JUTE Theatre Company’s award-winning First Nations residency program, Dare to Dream, hits the road this month, touring the Far North and Cape with, I Gut this Feeling, an engaging new theatre work to empower young people with knowledge for building safer communities.
Commissioned by JUTE Theatre Company as part of its Dare to Dream Safer Children, Safer Communities initiative, I Gut this Feeling by Isaac Drandic blends a compelling narrative with First Nations storytelling to form the centrepiece of a residency program bound for the remote communities of Mossman, Weipa, Mapoon, Lockhart River, and Normanton.
The production is clever, comical, and entertaining. Drandic has created it to engage and educate young and old audiences who rarely have opportunities to access or participate in theatrical arts expression.
Delivered by an all-new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cast and crew, stage/tour manager Serena Thompson and actors Jamaylya Ballangarry-Kearinsand Maurice Sailor, I Gut this Feeling is a two-hander touring show for students ranging from Grade 4 to Grade 9 and featuring a creative mix of fantastical fairytale characters, is a modern-day parable about ‘staying safe’.
I Gut this Feeling presents Djirra (played by Jamaylya Ballangarry-Kearins), a young girl trying to return home through a strange world safely. Along the way, Djirra meets some very odd creatures, a crafty water spirit who tries to lure her to the water’s edge, a roaring Hairyfella who seems so scary but maybe he isn’t and a peculiar old cook who is making stew in the middle of nowhere with crazy ‘secret’ ingredients. Djirra even gets messages from a little lizard; they all have advice for her, but who to trust?
At each community visited, the five-week, 4-day theatre residency program – (daily workshop sessions) for up to 20 young people (Grades 4 to 6 primary and 7 to 9 secondary) offers a fun and exciting environment to learn leadership, confidence, teamwork, acting, and creating performance skills. The artists/facilitators structure the residencies to align with theatre stagecraft, show themes that plug into the Australian curriculum and culminate at an end-of-week showcase, at which students present their residency experiences to peers and the school community.
This is an event the students embrace, and while giving voice to personal experiences, it successfully reinforces the play’s themes. JUTE Theatre Company’s Creative Producer Monica Stevens said Dare to Dream was established in 2016 to support, involve and inspire Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to express themselves and their aspirations through theatre.
“Embracing the heuristic spirit of Dare to Dream’s residency program, I Gut this Feeling is a culmination of everything Dare to Dream stands for, primarily the positive impact theatre can make on the lives of young people in remote centres,” Ms Stevens said.
According to JUTE Theatre Company’s Artistic Director and CEO, Suellen Maunder, Dare to Dream is a program about people and organisations working together to influence change.
“There is just so much opportunity for JUTE to make an important contribution in this way, but as you can imagine, the resources and expenses involved with touring are significant,” JUTE Theatre Company’s Artistic Director and CEO, Suellen Maunder, said.
“We are always on the lookout for like-minded organisations and corporate citizens who will collaborate with JUTE and help us do more.
“Organisations like Westpac, Energy Queensland are prime examples of how working together we can do something great,” Ms Maunder said.
I Gut this Feeling 2023 Touring Dates:
· 22/5/2023 – 26/05/2023 Mossman
· 29/5/2023 – 02/06/2023 Weipa
· 5/6/2023 – 09/06/2023 Mapoon
· 12/6/2023 – 16/06/2023 Lockhart River
· 19/6/2023 – 23/06/2023 Normanton
To date, JUTE Theatre Company’s Dare to Dream series has presented Proppa Solid (2016 and 2017), Bukal (2018), The Longest Minute (2019), Back on Track (2021 & 2022) and Get Your Geek On (2021).
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