In the Studio: The visitors

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

After its award winning premier in 2020, a new production of The Visitors by Indigenous playwright Jane Harrison sees us on the eve of colonisation. The first fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour on the 26 January 1788 bringing with them convicts, disease and violence. The play asks, what if we saw this moment from the Aboriginal perspective? What if they could decide whether or not to let the fleet land? As seven tribal elders watch the fleet arrive they must decide whether to stop them, or welcome them. Regina Botros follows the director Wesley Enoch, the writer Jane Harrison and the cast through the challenges of the play as it reflects, quite poignantly, the current political climate in Australia.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LiveSless Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service, bringing you extraordinary
0:05.7	personal stories from around the globe.
0:08.6	Search for LiveSless Ordinary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:13.4	Hi, I'm Regina Botras, welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.
0:22.9	The program that brings you the leading creatives reflecting our world.
0:27.7	In this case, the visitors is a play reimagining first contact and the parallels with the political
0:34.1	climate in Australia today are uncanny.
0:38.9	It's a sunny Wednesday, the 19th of July and I'm at the Sydney Theatre Company just under
0:47.4	the Harbour Bridge around from the Opera House, where this production will open in a couple
0:52.7	of months. I'm Regina, I'm with the writer and the director.
0:58.4	Longer than any marriage on that.
0:59.7	And they're working on this script.
1:01.3	I'm Jane Harrison, I'm a more a worry woman and I'm a writer and playwright.
1:06.7	So what's the idea?
1:08.6	The idea of the 26th of January, I thought that event has not been looked at from the Aboriginal
1:15.1	point of view.
1:16.1	See, last day of innocence, really, before colonisation happens and they don't have any
1:21.3	control over those events, but in my reimagining what if they did have control, what if they
1:27.9	could decide whether to let the first fleet land or not.
1:33.6	The 26th of January is Australia Day, marking the British occupation of our land.
1:39.4	It's the day Australians raise their flag and celebrate their beginnings.
1:44.3	But it often includes protests and a call for sovereignty, as it's also a reminder
	...

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