%0 Journal Article
%T Where Campfires Used to Gleam¡ª a Collage of Bipolar Dreaming in Davis¡¯ Aboriginal Theatre
%A Sibendu Chakraborty
%J Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
%D 2010
%I Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
%X Jack Davis¡¯ preoccupation with an aboriginal sense of experience as symbolized through uncle Worru¡¯s characterization in The Dreamers, is thought to have been sparked off by a mysterious man named Jack Henry, whose nostalgia was embittered and angered by what he considered to be the end of the golden age. Davis¡¯ own experience at the Moore River Settlement and his angst at having been forced to overlook the Noongar culture and tradition are snowballed into a representation of wisdom bordered on the edge of eccentricity. Uncle Worru¡¯s strong evocation of a poetic, almost archaic, wish-fulfilling past is thus addressed in terms of his dream-time stories. This paper tries to locate the significance of the dream-time stories in consolidating the theme of protest. The question is: how far successful is uncle Worru in acting out the role of Davis¡¯ spokesman? Uncle Worru¡¯s scheme of looking back at his past endeavors and success needs to be weighed against the younger generation¡¯s instinctive habit of dreaming forward into the future. The sense of false securities embodied through uncle Worru¡¯s dreaming backward in time necessarily comes in clash with the later generation¡¯s habit of dreaming forward. The dilution of the theme of protest thus gets enmeshed in the whirlpool of cultural abnegation. Davis¡¯ ¡°syncretic theatre¡± distils the elixir of dreams polarized on the chronological separation between past and present.
%K Nyoongar culture
%K bipolar dreaming
%K dreamtime stories
%K cultural amnesia
%K syncretic theatre.
%U http://rupkatha.com/V2/n2/JackDavisAboriginalTheatre.pdf