Black is the New White

  PRAISE FOR NAKKIAH LUI

  “I’ve been in awe of Nakkiah since I saw her play This Heaven at Belvoir in 2013. I can’t remember a time before seeing this play where I had seen Aboriginal people represented in the present day. Quite often the plays I had performed in or watched had been retrospective, and This Heaven spoke to me as a modern Black woman. I felt seen, I felt understood. Her work continues to explore what Aboriginality is in all its dimensions. My sister is brave, because you can always tell that she has spilled her heart onto the page. She is also insanely good at comedy, and uses that to challenge the privileges that colonisation continues to give non-Aboriginal Australians. She punches up by giving nuance and humanity back to her community. I loved playing Rose in Black is the New White not only because of all the great lines she gifted me, but also having the opportunity to perform with so many talented performers of colour. There were no egos on this project because everyone loved what they were a part of. I hope that audiences who see her work take whatever the play made them feel and do something to even the playing field for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Her work makes me believe that art can change the world.” Miranda Tapsell

  “Sneakily disguised as a whacky Christmas rom-com comes this shrewd remoulding of the national chat about race in contemporary Australia. It’s as if Nakkiah shows us our conversational display home, full of all those recliner rockers we’ve always retreated to in our discussions of race identity, and begins carefully rearranging them, and then picks them up and hurls them about the stage with savage glee. What a thrilling new voice in Australian theatre.” Richard Roxburgh

  “Her writing, whether devastating or hilarious, has always shown a great deal of accessible humanity and relentless intelligence.” The Guardian

  “We needed a new David Williamson, someone who speaks to Australia and Australians now. We’ve found her in Nakkiah.” Alex Broun

  “If there is such a thing as a rockstar playwright, Nakkiah Lui is it.” Fran Kelly, ABC Radio National

  First published in 2019

  Copyright © Nakkiah Lui 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 734 1

  eBook ISBN 978 1 76087 042 3

  Cover design: Alissa Dinallo

  Internal design by Bookhouse, Sydney

  For Joan.

  For Jenny.

  For Jack.

  For Lowie.

  For Keesh.

  And most of all, for my silver lining of colonisation, Gabe.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Dramatis Personae

  Notes

  Scene 1

  Scene 2

  Scene 3

  Scene 4

  Scene 5

  Scene 6

  Scene 7

  Original cast and crew

  About the author

  FOREWORD

  I love Christmas. My family love Christmas. I have never missed a Christmas with my family. That would be akin to some kind of sacrilege. I love the excitement you get from putting up the tree, singing along to Christmas carols that you only know two lines of. I love wrapping presents and trying to curl the ribbon just right. I love shopping with my family in the overcrowded shopping centres with their too-cold air conditioning and getting a kebab from the food court. I love the smells of cooking all day and getting dressed up to not leave the house. I love watching Christmas movies from the northern hemisphere that are filled with snow and cosiness, whilst I sweat it out in front of a fan. I love being with my family. A family that is changing as we get older, new members and additions joining each year and sometimes, sadly, a loved one leaving.

  But Christmas isn’t where the play started. That’s where the play ended up. Black is the New White started as two separate conversations. The first was about love. I was having a conversation with a cousin of mine who is this fabulous young Aboriginal woman, a gorgeous and great mum, a lover of Instagram and lycra and the hashtag #yummymummy. We were talking politics (talking politics is like talking sports in my family) and for some reason love came up, and she said that communities should try to stick together, to “get bigger and better and Blacker” … her racial/political beliefs could be seen as akin to Black separatism and I didn’t necessarily agree with her (I had dated one Aboriginal person and not had much luck—they turned out to be a cousin).

  However, at the same time, both my parents are Aboriginal, same as hers, so why did she hold those beliefs and why didn’t I? I thought it was a really interesting conversation to be having with someone who, I would say, is part of this new emerging Aboriginal middle class. It was around this time that I looked at the census and discovered a surprising statistic: 74 per cent of Aboriginal people who get married marry non-Aboriginal people. We were the community most likely to marry a race outside of our own. I found this really interesting … it intrigued me as to who this 74 per cent are.

  Primarily because I was one of them. I fell in love as I started writing this play. I’d got engaged by the time it had finished. To a White man. I was part of this 74 per cent … but that really bothered me, because, to me, my love was way more than a statistic. But there it was … an overwhelming statistic that was vastly different to the trends of non-aboriginal Australians.

  That led me to investigate how my own family had shifted over the last two generations, and how this had affected their definition of class. I was really interested in how we identify ourselves in terms of our racial and cultural backgrounds, and how that intersects with class. What does it mean to be successful? Especially as Aboriginal people, when you come from a community that is so often politicised.

  I also wanted to present a family of Aboriginal people that hasn’t been seen before, not just on stage, I would say, but within the canon of Australian artistic works. That is, an Aboriginal family who have money, who are not necessarily oppressed, but are culturally quite strong. So I had the idea of putting forth that family, because, for me, that was similar to what I’ve grown up with.

  The way my family has celebrated Christmas has changed over the years: from cold meat platters at my nana’s tiny little fibro house we all crammed into before running under the sprinkler; big picnics with extended family in the local park as the kids ran around in what were called “the piddle pools”; then later, to hot meals with gourmet cuts of meat, caviar and Bellinis in the morning, swims in the pool in the afternoon; then, a “white Christmas” on the other side of the equator one year, together and loving Christmas in a foreign but familiar land.

  But all still the same in the end—with your family, bickering and happy. The evolution of my family Christmas celebrations seemed to reflect a much bigger discussion I was trying to figure out: what is it to be Aboriginal and middle class? Is that even a thing?

  That journey to middle class was fought for. The ability to have hope and love and celebration, in my heart, is because my parents, my grandparents and an
cestors fought incredibly hard against all the odds to make sure the ones who came after them would have a good life.

  And if being Aboriginal and middle class is a thing, if that’s what has happened in my family, what does it mean to have that privilege? What does it mean to be an Aboriginal person with power?

  Over the last ten years I’ve watched my parents transform into serious foodies. Just watching that happen made me want to present a family of Aboriginals drinking on stage in a way that wasn’t politicised. That in and of itself then becomes a statement. I wanted to say, “Here’s a family who are like you.” I wanted to write something that didn’t come from a place of sorrow, or from death, or from oppression, where I’d have to rehash that intergenerational trauma. This was actually about something that had hope and happiness in it.

  For me, having privilege gives you the power to be seen as a human and not just a racial identity. If I, as a kinda-middle-class Aboriginal person, could put an Aboriginal family on stage and have them be seen as people, individuals, and not just Aboriginal, if I could get the people in the audience to look at that family and say “they’re just like me”, then maybe that would be my way of creating hope for others.

  I wrote this play as I fell in love and my life changed around me, consequently changing my family’s life as well (they love their White son). My own little love story hit all the rom-com tropes: it had the “meet cute” (the serendipitous meeting of the two “destined to fall in love”, the more unusual the better), the over-the-top romantic gestures (think John Cusack standing with a boom box outside the bedroom window), it even had the coordinated dance sequence. I wanted to write something that made me as happy as my life was. I love romantic comedies. I love falling in love with characters. I love the feeling of elation that you get when you really love a story; I call it the “Tingles”. I wanted to write a play that gives you the tingles, that makes you want to laugh and dance and leaves you with those tingles as you walk out of the theatre and into your life.

  My beautiful grandmother, Joan, always used to say to me, “what can you do if you can’t laugh?” I say this to myself every day. I think laughter is the heart opening the door, and the more we can laugh, the more open and bigger our hearts get.

  Nakkiah Lui

  November 2018

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Charlotte Gibson – mid to late 20s

  Francis Smith – mid to late 20s

  Ray Gibson – mid 50s to early 60s, constantly wearing a virtual reality headset

  Joan Gibson – mid 50s to early 60s

  Rose Jones – late 20s to early 30s

  Sonny Jones – late 20s to early 30s

  Dennison Smith – mid 50s to early 60s

  Marie Smith – mid 50s to early 60s

  NOTES

  SETTING

  Sprawling expensive holiday home owned by the Gibsons, located in the bush on ancestral land.

  OVERLAPPING

  A slash (/) in a character’s line denotes where the following character’s line should begin.

  A slash (/) at the beginning of a line denotes a complete overlap with the following character’s line.

  An ellipsis ( … ) indicates a pause/silence.

  THE PLAY

  Genre: Think a Christmas play, a rom-com, and a homage to the family dramas of Australia’s past.

  I listened to Right Back Where We Started From by Maxine Nightingale a lot while writing this.

  SCENE 1

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  Lounge room and dining room adjoined in open space living. The walls are artfully adorned with family photos in expensive frames. Wrapped presents sit around the room and the remains of present wrapping paraphernalia lay around the room. Cicadas buzz. FRANCIS plays a modern, experimental classical piece on the cello.

  NARRATOR

  Many people know the name Ray Gibson, but what they don’t know is that Ray Gibson was the son of a drover. As a young boy he moved around often, and his world was safe and insular. As a teen he moved to the big smoke and all of a sudden he felt like an outsider, like he couldn’t find his place.

  This turned him into a fighter, both on the streets and in the ring. He would train in the mornings, doing speed and punching exercises, and then use what he learnt at training in the evenings: getting into punch ups and running from the coppers.

  Ray Gibson was an unhappy young man. One day Ray’s mum dragged him to church. It was at church that a nice White lady gave Ray a book. It was called Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King. This book made Ray Gibson feel like he wasn’t alone in the world.

  To Ray, the book was about hope: how the one thing mankind has is hope and it was with hope that he went forward. Inspired by the words of Dr King, Ray Gibson went forward and never turned back.

  The man you are watching is not Ray Gibson. Of course it’s not. Ray is Aboriginal. This is Francis Smith. He’s White. He is also the fiancé of Charlotte, Ray’s youngest daughter. But you see, Ray does not know this yet. In fact, no one knows this yet. But that is about to change very soon.

  Oh! And who am I? Some people call me The Narrator, but I prefer: the Spirit of Christmas.

  CHARLOTTE enters, balancing a laptop in one hand and a glass of water in the other, headphones in and having a Skype meeting.

  CHARLOTTE Yes, but that isn’t anyone’s prerogative aside from his – I said that’s not anyone’s prero … prerogative. Prerogative. Yes. That is a word. Pardon? That’s what I’ve been saying. Yes, but you’re just saying what I said a different way.

  I would be very happy to have a conversation with the minister about those changes. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, I’ve had the same conversation with all of his predecessors and his advisers, and their predecessors and their advisers … why not the man himself? Yes. Thanks. You too. Merry Christmas.

  FRANCIS stops playing. He pours CHARLOTTE a glass of wine. She hesitates, and then takes it.

  CHARLOTTE Do you ever just hate your job?

  FRANCIS No, I love my job.

  CHARLOTTE You play the cello, of course you love your job. Maybe hate is too strong a word. Maybe I mean dislike. Dislike. I dislike my job. No, I definitely mean hate.

  I hate my job.

  Franny, I hate my job.

  FRANCIS Darling, I hate when you call me Franny.

  CHARLOTTE Franny, maybe I should just give up practising law to work in a shop?

  FRANCIS I don’t know … I think it’d be pretty shit.

  CHARLOTTE Here, do me a favour and pass me the paper. Not that paper, the other one. The gold one. And the scissors. And the tape. Thank you, my darling.

  FRANCIS Who’s the blow-up pink flamingo for?

  CHARLOTTE Mum. Last year I got her a gold swan and she hated it. So this year, a pink flamingo.

  FRANCIS How passive aggressive of you.

  CHARLOTTE It’s not like that. We’re not White people. It’s just a joke. Also, you got her this.

  CHARLOTTE hands FRANCIS a box.

  FRANCIS Gypsy Water? What kind of name is Gypsy Water?

  CHARLOTTE She loves it. They only stock it in Sweden. After I casually mentioned that she had run out, you went online and ordered it for her especially.

  FRANCIS I did?

  CHARLOTTE Yes.

  FRANCIS Isn’t Gypsy Water a form of cultural appropriation? Aren’t Gypsies actually a cultural group? Weren’t you lecturing me about that the other day? I believe the precise words were: “All inequalities are connected and privilege is thinking something isn’t an issue because it’s not an issue to you.”

  CHARLOTTE … Yes. And my point that cultural appropriation is cultural colonisation still stands BUT this smells so good. And I think it’s a reference to some culture thing … of the makers … of the people … who make the scent … the perfume scent.

  FRANCIS They have Gypsies in Sweden?

  CHARLOTTE There are gypsies everywhere.

  FRANCIS You say that there’s
one living under the stairs. And am I giving the Gypsy perfume to this woman here?

  FRANCIS motions to a picture on the wall.

  CHARLOTTE Yes.

  FRANCIS Now I see where you get your looks from.

  CHARLOTTE Did you really just say that?

  FRANCIS I did.

  CHARLOTTE Disgusting. Kiss me.

  They kiss. CHARLOTTE dawdles over to get a chocolate from a box across the room and dawdles back. FRANCIS continues to look at the pictures.

  CHARLOTTE Mum was beautiful. I mean, it’s not like she isn’t now. She is, great for her age, you’ll see. Why do we say “for their age”? That’s so ageist. And sexist. Because we really only say it for women, don’t we?

  God, all these behaviours are just so ingrained in me. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. Anyways.

  That was her at her … her grad ball for nursing, I think.

  CHARLOTTE continues to wrap presents.

  FRANCIS Is this your dad and Bill Clinton?

  CHARLOTTE Oh yeah, they’re buddies.

  FRANCIS Ha. Buddies. You say that so casually.

  CHARLOTTE We call him Uncle.

  FRANCIS Really?

  CHARLOTTE Of course not. I was joking. We barely know the bloke. But please remember to try and sound as impressed as you just did when you meet my father. It’ll appeal to his ego. His huge ego.

  FRANCIS I won’t have to try.

  CHARLOTTE Aren’t you used to this stuff?

  FRANCIS My father was never as popular with the proletariat as your father was. Or popular with anyone actually.

  CHARLOTTE I bet they both just felt a chill run up their spines.

  FRANCIS Well, let’s just say we don’t have pictures of my dad and Bill Clinton around the house. Look at them. Bill and Ray. Ray and Bill. A real pair of lady killers.

  CHARLOTTE If you really want to be entertained ask Dad if he thinks Bill Clinton did it. He’ll rant for hours.