‘So hungry for something beyond four walls’: The musical bringing joy to prisons

Ilbijerri’s musical about the Warumpi Band – the first Australian rock act to release a record with lyrics in native language – has had rave reviews since its debut at the Sydney Festival in January (it has also played the Darwin and Brisbane festivals and Melbourne’s Rising). But the present tour of 16 prisons, including a handful of maximum-security facilities, is bringing Big Name, No Blankets its most appreciative audience yet.

“They are the most phenomenal experiences,” says Rachael Maza, artistic director of the country’s leading First Nations theatre company. “The people inside are just so hungry for something beyond those four walls. For a moment, we transport them out of that place, and it’s such an incredible, joyful thing.”

The show tells the story of the band from their start in Papunya in 1980 – with George Burarrwanga on vocals and didgeridoo, Gordon Butcher Tjapanangka on drums, brother Sammy Butcher Tjapanangka on guitar and bass guitar, and Neil Murray, a white schoolteacher, on rhythm guitar and backing vocals – through their highs (touring Europe, playing with Midnight Oil, the singles Blackfella Whitefella and My Island Home, multiple ARIA award nominations) and their lows.

It all started over a cup of tea, when Maza asked Anyupa Butcher, who is Sammy’s daughter and had moved from Alice Springs to work at Ilbijerri, if she had any ideas for a show. “And she was like, ‘Oh, I’m already working on one, about the Butcher brothers’. And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. What did they do?’ – I’m such a knobhead – and she goes, ‘Warumpi Band’. I was like, ‘What the hell’.”

The cast of Big Name, No Blankets performing inside a Victorian prison. Credit: Tiffany Garvie

In 2021, Maza approached Hamish Balnaves, head of the Balnaves Foundation, for support to develop the project. But Balnaves, whose philanthropic trust has a special interest in both First Nations-focused projects and the arts, had a better idea: a tour of prisons, where the Indigenous population is massively over-represented.

(Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders account for roughly 3.2 per cent of Australia’s population, but 33 per cent of prison inmates; in the Northern Territory, where just over a quarter of the population is Indigenous, they account for more than 88 per cent.)

“I thought of Johnny Cash playing in prisons in the US, and thought this would be an awesome piece for something similar,” says Balnaves. “And when I mentioned it to Ilbijerri I found out they had done prison tours with other pieces, so it was a perfect fit. They knew what they were doing, and they were keen to do it.”

Ilbijerri’s previous prison shows had been specifically educational in nature. But this, says Maza, is different.

“It’s not a deeply political work. It’s just a huge celebration of blackness in all its glory, of what Warumpi represents – whitefellas and blackfellas celebrating Australia’s black story. It’s such a powerful message if we’re trying to think about a way forward.”

Warumpi co-founder Sammy Butcher with daughter Anyupa Butcher, right, and Rachael Maza.Credit: Edwina Pickles

The show that is touring prisons in Victoria and the NT (with other states hopefully to follow) is a slightly scaled-back, hour-long version of the main-stage production, a response to the challenges of getting visitors into and out of prisons. But it’s still a 10-person exercise. And with no ticketing revenue, without a benefactor willing to fund the wages and travelling expenses, it simply couldn’t happen.

Whatever the costs, the returns are there on the faces, and the comments, of the inmates who see the show, says Baykkali Ganambarr, who plays Sammy Butcher.

Chatting after a run-through in Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre the day before the first gig in the big house, Baykkali confessed to being “quite nervous” at what lay ahead. But a few days later, Ganambarr – who hails from the Elcho Islands and won the Venice Film Festival award for best young actor for The Nightingale in 2018 – says the first round of prison shows went perfectly. Almost.

“It was hard to crack the inmates, get them into the vibe, at first,” he says. “But halfway through the show we started to notice them laughing, smiling, and they even started dancing. It was really hard to make these fellas move, but at the end of the day they got into it.”

For all that, it’s a celebration of the band’s music, and what can be achieved when black and white work together with mutual respect, Big Name, No Blankets is also a tale of competing priorities.

Hamish Balnaves, chief executive of the philanthropic Balnaves Foundation.Credit: James Brickwood

The band reached its professional peak around 1987 (versions played on for another decade or so), but for the Butcher brothers the call of home proved too strong to resist. And that is the story the show sets out to tell.

“Yes, the music was important, but not at the expense of family and community,” says Maza. “Everybody knows Neil Murray, he’s written books and done lots of media and publicity, but you don’t ever get to hear the black side of the story.

“That was Anyupa’s principal aim,” she adds, “to honour her fathers and their extraordinary contribution with this band, as cultural men who ultimately would prioritise family and being on country over being a famous rock star.”

The story resonates with the prison audiences, which are principally (though not exclusively) First Nations. But so does the simple fact that for once, something good is happening to them inside those four walls.

“All the good things we know and love about the arts and how it gives colour to everything in life is multiplied by 100 for them,” says Balnaves. “They’re in a stale, negative, controlling, depressing environment, disconnected from family and community, and all the positive effects of the arts are just amplified with a moment of joy.”

The original Warumpi Band: Neil Murray, Gordon Butcher, Sammy Butcher, George Rurrambu.Credit: Pat O’Neil/RCA

And for Maza, it’s hopefully just the start of something much bigger.

“Seeing the humanity in those faces, instantly I’m like, ‘OK, what other shows have we got that we’ve now got to take inside?’,” she says. “I can see it’s really important that we keep this work up.”

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