Subsequent scenes entail Nev and Jem having a Las Vegas style wedding as Elvis and Priscilla, while Harvey becomes a firebrand political leader or agitator. After Skylab whooshes past close above the house, in Act Two the characters get the ability to make their dreams come true, thereby moving the performance into a more fantastic mode. These are the evocative themes which Reynolds-Diarra and director Kyle Morrison have to work with, and while the script has undergone considerable dramaturgical development since appearing at the 2015 Yellamundie National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Playwriting Festival, the current version from Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company and Black Swan State Theatre Company is still something of a shaggy dog.Īct One is largely played straight, in a naturalistic manner, presenting the audience with the domestic dramas of roustabout and small farm owner Nev (Alan Little), his partner Jem (Laila Bano Rind), their three children (Eva Bartlett, Donnathia Gentle and Jacob Narkle), and their uncle Harvey (Gary Cooper) – the last of whom lives in a corrugated iron shed out the back. ![]() Reynolds-Diarra’s decision to cast her skyward-gazing protagonists as a financially challenged Indigenous family further opens up rich possibilities for reading the descent of Skylab as a metaphor for the Australian colonial experience and the Aborigines’ points of view. Skylab stories still make for a good yarn today, and the topic has all the makings of a great piece of theatre. Like playwright Melodie Reynolds-Diarra, I too switched between ABC’s screening of the cult children’s television show Monkey Magic to hear where the next fragment of Skylab might show up. ![]() ![]() The break-up of NASA’s Skylab space station as it fell through the atmosphere and across large expanses of south western Australia was one of the great media events of the 1970s. Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA
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