Derek Nannup's connection with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company goes back to its early days as an Aboriginal youth theatre project, where he taught circus skills in workshop programs. He considers the theatre company his family and cherishes memories of his daughter Shaquita growing up in that environment.
“All the parents who worked in the theatre, while we’re workshopping a new show, our kids would be running around in the theatre, playing with the costumes and dressing up,” recalls Derek, a Whadjuk Noongar man. “She would come to the workshops, and she could play the theatre games with me, dummy in mouth . . . She was definitely a daddy’s girl. She’s my baby, and she’ll always be my baby, no matter how old.”
Fast forward a few decades, and Derek—who also worked as a clown doctor, Dr Munjong, at Princess Margaret Hospital—now leads cultural tours as an eco education officer at Yanchep National Park, including cave and koala tours. “I could tell you all about koalas; I do have my koala-fications,” he jokes.
Shaquita, now 25, completed the WA Academy of Performing Arts Aboriginal performance course, appeared in the television mini-series Cloudstreet, and was part of Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company’s Kaarla Kaatijin, a children’s education program performing Noongar dreaming stories to students.
The father-daughter pair will perform together for the first time in Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company’s production Which Way Home, drawing on their own relationship as Shaquita plays Tash and Derek plays Tash’s dad. The 70-minute WA premiere is directed by Cezera Critti-Schnaars, who also has experience working with her father, Yirra Yaakin artistic director Maitland Schnaars.
Derek took leave from his Yanchep National Park position for the season, as the opportunity to perform on stage with his daughter was too important to pass up. “There’s already an understanding,” he says. “We can take all those different elements in life, we can look at those situations, and we can put that into the play.”
Written by Murriwarri and Yuggerah woman Katie Beckett, Which Way Home follows Tash and her dad on a road trip home to country after Tash’s very white suburban childhood. Beckett’s heartfelt play, her playwrighting debut, draws on her own experience growing up with her single Aboriginal father after the loss of her mother when she was five.
“Katie’s done a great job on this play,” says Derek, who spent his childhood in the Mandurah/Pinjarra region. “We look at it and we see similarities. There are differences as well, but she understands when you’re trying to find out more about your past and where you’re from. When you move away from country, especially for Aboriginal people, there’s a loss of connection. This whole story is about reconnecting and understanding that reconnection . . . and finding out who she is. The dad is a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke, but they’re on a journey, and as you know, it’s not the end that counts, it’s the journey itself. Tash is trying to find out about parts of her life and who she is, because they moved away, and now they’re heading home, back to country. She wants to know why they moved away.”
Derek reflects on how children see their parents as flawless until they don’t, and while parents spend much time protecting their children from generational trauma, there comes a need for them to follow their own journey. “You know when somebody has an accident or somebody is about to die, and they see their whole life flash before their eyes? The same thing happens when your child is born, especially the dad of a daughter, because you want to protect them. You don’t want them to go through the things that you went through or make the mistakes that you made. But those mistakes are the things that teach you how to behave. They teach you how to grow up.”
Which Way Home runs at Subiaco Arts Centre from April 28 to May 9. Tickets are available at artsculturetrust.wa.gov.au.
