Hamilton star Shaka Cook honours Indigenous culture as he pursues acting dream

A year ago Indigenous actor Shaka Cook had never performed in a musical. Next week he farewells Sydney for Melbourne after a successful run of hit stage show Hamilton.

In 2010, Shaka Cook spent 10 weeks living deep in the Australian bush for his initiation, an important rite of passage as an 18-year-old Indigenous man.

Just three days after finishing he switched his focus to another life-changing challenge – surviving the bright lights of Sydney while thriving as a student at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).

Worlds apart, yet both experiences have played a critical role in the launch of a young man with a huge dream – to make it as an actor, represent his people, and inspire anyone who dares to dream big.

As a proud Innawonga and Yindjibarndi man, Cook’s heritage runs strongly through his veins.

He grew up in the small Wakathuni community, 25km from the nearest mining town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and more than 3500km from Sydney.

Actor Shaka Cook stars in the hit musical Hamilton. Picture: Tim Hunter

Cook, now 30, is proud of where he came from and the fact it’s shaping where he’s going.

“Initiation means you become a man in the eyes of the people and you gain the responsibility of being a man. It definitely changes you because you have this massive responsibility now to keep your tradition and culture alive, to take care of your people well and to respect the people and teach your people,” he says.

“I was out in the bush for 10 weeks, sleeping on a really thin swag and three days after that is when I moved to Sydney for the first time.

“All I had on me was three pairs of jeans, three green shirts and a pair of cowboy boots that weren’t even mine, I found them in the bush.

“My hair was like a messy bush, and I was three weeks late for school so I had so much to catch up on. Being out in the bush for that long, you’re speaking a mixture of English and other languages, so when I came to Sydney I had to adapt to formulating my sentences with just English.”

He also had to get reaccustomed to sleeping on a mattress, the very best part of arriving in Sydney after 10 weeks in the bush, he jokes.

Cook enrolled at NIDA having first graduated from the Aboriginal Performance course at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in 2009.

And since graduating from NIDA in 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting), he hasn’t looked back.

From left: Nathaniel Dean, Shaka Cook and Marcus Corowa in The Secret River. Picture: Shane Reid

Credits range from critically acclaimed feature film The Flood (2020), to touring with Sydney Theatre Company’s The Secret River to London’s National Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival in 2019, and the television series Cleverman (2016-17).

And for the past 12 months, he has been making a huge impact in the dual roles of politicians James Madison and Hercules Mulligan (fourth president of the United States) in the hit musical Hamilton.

It might be his first musical theatre gig but the young man who arrived in Sydney with little more than the clothes he was wearing has well and truly made his mark.

NIDA’s Indigenous consultant Rhoda Roberts says opportunities for Indigenous performers have come a long way and there’s an extraordinary time ahead for a new wave of young talents like Cook.

More notable recent Indigenous NIDA graduates to watch are Ari Maza Long and Mema Munro. Maza Long wraps a season in At What Cost, at Belvoir, tomorrow, while Munro is about to start rehearsals for a touring production of Black Cockatoo with the Ensemble Theatre.

“I think the more people understand our philosophy of who we are and why we want to tell the story, Australians are going to own it because that’s what makes it so different to the rest of the world,” Roberts says.

Shaka Cook says his Indigeneous culture is a part of who he is. Picture: Tim Hunter

The current groundswell of work for Indigenous artists across every aspect of the creative industry can be traced back to the 1970s and ’80s when Roberts was running an Aboriginal theatre company at the time called the National Aboriginal Theatre Trust.

After seeing a clear disparity of work opportunities, the first National Black Playwrights conferences were established, with pioneer writers Kevin Gilbert and Jack Davis among others who started to mentor a second wave of talent, which led to an explosion in film and musicals.

“Now we are seeing more and more people go to Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and NIDA to get the craft,” Roberts says.

“It’s shifting all the time and for our young artists now, this is the perfect time.

“There are still challenges but it is the perfect time for these expressions, and I think the industry is a bit braver with what they want to see. Our next challenge is, OK, we have seen all the pretty, nice things, now we have to start the serious truth telling.”

Cook in the production of Hamilton.

Working with the likes of Hamilton producer Michael “brilliant, bloody beautiful” Cassel on showcasing talents such as Cook is the tip of the iceberg for the industry, and for audiences.

“It’s fabulous to see our artists being engaged in that mainstream media,” Roberts says.

“Being Aboriginal – our people, our nation – is who we are.

“So before I’m a woman, I’m Aboriginal – then I’m a woman. It’s just our DNA and I don’t think we realise how much of that is in us and now we are able to express it.”

Cook sees parallels between his own initiation and coming of age and the story of founding US father Alexander Hamilton as retold in the hit musical which has its last show at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre on February 27 before the cast head to Melbourne in March.

“You go out into the world and you try to thrive and not prosper for yourself but for generations to come. It’s all about taking care of your people and Hamilton does that in the show,” he says.

“You see it, when he’s thinking about what’s best for the country now, and then how do we make this country great and that’s what’s beautiful about it.”

Cook went through his initiation with his older brother and says when he has kids they too will go through the traditional ceremonies, learning their customs through experience, so shared knowledge and history will live on.

“It’s the only way to be seen as a man in the eyes of our people,” he explains.

“The things you learn, a lot of it you can’t speak of because it’s sacred but it’s a massive responsibility. It is ancient history that you’re taught out there and none of it has changed because we are very strict that it had to be done a particular way, had to be sung a particular way.

“A lot of things make more sense because you can see the connections, because you have a piece of the puzzle that you never had growing up. It’s an incredible experience and a beautiful experience and it changes you, for the better.”

Cook, aged 18, with his brothers and mother. Picture: Supplied

Performing has also changed Cook for the better but, like Sydney, it is worlds away from what he thought his future held.

He first discovered a love of performance in dance, forming a dance group with his friends as a teenager, and spent his school holidays in workshops led by the Black Swan Theatre Company in Karratha, a four-hour drive from home.

“I spent a couple of years growing up on a horse station called Five Mile, and then we moved further inland and I was a very shy kid growing up. It wasn’t until about Year 10 that I started to gain a bit of confidence and do stuff,” he says.

“Me and my friends had a dance crew in high school, which was what got us into the performing arts.

“We had a great mentor in Michael Leslie, who is this amazing human, and Indigenous man who’s done so much for Indigenous people in the performing arts.

“He had a massive role in opening that door to the arts for me. From there, I didn’t want to go to university and I was done with exams after high school, I was done with writing essays, I knew I didn’t want to get a law degree, so I thought I’d see what the arts had to offer.”

He did a one-year Aboriginal theatre course at WAAPA after high school which gave him a better understanding of what acting was.

Part of the course was auditioning for a mainstream performing arts school, so he decided to audition for both WAAPA and NIDA.

But then, having been accepted into NIDA, he had a big decision to make.

“I didn’t want to get in because I wanted to take my year off,” Cook laughs.

“But I had this principle where I would always take any opportunity that came my way, even if I didn’t want to, or was afraid to.

“So I was like ‘Damn it, now I have to choose’. So I graduated from NIDA, went out and got my first job with Sydney Theatre Company doing puppetry in Storm Boy.

“I got to work with director John Sheedy and then he gave me my first acting role in theatre, which was Jasper Jones in 2014.

Cook with horse Ella in a behind-the-scenes picture while filming The Flood in 2019. Picture: Supplied

“My career slowly started to build which was amazing, and I got used to the city life, which was a massive change for me.

“Luckily I was able to live in Perth for one year which gave me a taste of what the city was and then I came to Sydney to study at NIDA and caught my first train at the age of 19.”

For a performer passionate about breaking down barriers and stereotypes, Hamilton is a good fit for his first professional musical theatre role.

Producer Cassel says finding a richly diverse Australian cast in both background and ability was essential to the show’s creative team.

“Shaka is an absolute unique talent within the theatre community,” Cassel says.

“He had never performed in a musical, let alone sung professionally, however he burst into auditions like he bursts on to the stage in the show, with such thunderous energy and natural charisma.

“When casting a show, finding people like Shaka is always incredibly exciting and rewarding as a producer.

“I find it is my job to create opportunities and make space for new people, new talents and new faces. And I also find as audiences, we love to see new faces and to see ourselves and our communities represented on our stages and our screens. Certainly, Hamilton is a true testament to that.”

Off stage, Cook is still adjusting to the faster pace of life in the city.

But unlike many Sydneysiders, he has been loving the recent stormy weather La Nina has brought – especially the lightning – because they don’t get a lot of rain where he’s from.

“I’m a bush kid, and I think it’s always important to never forget where you come from,” he says.

“I grew up in country. A lot of my childhood was going out bush, camping, hunting, eating traditional food, practising our traditional culture.

“Sydney was a whole new world to learn and survive in.

“But you do miss home, you do miss family. Right now, having been here for over a year (with Hamilton), I’m definitely missing camping trips, bush food, fresh food, missing the family but what makes it worth it is I know why I’m doing this.

“Doing this is worth it because they get to see me do something and be proud of it and it gives them a boost of confidence as well.”

Shaka Cook at his Year 12 graduation at Tom Price Senior High School with his parents. He was the first person in his family to graduate from high school. Picture: Supplied

Hamilton has given Cook his own hit of confidence and the people he bounces off love learning about his heritage as much as he likes talking about it.

“It feels incredible and I almost have to pinch myself to be like ‘oh snap, I’m in this musical’ because I knew nothing about the show until I got the audition, and it was completely out of my comfort zone,” he says.

“I didn’t know the impact it had on the world until they made the cast announcement in Australia and I was like ‘oh, the show is that big’ and it allowed me to be humbled by the scope of it. To be part of it and bring it to Australia was just incredible.

“For the whole world to be in a pandemic and for us to be the only (Hamilton production) able to put a show on stage while the rest were on standby was an incredible feeling. To be carrying that torch for them around the world.

“It’s been a wild ride and I’ve made some great friends.

“You know, we’re all humans and everyone’s different no matter where you go. But there are so many similarities too.

Shaka Cook at the opening night cast party of Hamilton Australia’s premiere in Sydney in 2021. Picture: Supplied

“Even in this show, I’m teaching people bits of my language – a really cool phrase or something where song lifts someone up – and I’m doing that so I can maintain my connection to my culture and constantly talking with my family, older brother, my grandmother and everyone.

“It’s just who I am.

“There’s no switch to turn that on or off and who I am is my culture, my tradition. It’s just part of being me, and constant, so I can never forget it.

“I’m pretty blessed to grow up not having to go and find myself. I always had everything around me that told me who I am.

“Going to acting school – I knew who I was, and it allowed me to know the reason why I was there and it was amazing.

“And then doing something like this show, I’m representing my people and hopefully giving hope to the people who have that fight in them as well.

“Not just Indigenous Australians, but all people who feel something seems like it’s an impossible reach to get to.

“I just simply want to make the impossible possible.”

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