An Indigenous Trilogy Act III: Some Secrets Should Be Kept Secret

ACT III of An Indigenous Trilogy is currently performed as a rehearsed reading at La Mama Courthouse.

Some Secrets Should Be Kept Secret is a gripping gothic tale written, performed, and directed by Glen Shea. It harks back to Act One, when our chief narrator Peter (Glen Shea) sits in solitude in country by his campfire, reminiscing in his own dream time as a person of the Stolen Generation - about a place he learnt to call home.

Peter is an omnipresent character - he sits at the heart of the tale and recoils and uncoils his experiences, his thoughts, his secrets via the ghostlike people that he owns, secrets that he keeps to himself, secrets that are only disclosed in his personal dreamtime world.

His adoptive mother, now deceased, has called upon the family members to return to the homestead via a letter she penned before her death. His siblings Mathew (Brodie Murray) and Camille (Lucy Payne) reminisce - they belong to Peter’s secret life, and he sits by the campfire in country, a place where he can rest and dream.

Mrs Margie (Nicole Nabout) the housekeeper and Michael (Syd Brisbane) the father are allusive ghostly characters and double up as ticket collectors on a train heading somewhere (maybe nowhere); they taunt Peter in reverie. He knows the truth, and is comforted by Aboriginal lore.   

The eagle calls high above, a symbol of power and strength; a makeshift chorus (Shea, Nabout, Brisbane) call out in an indigenous dialect, “We will do what we wanna do when we wanna do it”. They pronounce “No Sacred Fires” like dictum, punctuated separately, claim “no lore”, “no family”, “no ceremonies”. Peter has learnt to bond with country and his ancestry - it offers him solace and Hope.

Shea, a majestic visionary, has taken his audience on an amazing indigenous journey; he the “creator of creation” has offered a magnificent spine-chilling yet revelatory true to life  indigenous story.

Flora Georgiou