Guy van Egmond
‘When one buys a ticket to a First Nations show, one expects to be gently and respectfully reminded that indigenous people deserve to exist.’ This line came from the end of A Nightime Travesty, in an aside where the performers took the piss out of snooty, white critics. But it was a useful line, because it summed up everything that the show was not.
There was nothing gentle about this 90-minute fever-dream about extinction; it refused to sit quietly in a box, refused to be any sort of neatly-packaged Aboriginal performance that we could all coo at and then forget.
Created by Naarm-based collective A Daylight Connection, A Nightime Travesty follows an ensemble of characters played largely by two actors: Kamarra Bell-Wykes (Jagera/Butchulla) and Carly Sheppard (Takalaka), who also created the show together. They all find themselves on board the last flight leaving a ravaged Earth towards the ether and ever-after, a journey rife with colonial satire and scored with live music by small sound (Quandamooka).
The show took a while to warm up. Firstly, in terms of performance, there were attempts at synchronicity during the pre-flight safety demo that didn’t line up and a couple of stubborn mic issues, but the show refused to falter. With unrelenting pace, we hurtled through an absurd narrative. This took a while to get going as well; not in a way that ‘Ohhhhhh,’ it all made sense at the end, but in a way that you eventually gave yourself over to wherever the story might go next. One minute, we’re watching the plane’s pilot, Captain God’s Gift—endowed with an elephantine cock and an even bigger white-saviour complex—as he fellatios the swollen, right pinky-finger of God’s secretary, Pinky. Next minute, we’re in a 90s-cringe, variety TV-show, where auditions are being held to cast God’s body, featuring Satan and a garbled performance of the Jabberwocky poem by the Jabberwocky itself.
There was a lot of vitriol directed at the big guy upstairs, so unabashedly angry that it felt very personal. It was the closest I’d been to what felt like true blasphemy, mocking God for more than just laughs. It almost made me, a reasonably uninvolved agnostic, uncomfortable. But Sheppard did well to contextualize this rage, screaming for the communities, languages, and ways of being that have been annihilated by colonial practices, in the name of the good Lord.
As the show got going and the little hiccups worked themselves out, the team’s talent shone. The rapid-fire changes of characters by Bell-Wykes and Sheppard, as well as supporting actor Zach Blampied (Yorta Yorta/Wiradjuri), didn’t miss a beat. I was never once unclear who they were portraying in the moment, which is a testament to their skill when they each had five or more roles to play. The live music by small sound and Richie Brownlee tied the chaos on stage together, even as bikes were ridden, gongs were struck, bongs were ripped, live-feeds were projected above the stage; there was pantomime and musical interludes; it was all-go.
I have to say that the show’s humour didn’t land with me as much as it seemed to for other audience members. There were some deliciously snide lines such as, ‘the pure caucasity,’ and ‘my little diaspora daisy.’ But most of the comedy was built on the actors pushing the boundary ever further of how wild and loud and vulgar they could be.
But between the dick jokes and ‘fuck-you’s was a frank and sobering reflection on what it is to survive as an indigenous person today. For Sheppard’s protagonist character Angel—the last Aboriginal person alive and fetishised by Captain Gift—the world has been burning for a long time. There was a strong scene early on where Gift laments about the weight of his white, male privilege, while Angel grapples with the feelings of betrayal and isolation that come from what she’s had to do to get any sort of success in a Western society. It was a reflection on the liminality of being Blak yet looking white enough to ‘pass’ as the social norm. The ‘outsider within’ sits in a lonely space, forced to choose between a career or kinship. The power of this show lay in its clarity. I couldn’t place myself in that double-edged identity, but there was no mistaking the pain and anger in this show, whether they made it palpable in soliloquy or in satire.
Switching from songs about the state of the Earth to sloppy sex acts, from rage to grief to mockery, A Nightime Travesty was jarring. But that felt like it was the point. It was a show that refused to be ignored. It refused to be pigeonholed as any one thing and, thus, took on everything. Not all of it worked, in terms of sense, comedy, or trans-Tasman cultural relevance. As a sum of its parts, it was overwhelming. Sheppard, Bell-Wykes, and director Stephen Nicolazzo built a riot on stage that was wild, but rich and cuttingly critical. They built a space of openness through a shared experience of ‘what-the-fuck!?’ Having drawn us in for the ride, they could speak plainly to a way of living that we could mourn, laugh at, and bear witness to, together.
A Nightime Travesty made its Aotearoa debut as part of the Kia Mau Festival’s He Ngaru Nui programme.