a film.
48:45Oh, we had some people, some, uh, a couple of press in New York
48:48who said they saw a test screening and then some of the feedback
48:51when he was part of Jewish before I'd gone in
48:54because I would have enjoyed it more.
48:55Yeah.
48:56And like, cause like, oh, do you want that on the poster?
48:58Don't worry.
48:59He's Jewish.
49:00It's kind of like, I guess, reversed in the way that, you know,
49:03we were talking about colour blind casting in the sense that,
49:05you know, people expect any of us to walk into a room
49:08and not see all of the experiences that bring us to that room.
49:11And then you just look at the ultimate and we're like, well,
49:16look at me now.
49:18I can't be blind to this.
49:19Taking those white rolls off you.
49:22Slowly taking all those precious white rolls.
49:25All those white rolls, the precious rolls that they want.
49:27But that thing too of authenticity that people ask of us,
49:30a kind of authenticity in the skin and all that kind of stuff
49:34when we do our work, even if it's an act of fiction,
49:36a lot of Aboriginal theatre ends up being called, you know,
49:39a biographical piece or it must be your true experience
49:42because that's what we expect from black fellas.
49:45But we don't expect the same thing from white fellas.
49:47And so, and the flip side of this, I don't know if I truly believe
49:50in colour blind casting, to be honest.
49:51Yeah.
49:52Because I don't know if the audience is advanced enough
49:55not to see colour.
49:56I think people still project upon casting their own preconceptions
50:02of be it colour, be it height, be it, you know, hair colour,
50:05be it whatever.
50:06Yep.
50:07But they still are using all of that to make meaning.
50:09And then in this country, if someone knows that you're Aboriginal,
50:12then they go, oh, there's a political lens I'm now going to...
50:15A political lens I'm now going to...
50:16Oh!
50:17A political lens that's going to happen and look over the whole thing.
50:22And what I would love to see is the incidental Aboriginal character,
50:27which I think is what the ordinary is, isn't it?
50:29Yeah.
50:30And it's also you don't want to have to think about it.
50:32I want to watch something and not go, oh, there you go.
50:35You've got your Chinese character there, their best friend,
50:37Asian best friend character in the rom-com.
50:39Okay.
50:40And here comes the Hispanic guy who tells the jokes.
50:44Okay.
50:45And then we've got this.
50:46It's like that to me is distracting and it pulls me out
50:49when I go, oh, now they're just ticking boxes.
50:52Yeah.
50:53And that sucks as well because, yes, you want the best people for the job.
50:56Sometimes in a particular film they all happen to be white
50:59because it's World War II and I can't put a Māori apart from myself
51:03into that film.
51:06But, you know, and then other times it's like, yeah, you want to be,
51:10you know, I want to make sure that there's, you know, that we're inclusive.
51:15But again, then you have people like, yeah, but what about this community?
51:18What about these people feeling left out?
51:19And then it's like, well, I'm not going to make a film
51:21that represents every single ethnicity on the planet.
51:26This is going to be the dumbest film ever made.
51:28And don't do dumb films.
51:32Highbrow.
51:34We are going to end on a question for Taika from home.
51:39Oh, take it away.
51:40Kia ora, Taika.
51:41Ko Rachel Howes, Taku ingoa.
51:42We've met a few times before, so I guess really the burning question is,
51:58what role or play would bring you, Taika Waititi, back to theatre?
52:08Peace.
52:09Peace.
52:11Peace.
52:12Peace.
52:13What role or peace, it would have to be something that I wrote.
52:19Yeah.
52:20I don't think I want to do anyone else's work anymore.
52:23On both other people's stuff.
52:25I don't watch other people's work.
52:27As an artist, I don't want to be influenced by anything else.
52:32Because everything that is in here is where it should be,
52:36and I just don't want anything cluttering it up or clouding my vision.
52:40Moving forward on this straight path.
52:43Ducky Jack!
52:48Excellent.
52:49Thank you so much for joining us.
52:50Thank you, everybody, for joining us today.
52:53Thanks, Shari.
52:54Aw.
52:55Thank you, Shari.
52:56Thank you, Shari.
52:57Thanks, Ches.
52:58Next week, we're going to be talking about the present,
53:00and asking if we as First Nations people feel like we have gained control
53:03of our narrative through our chosen medium.
53:06Thanks so much for joining us, Rhoda, Wesley, and Nakia.
53:09I'll see you next week.
53:10And Miranda and Taika, thanks for being our special guests this week.
53:13Thanks for having me.
53:14Aw, thank you for coming.
53:16Bye now, everybody.
53:17See ya.
53:18OK.
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