The Thousands

Redfern. Not a place named – as I long assumed – after an abundance of red coloured native flora (to my great disappointment, exclusively red ferns do not exist, but are merely a seasonal colour), but rather less poetically after the colonial surgeon William Redfern.

Sydney Festival is suggesting that a more appropriate descriptive phrase for that suburb we know so well is the ‘Black Capital’ of Australia. Black Capital is celebrating the diversity of contemporary Aboriginal theatre. I am Eora and Walk a Mile in My Shoes have already raised the bar high but for the more financially constrained (read: dirt poor) amongst us there’s still plenty of excellent (read: free) stuff on.

In the belly of that enormous concrete elephant that is Carriageworks currently reside seven caravans. Travelling Colony functions as a reversal of the history of Indigenous people being in circuses and on display. The zig-zag hand-painting of the caravans by Brook Andrew is a “mantra for the hypnotic nature of history and what we don’t know”. From the outside, there’s something of a trippy Magic Eye about them. Better still you can perch inside and listen to stories from some of Redfern’s key characters.

There’s also an exhibition across the way celebrating the 40 year legacy of the National Black Theatre at 181 Regent Street, where the playwrights Kevin Gilbert, Robert Merritt and Jack Davis were creatively birthed.

It’s all rather more interesting than a non-existent mythical fern.