A modern-day reimagining of the bunyip legend, My Lovers’ Bones is a spine-chilling new theatrical work from acclaimed Indigenous storytellers Brown Cab Productions and will have its world premiere as part of Melbourne Festival for a limited season from 14 October 2014 at Footscray Community Arts Centre.
An Aboriginal man stumbles down a Melbourne laneway, pursued by an ancient, malevolent force. As he runs, he can feel the creature’s eyes burning through him – but is he fleeing from the fiend itself, or from the monster he fears he might become?
Inspired by the poem, The Bunyip of Bummiera by Aboriginal writer Cameron Costello, My Lovers’ Bones is a fusion of theatre, poetry, physical movement, digital projection and visceral soundscape.
The production brings together Indigenous artists Margaret Harvey (director), Anna Liebzeit (sound design / musician / composer / performer) and Kirk Page (performer) with non-Indigenous artists Alison Ross (set and costume design) and Lisa Mibus (lighting design).
Director Margaret Harvey says, “I wanted to explore the precarious balance of a man who sits at the edge of his existence and speaks of a creature, to create a piece that is visually and dramatically arresting, that pushes the edges of reality and combines the metaphysical world that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people still live in today.”
Brown Cab Productions is a Melbourne-based independent Indigenous production company, helmed by two of Melbourne’s most exciting Indigenous theatre and film practitioners, siblings Margaret and John Harvey.
The Company works across live performance and screen, producing several short dramas that have screened on ABC TV and at international film festivals including The Hunter, The Oysterman, The Chuck In, The Farm and Man Real. It also produced the chapter Sand, directed by Stephen Page as part of Robert Connolly’s The Turning – based on Tim Winton’s novel.
My Lovers’ Bones offers a hauntingly beautiful take on a myth both fearsome and misunderstood – the hunter of those who would forget the laws of the land.
My Lovers’ Bones
Footscray Community Arts Centre, 45 Moreland Street, Footscray
Season: 14 – 18 October 2014
Bookings: (03) 9362 8888 or online at: www.footscrayarts.com/event/lovers-bones
For more information, visit: www.browncabs.com or www.melbournefestival.com.au for details.
Image: Kirk Page in My Lovers’ Bones – photo by Deryk McAlpin