Indigenous playwright Leah Purcell to bring Aunty Ruth Hegarty’s stolen generation truth to stage

It took Leah Purcell 25 years to bring 94-year-old Aunty Ruth Hegarty’s recollection of living as a stolen generation dormitory girl to the stage. Both agree now was the only time to do so.

Leah Purcell, right, with Aunty Ruth Hegarty and actor Melodie Reynolds, who plays Ruthie in Purcell’s production. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/ QPAC

Twenty-five years ago, Indigenous playwright Leah Purcell asked Aunty Ruth Hegarty for time: let me adapt your story of living through the Stolen Generations for stage once I can do it justice.

The time has finally come.

Is That You, Ruthie? will premiere at Queensland Performing Arts Centre this weekend, recounting Dr Hegarty’s separation from her mother Ruby from 1930 to 1957, due to the government’s removal policy and her harsh life as a young woman in the dormitories at notorious Aboriginal Mission at Cherbourg, two hours west of the Sunshine Coast.

“She’s just got this amazing wealth of story,” said Purcell, a Gunggnai woman.

“We need these stories, to give us strength, determination, to keep moving forward.

“We need to know where we come from and the hardships to know that we live in a time where we’ve got it a little bit easier than those that have went before us and to keep trudging ahead to keep making change.”

Aunty ruth Hegarty and Leah Purcell share tribal links. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/QPAC

Aunty Ruth, 94, first published her award-winning first memoir in 1999, which she followed up last year with Buthalangi: A Maranoa Woman, recounting her mother’s story.

She will see the show for the first time on Saturday surrounded by her eight children, the youngest of whom is 77, and 15 descendants of other woman who lived with her in the dormitories.

Aunty Ruth shares tribal links with Purcell, and the pair agreed the story would educate audiences on a dark part of history forgotten.

“I’m the only person left now of the girls that I grew up with,” she said.

“We want people to know you know that we had no authority over our own lives. We were controlled by these people that we went to work for.

“The dormitory girls were everywhere. But they weren’t recognised and we want recognition for them.”

The two woman are tribally linked, with Purcell first meeting the formidable Aunty Ruth when researching her own stolen mother’s history.

The playwright said she had not been sleeping because of the pressure of getting the story right and expectations from family.

“It’s so big on many levels,” she said.

“The scale of the work, the importance of Aunty Ruthie, where we are as a nation now, it’s so massive. I think if I was 20 years ago, we would have got here.”

The story was always Aunty Ruth and, working with Ms Purcell, she wrote her own ending after reclaiming her identity.

Tickets are on sale through QPAC, with the play running until December 16.