Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 04 September
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Oral storytelling has enjoyed a major resurgence in the last few years, with the massive popularity of The Moth, This American Life and even TED, and an explosion of breathless announcements about ‘the power of storytelling’.
But for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the power of storytelling is not exactly breaking news – it’s knowledge that is tens of thousands of years old. Australia has many rich oral traditions, and the endurance of these traditions to the present day says more about the value of storytelling than anything.
In 2013, the Wheeler Centre hosted a popular series of Indigenous storytelling events, co-curated by Genevieve Grieves. We’re bringing it back for one night as an intimate, entertaining bookend to our week-long Outbound series of events about life in regional Australia.
Curated and hosted, once again, by Genevieve – with new and returning guests including actor and filmmaker Pauline Whyman, elder and storyteller Larry Walsh and writer Hannah Donnelly – this night of yarns will explore the theme of country through storytelling approaches old and new.
Featuring
Genevieve Grieves
Genevieve Grieves is an Indigenous educator, curator, filmmaker, artist, oral historian, researcher and writer who has accumulated nearly 20 years experience in the arts and culture industries. She is Worimi – traditionally from mid-north coast New South Wales – but has lived and worked on Kulin Country for many years.
Genevieve has a role as a public intellectual and speaker and teaches at the University of Melbourne, where she is also undertaking her PhD.She was the lead curator of the First Peoples exhibition, Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre at the Melbourne Museum, which opened in November 2013.
Genevieve has previously worked with the Koorie Heritage Trust as an oral historian, and then on both the Mission Voices website for the ABC and as a field producer on First Australians for SBS television. She has produced a documentary called Lani’s Story.
Uncle Larry Walsh
Uncle Larry Walsh is a local Aboriginal cultural leader and storyteller. He particularly loves working with the younger generation as he sees them as the torchbearers of the future. Inspired by his local Aboriginal community, plus his own Kulin ancestral blood connections to his country, Uncle is one of the only senior Elders in Melbourne who focuses specifically on storytelling, ensuring the cultural continuity of his ancient oral traditions.
He has contributed to many organisations and cultural events over the years – Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC); the First Peoples exhibition at Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Melbourne Museum; and the Tanderrum celebration at the Melbourne Festival, to name just a few.
Uncle Larry describes himself as a pure storyteller. He sees his focus being on the oral tradition – the story as an important expression and element of Aboriginal culture. He wishes to display that Aboriginal people live in the modern world as intimately as they are connected to their past.
Hannah Donnelly
Hannah is a Wiradjuri woman from NSW who grew up on Gamilaroi country in Tingha and Inverell. She is the creator of the Sovereign Trax music blog, which aims to foreground the creation and consumption of Indigenous music ‘through our own paradigms that speak to collective stories, identities and resistance’.
Hannah is co-editor of the Sovereign Apocalypse zine focussing on emerging artists and storytellers. She also writes for Canadian Indigenous music culture website Revolutions Per Minute. Hannah’s personal work experiments with cli-fi and future imaginings of Indigenous responses to climate change, particularly through stories of our cultural flows and water management. She has worked for a number of years in Indigenous social justice at the Australian Human Rights Commission and other community-controlled organisations.
Pauline Whyman
Pauline Whyman is a proud Yorta Yorta and Kulin Nations woman.
Pauline’s work as an actor, writer and director includes verbatim theatre for La Mama’s Minutes of Evidence, proudly playing roles of the women of Coranderrk and their fight for structural justice. She played the role of Aunty Cath for the Australian/Canadian TV series Hard Rock Medical, and Miss Prism in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest for Black Swan State Theatre Company. In her Australian feature film debut, she played Skinny in Beck Cole’s feature film Here I Am.
She has dedicated much of the past 20 years to development, co-devising and performing theatre and film projects in Melbourne, Victoria and across the country. She has toured nationally and internationally, with some of her career highlights including Stolen (Ilbijerri/Malthouse Theatre), Windmill Baby (Yirra Yaarkin), Fever and Up The Ladder (Melbourne Workers Theatre), The Birthday Party (Melbourne Theatre Company) and Stolen, Blacked Up and The Cherry Pickers (Sydney Theatre Company). She has appeared in numerous TV series and short films including The Secret Life of Us, Whatever Happened To That Guy, Harry’s War and The Order.
In recent years, Pauline has begun writing and directing for stage and film. She wrote and directed an SBS-TV short film based on an event from her childhood, called Back Seat, to much acclaim.
Pauline is a two-time Victorian Indigenous Performing Arts Award recipient – ‘Bob Maza Memorial Award’ for Outstanding Contribution to Indigenous Theatre and ‘Jack Charles Award’ for Best Achievement by an Indigenous Theatre Practitioner.