- (ABORIGINAL CHANTING)
- And when we are born, we will cry
that we have come to this great stage of fools.
- (ABORIGINAL CHANTING)
- King Lear is such a potent story from the Western canon
that helps us really examine our relationship to land
and our relationship to nature.
All those themes were in my mind when I went up to talk with Tom E Lewis,
who is an actor that I have admired for a long time.
And in the context of what's taking place up in the north,
Lear suddenly sort of resonated, in a way, even more powerfully.
- So the idea is that we try and run as much as we can tonight.
We will stop if we need to and restart again.
- We slowly grew with Michael in translation
and fit this crown on this silly head of mine.
But when I do this one,
it's a voice of the country.
Am I in another country? - (SPEAKS ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
- Right now, in the north,
there is really big questions being asked about how land should be used,
who has the rights to make decisions about land and in what way.
- That is us.
- (SPEAKS ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
- Lear himself believes in, sort of, a fit of hubris,
that he can own land and divide it.
And the consequence of that one idea is his downfall.
- And when I have crept upon those rotten borders,
then I will kill, kill, kill!
A lot of fathers don't listen to their daughters.
They revolt against their own father just to prove he's wrong.
Tell me what's going on!
- Look at me, Daddy! Let me come home. Give me your blessing!
- Don't make fun of me!
Don't make fun of me!
I know you don't love me. (SPEAKS ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
Your sisters did me wrong for no reasons!
Our children are now getting angry against their parents.
Are we not looking after the country properly for them?
Are we all responsible for the country?
If you and me don't look after the rivers,
our kids are gonna get thirsty.
- My mum and your dad, all they care about is themselves, the old ways.
As long as she has that dillybag by her side
with the songline and custodianship, she thinks she has the power!
The way I see it, they are the traitor to all of us.
Their ways will kill us all.
- We don't own the land, it owns us, regardless of what we say.
That's when we go wrong, you know, kids now, they wanna own the land.
But don't forget the corroboree, because that's the key to the country.
(SINGS IN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
- Within Shakespeare, particularly Lear,
there is such a, kind of, cosmology and spirituality
and a sense of the mysteries of the universe,
that straight away your mind wanders
to indigenous culture and how indigenous culture works,
all the time with a foot sort of in the contemporary
and a foot in this extraordinary 60,000-year history.
- You know, they think they're cursed by their actions.
But the madness is all my making.
And when the time is right, I'm gonna hunt my brother like a kangaroo.
Bang! (LAUGHS)
Well, if none will do payback, I'll do it myself!
- Scenes in Shakespeare that are played
about family retribution...
It's actually in Lear that he sings to his children
and curses them accordingly, that's how a curse would work
in contemporary indigenous culture. - (SINGS IN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE)
- So it's an extraordinary symbiosis that's taking place between Shakespeare
and this contemporary experience as it's lived.
- It's our father. He sung us.
He cursed us both and this land we were given and that old mad cracked!
- No, we brought this on ourselves.
- At least I have my man good and proper.
You'll look after me, won't you?
- (SHOUTS)
- Tell her! Tell her the truth!
- If we tell you the abundance of our tragedies in our country,
nobody will believe us.
Using this story of Lear,
it's a reflection back to our own people.
- (ABORIGINAL CHANTING)
- We've finished now, our sad tale.
The villain, a stubborn man
who finds wisdom by listening to the rumbling of his land.
But too late.
Too... late.
- If you and me, people, are not gonna enjoy a country,
we're gonna lose it, like I lose it.
And the show becomes what it is, the story of The Shadow King.
- (ABORIGINAL CHANTING)