Re-RIGHT-ing the Narrative

An edited extract from Rachael Maza's essay in the New Platform Papers Volume 2, From the Heart: The Voice, the Arts and Australian Identity.

Celebrated actor and director, Yidinji and Meriam woman Rachael Maza AM says the road to the Voice to Parliament is truth-telling and that’s what First Nations performing arts are all about. 

I come from a long line of storytellers. My father was Bob Maza, one of the founders of the Black Theatre company, the first modern black theatre company, but of course, there are at least 2,000 generations before him of mobs of storytellers that go way back, and I come at the end of a very, very long line. I hold the baton in this tiny chapter of my life, but this story, told through me as a storyteller and a theatre-maker, goes way, way, way back. Of course, it has been somewhat disrupted recently, by the colonisation of this country 234 years ago.

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Celebrated actor and director, Yidinji and Meriam woman Rachael Maza is the Artistic Director of Ilbijerri Theatre Company in Melbourne.