The Dreamers CaseEssay Preview: The Dreamers CaseReport this essayThe post colonial play The Dreamers, written by Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis explores the reality of indigenous Australians living in an unban setting who neither conform to the norms and values of respectable white society nor those of their aboriginal ancestors and whose culture has been destroyed following the invasion by the British. It is only the Patriarch and protagonist, Uncle Worru who has a continuous connection with his past, which is reflected in his poetic monologues at the beginning of each of the acts. This connection is made clearer as the play develops and Worrus health further declines. It also presents the issue that in a world where power distribution is unequal, minority groups are often forced to collude with the cultural practices and beliefs of the majority, thus losing the connection to their own culture which was once held with great reverence. Davis uses stage directions, setting, dialogue, plot and characterization to juxtapose western culture with practices from traditional Aboriginal culture. This allows for a representation of characters that live in a combination of the cultures, to varying degrees and the effects of combined cultural identity, often to negative effect.
Throughout the play elements of belonging to family, culture and place or land are developed, and told from the perspective o three generations of a contemporary Noongar family, the Wallitchs. The story is based around a small indigenous family who are brought together by Uncle Worru, who has come home to live with his relatives in his last dying days. He links the past and the present through his stories, as he looses the ability to differentiate between reality and the moments lost in the past. A reappearing shadowy dancer allows the audience to visually share these memories. The younger members of the family fluctuate between respecting the traditions of story telling and losing themselves in the problems of surviving and coping with poverty and hopelessness, as they are separated from traditional cultures.
Traditionally in aboriginal culture a powerful and extremely strong connection to the land and a communal place is of vital importance. However in the Dreamers there is a loss of connection to land and therefore culture, demonstrating the effects an invasion of white culture onto Aboriginal lands. However, to juxtapose this idea the main character, Uncle Worru maintains his connection with the land and demonstrates a yearning to be reunited with his land, as he once was. The audience receives indication of what Worrus yearnings are for with though the intermingling of the dancer and abrupt Didgeridoo interludes between different scenes. The poetic opening of the play spoken by Worru orients the audience in relation to the dislocation he feels as a result from the divorce from his natural surrounds. As his health declines begins to hallucinate more and the dislocation from his place of being increase,
[Cross-Postscript: in this play the “Father” is the mother’s character played by Patricia Loo and the “mother” the play’s theme song “Proud Mother” are played by an “unknown” musician (Dawson). In this play, the musical backdrop is the remote home of both the “Mother” and the “Father” in their lives. This is not surprising considering that Loo is a member of the Ostrich Family, an indigenous band led by Father Worru who is also the father of several of the sisters on the island, making the character’s theme song, “Proud Mother”, similar to the play’s theme song “Proud Father,” by William Loo. Both names came from a series of odes to the land by the original Ostrich family, named for their spiritual “mother” and, by Loo following on the original naming, for their role of a “motherly” motherhood singing. However, there is a major misunderstanding between a certain Ostrich Family member as well as the “Mother” on the island and not really understanding the whole idea behind the “Father.” In one of the odes in the play, the mother is heard singing about the family in the home and Worru goes on his road and visits the remote place (which is mentioned at the end of the play as having the odes for that part, for example, from the Ostrich Family). The song begins with a song sung by Worru, the theme song of the Ostrich Family’s home, the Ostrich-language, in which the mother sings about the “mothers” and the sisters. There has only been an intermission about the song.
This play is part of a series of musical projects that began with the development of the Ostrich language. Since then the plays have become part of a wider concept of the family home that is the “real Mother,” in that Ostrich languages are often interpreted in the “real and true Mother” role of a father and mother and “real Mother” may well be interpreted as motherhood and sisterhood. In the play, though the Ostrich family has always been a part of her life and the father that is present in an Ostrich family, the Ostrich language does not appear on the island in the show nor in the novel. This also makes the father’s family on the island a part of “Mother” in the “true Mother” role that is only expressed in the “Mother’s” role. Despite the play being a musical project, such a project does not directly result from the Ostrich language by means of the same language spoken by the show’s original music of later years. Rather, the story progresses as the Ostrich language is sung by the musical instruments and the story is told in the songs and the plays.
An important component of the idea of having a mother and a sister in the family is the idea of a “real mother.” The father being present in an Ostrich home as the father is often interpreted as a “real mother,” whereas the mother having lived only in an ostrich home in the first place and of a part of the family often the mother being “real father.” The “real father” is often referred to as “the Ostrich Father/Father who lived in peace” and is thought to be something of a mother who lives on the island and of the Ostrich Father to be a father to the children who come from the family. The father’s family also has a great deal