Black Rights Activist Foley Dissident Narrative Set to Challenge
21-Sep-2011WORLD PREMIERE
PRESENTED BY MELBOURNE FESTIVAL IN ASSOCIATION WITH SYDNEY FESTIVAL
FOLEY (Australia)
ILBIJERRI THEATRE COMPANY
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."
Gary Foley
Political agitator Gary Foley presents a swag of stories from a life lived in the spirit of resistance. From the frontlines of black activism to the halls of mainstream culture, he presents a colourful personal history and a dissident narrative of an Australian half-century.
For more than forty years, Foley
has been deeply involved in the continuing struggle against foreign invasion. As activist, academic and actor, he’s been one of the key figures in ensuring that the Aboriginal experience is not written out of this land’s history. Having spent decades spinning the yarns of black Australia, both past and present, he now uses his well-honed skills as trouble-maker, teacher and teller of tales to bring his experiences to the stage.
Entertaining and challenging, Foley is as much a personal narrative as it is an account of an untold Australian history. From land rights to native title, from treaty to reconciliation, from the referendum to the embassy, from black power to black pride, Foley, with characteristic dark humour, chronicles his life and times in an engrossing tale of resistence and tenacity.
Directed by Rachael Maza Long, Foley promises to be an explosive event that weaves his extraordinary life around the major events that have shaped modern Australia.
Gary Foley was born in northern New South Wales, of Gumbainggir descent. He has been at the centre of major political activities including the 1971 Springbok tour demonstrations, the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972, the Commonwealth Games protest in 1982, and the protests during the 1988 bicentennial celebrations.
Foley was involved in the formation of Redfern's Aboriginal Legal Service (in Sydney) and the Aboriginal Medical Service in Melbourne and has been the Director of the Aboriginal Arts Board and the Aboriginal Medical Service Redfern. He has been a senior lecturer at Swinburne College in Melbourne, consultant to the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody and a board member of the Aboriginal Legal Service.
He was born in northern New South Wales, of Gumbainggir descent. He has been at the centre of major political activities including the 1971 Springbok tour demonstrations, the Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972, the Commonwealth Games protest in 1982, and the protests during the 1988 bicentennial celebrations.Ilbijerri Theatre Company is the longest-running Indigenous theatre company in Australia. From the breakthrough production of Stolen, commissioned in 1992, to Jack Charles v The Crown at last year’s Melbourne Festival, the Company has toured nationally and internationally, finding resonance and critical acclaim with Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences alike.
Contains Coarse Language
Venue: the Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio
Dates: Previews Fri 7 & Sat 8 Oct at 7.45pm; Tue 11 – Sat 15 Oct at 7.45pm & Thu 13 & Sat 15 Oct at 2pm
Duration: 1hr 20min no intervalTickets: Priced from $25 - $45
Bookings: the Arts Centre 1300 182 183 / Ticketmaster 1300 723 038 / melbournefestival.com.au
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