In a sold-out show at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Voices of Women presented Amplify in collaboration with Booranga Writers Centre and Eastern Riverina Arts.
The performance began with a Welcome to Country from Wiradjuri Elder and performer Aunty Cheryl Penrith, who welcomed the audience in the Wiradjuri language. Immersed in the round, the audience experienced the live show which took place with a backdrop of a large screen silently playing the teaser from the Voices of Women film Entanglement.
Read the full program and all about the full ensemble here.
Developing the stories
We began with an Artists in Residence call out, which was shared in the local community through our collaborators and other creative channels. Aunty Cheryl Penrith was selected as the Wagga Wagga Artist in Residence and worked in a series of telephone workshops with Lliane Clarke to develop her stories.
In conversations and roaming creative explorations across cultural and artistic landscapes, Cheryl developed two stories.
What Was that? is about a car accident Cheryl experienced and the connection with her mother through a painting which protected her.
Transformation and Wandiri: is a story that comes from the Wiradjuri word Wandiri, and was developed in a story about standing strong in your own light, and living strongly through transformative times in your life.
Cheryl’s natural performative talent come to the fore, and her love of fashion and costume was also expressed in her performance, which was designed by her.
Cheryl also welcomes visitors to the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, and is comfortable in the space to present and welcome audience members to Wiradjuri country.
Weaving our lives together
Charle Malycon is an emerging Australian writer and critic. Her work has been published in Overland. She is currently co-editing the 35th Anniversary edition of the UTS Writer’s Anthology, which celebrates forty years of emerging Australian talent. Charle was the author of Sun in My Bones, featured in the Entanglement film, and wrote A Good Yarn for Amplify, which received its world premiere on the tour. The piece included a audience interaction, read movingly by Victoria Kennedy, while Aunty Cheryl Penrith wrapped the audience in red wool, symbolising love, life and community.
Space selection and audience immersion
Another pillar of the Voices of Women program is the selection of spaces that are not traditionally used for theatrical presentation or spoken word performance. Wagga Wagga Art Gallery sits in the award winning Civic Centre complex, the symbolic heart of Wagga Wagga’s central business district. Designed by Melbourne architectural firm Garner Davis, the Art Gallery includes a separate gallery specifically for the National Art Glass Collection. The Gallery Curator Le-Anne Hall was keen to present small performances in the lower galleries as part of the community outreach programs at the gallery.
Music for Amplify
World premiere music written and commissioned for the tour was performed by Elizabeth Jigalin, the Voices of Women composer in residence. Elizabeth performed melodica and piano in the space, seated in the same space as the audience and the cast, to become an integral part of the storytelling. Musicians are often separate from the action of theatre, but in this case, Liz was seamlessly integrated into the action, sound and performance.
For the Wagga Wagga performance, Liz moved amongst the audience with melodica, and became a roving performer as well as seated at the piano.
Artists in Residence
Cheryl Penrith, Artist in Residence, Wagga Wagga, writer and performer
I am a connector, an influencer, I am spiritual,
I am a fashionista,
I wear many hats in my community, family is everything to me.
Cheryl Penrith is a Wiradjuri woman, who also has cultural connection to the Yuin and Wotjoboluk nations, and currently lives in Wagga Wagga. Cheryl comes from a large, proud, strong Koori family. She is the Mother of one and Ninny of five beautiful grandchildren. Cheryl is an Aboriginal business owner, a connector, a mentor and a coach. She has worked in the government, private and tertiary education spaces and has many areas of expertise to draw on. Her passion is the revival and re-invigoration of cultural practices such as-weaving, language, possum skin cloak making, and women’s cultural business.
Cheryl’s other passion is fashion and is well known nationwide and internationally as a fashionista through her blog. She has also just started a personal style business for “stylin’ up your physical, but also stylin’ up your spirit”. Cheryl wants to influence how First Nations people feel about themselves and deal with everyday life with dignity, pride and hope for an uncertain future.
Jocelyn Freeman, Artist in Residence Wagga Wagga, writer
Jocelyn Freeman is a writer based in Junee and member of the Booranga Writers Centre. She has spent much of her working life employed as a journalist and teacher, writing for publications both nationally and internationally, such as The Sydney Morning Herald and the Praque Post, Czech Republic, as well as teaching in Australian secondary schools. Jocelyn has been published for several years in Booranga Writer Centre’s annual anthology, 4W.
Photography: Noni Carroll Photography and Jeanne Kinninmont
