Indigenous actress Natasha Wanganeen will perform in The Secret River for a second time at the 2017 Adelaide Festival
STUNNING indigenous actress Natasha Wanganeen will perform in The Secret River for a second time when she returns next March to Anstey Quarry for the Adelaide Festival.
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STUNNING indigenous actress Natasha Wanganeen will perform in The Secret River for a second time when she returns next March to Anstey Quarry for the Adelaide Festival.
Wanganeen – a cousin of former AFL player Gavin Wanganeen – will this time play the mother Gilyagan in Kate Grenville’s confronting story about conflict between white settlers and black Australians.
“It’s telling both of our stories, indigenous and non-indigenous, and anything we can do to bring our stories together, I will be part of,” she said.
“I know there’s a lot of pain in there but it comes with the job.”
The State Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company co-production, adapted for the stage by Adelaide playwright Andrew Bovell, will be one of the star attractions of next year’s Festival.
In last year’s two-part ABC TV series The Secret River, Wanganeen reluctantly took on the different and more harrowing role of a woman chained as a sex slave by a merciless settler because no other black actor would.
“Everyone was saying, ‘No no no, I’m not going to put myself in that position’,” said Wanganeen. “I said, ‘OK, things are getting dire and nobody want to do it but it has to be done. You have to understand where we come from to understand indigenous rights’.”
At our photo shoot in Anstey’s Quarry, dressed by local indigenous designer Chantal Henley – another cousin – Wanganeen said performing live would intensify the emotion but it was her job as an actor to meet that challenge.