SPOTLIGHT: First Nations Resident Alexis West
Alexis West takes a moment to pause and reflect on her life, memories and ties to family in this brief note as she begins her stint as a First Nations Resident with ActNow Theatre.
My Journey Somewhere... sits deep in my soul, itching my palms, scratching my spirit, tingling my hair follicles and hurting my feet whenever and wherever I tread. I'm longing to connect to my own country. I’m grateful to be here, it’s where I belong in this moment and yet… I still long... All of these feels remind me whether I sit in a doctor's waiting room, drive in a car, travel on a bus or walk amongst the trees that my connection to My Journey Somewhere continues…
As a Murri Woman here on Kaurna Country… for those of you that don’t know what that means… As a Queensland First Nations Woman, more specifically a, Birri Gubba, Wakka Wakka and South Sea Islander woman living, learning and growing here in Adelaide, Kaurna Nations I have the privilege to be supported in my ongoing creative endeavour with the support of ActNow Theatre Company to research, reflect, ruminate and write memories, poems and scenes of my personal journey and explore the cut-out memories that were stolen from me.
This exploration is a personal approach, a selfish approach, where I can wander down the pathways of my own memories, make sense of them as I look back on them as a 48-year-old woman and see how they interconnect on a human scale to others. An approach that empathetically connects me with others… helping me connect with community and what has shaped who I am… who we are…
My Journey Somewhere… is me unpacking my colonised learning… my racist, patriarchal, misogynistic and ableist mindset and helping me to re-shape who I am and what I give back artistically to enable others to question their own ways of thinking. At the very least offer something that will make people think, feel, laugh, cry and hopefully titillate… My Journey, my life so far…
As a human and artist, I am and have always been interested in connection, reconnection and disconnection. Perhaps this is what happens when you are held in the arms of your mother and then taken away to live in an orphanage for the first 9 months of life…
I am fascinated with the senses… and how memory is triggered by them.
The sense of smell
Touch
Taste
Sound
Sight…
And I’m interested in the exploration of other heightened senses if one or more is taken away…
I am wanting to build and create a work or body of works that can be accessible in some way or form for anyone… Like any journey, it is up to the traveller where and how they connect in…
As an adopted child I was chosen to be a part of a family where my white parents were unable to have children. My older brother is white, then there is me, my younger by 9 months (little-big) brother who is also South Sea Islander. He hails from Tanna Island. My ancestors are from Ambae Island. And then there is my youngest sister who was adopted into the family when I was a teen. She is disabled and as we were growing up as young teens, we fostered many other children some who were First Nation and had disability. So, I’ve grown up abled and around disability. I want to create work that my sister and other people are able to tap into somewhere and somehow and enjoy.
Like my life, some of it doesn’t make sense, a part of me wants to make sense of it and another part of me can’t be bothered… The Journey continues… I want to create a bit of some things that reflect this.
Part of this residency will be an active exploration of how to play and manifest the tangled mess into something that audience members are able to relate to even if it is just on a molecular level. I’d like the work to explore spoken word poetry, snippets of theatre, vignettes of film, soundscapes, an exploration of touch and smell…
Close your eyes and imagine a hot, humid day, the sun beats down on the hospital like an orphanage. You can feel the oppressive heat. The floors are cleaned, it smells like bleach, hospital-grade clean sheets, ethanol, baby powder, carnation milk, baby poo and baby spew.
The sounds of children crying, murmuring, gurgling, giggling. Magpies warble outside the window. The whir of a fan. Sound of nurses or are they nuns walking down halls.
I want to re-create stations or installations to feel these sensory memories.
This is my story and yet it connects to so many who have been stolen. So many who have been removed. So many who have had the experience of being a ward in a hospital. What triggers your memory? What did this snippet of my experience make YOU feel? How does this connect us? Does it connect us? Does this repel you?
Part of this Journey is the playing around of this.
Playing on the floor with my fellow colleagues and artist family as well as engaging with a mentor to keep me accountable, learn me and listen to my audio processing.
This work, this undertaking, quite frankly terrifies me AND also thrills me…
2020 and 2021 are years of reflection. A time where inequities are being spotlighted, filmed and shared for all to see. A time where it is imperative for each and every one of us to take personal responsibility to partake in Anti-racism which will then proactively lean into healing of self, kin and especially Country.
This is my time to do this.
This is my Journey Somewhere...
A Journey that is deeply personal.
I feel beyond blessed and grateful that I am able to undertake these imaginings and doings in the safe space that is Act Now Theatre.
Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this First Nations Residency.