Whose Gonna Love Em? I am that i AM.

This is a well-focused text that addresses the trauma of First Nations people in a graphic and emphatic manner. There is an explicit determination in this production to address the various aspects of this trauma: issues such as unjust incarceration, racist abuse, sexual violence, dispossession, and discrimination are all thoroughly and often viscerally addressed in this performance.

The show has a simple and direct structure with three excellent performers, Maggie Church-Kopp, Corey Saylor-Brunskill, and Maurial Spearim, working in unison to deliver the often painful and challenging content. The text provides snippets of diaglogue, brief episodes or exchanges that are decontextualized but nonetheless clear in their tragic nature. The depictions capture the raw and often horrific truths behind the different and disturbing social injustices that affect Indigenous communities. The text is sometimes delivered as a chorus or the performers echo each other’s lines, movements and gestures to create an intriguing emphasis on the various troubling emotions that are elicited.

The format is an interesting one and certainly suitable to convey the content. However, the text has some interesting scope for different ways to employ theatrical techniques and this could have been explored more. The lack of situation, character and location is sometimes too alienating for the audience and provides little opportunity for a deeply empathetic response to the material.

The music is haunting and provides a beautifully evocative accompaniment to the performance. This is a show that is not afraid to make its distress integral to its powerful and confronting oeuvre.

Patricia Di Risio 

Photograper: Jacinta Keefe