Posts in the Paddock

Overview

There's some hurtful stuff delved into in Posts in the Paddock, some things that are hard to talk about. Jimmy Governor is not a person on whose history it is comfortable for Australians to dwell (it's not one in which anyone really ends up looking great) and ancestral involvement cannot make it much easier. So it's admirable and brave, as well as interesting , that My Darling Patricia and Moogahlin Performing Arts have brought this story to life.

But it's not quite right to call it a story; this is not the story of Jimmy Governor or of him and his wife, or of the white and black communities in which they lived, or of the current inhabitants of the region from whom the creators of this work have sourced their history. Posts in the Paddock is not a story but a series of stories, a collection of perspectives on events leading up to the murders and the hanging that are at the centre of the story. The production, accompanied by an installation in which oral histories are projected from totems, moves between abstract and choreographed sequences and direct address to the audience. The performers negotiate and modify a fairly sparse but texturally rich set against a recorded backdrop of dialogue, song and sound, progressing from the dreamlike to the matter-of-fact in an attempt to come to terms with a past that's been mythologised.