Liza-Mare Syron talks about her early life and how she became involved in theatre studies, partly through her relationship with her father’s uncle, Brian Syron, who was a well-known and highly respected theatre teacher. In 1990 she identified as an Aboriginal actor which her training had not prepared her for. She realised she didn’t understand much about her culture and that working in an Aboriginal context is very different.
Liza-Mare’s future research, writing and theatre studies focused on artistic practice in contempo-rary Aboriginal theatre, actor training and the Indigenous student experience. She is recognised as a much awarded and leading Indigenous actor, teacher, public servant and academic.
In this excerpt she discusses different practices employed by Indigenous people when making theatre
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At drama school you’re taught skills and methods, but those skills and methods within an Aboriginal context are just skills and methods. There’s a way of working with Aboriginal people together, that I found was very different. The skills and methods that you learn in drama school aren’t necessarily things that are going to provide you with a way of working in an Aboriginal context. I think what I’ve come to know over many, many years is that it’s Aboriginal people together that create the context. When working with Aboriginal people on making theatre is when the process and the practices become something else. I mean that’s the area of my study now because it’s not necessarily always easily articulated. So really what I’ve been trying to do over many, many years is try and in some way get it down as a practice that’s unique and that has its own processes that are different from the way, say, non-Aboriginal people make theatre. It’s still within a theatre context, yes, but it’s different, because you’re negotiating heritage and cultural heritage during that process, and there are certain protocols around doing that, and there are also certain things and ways of navigating that that are different.
