2015 - Aletheia
“I have one question, Aletheia – Do you really want to know?”
Cries of the Kalwun finds its title in a cracking story from the Scenic Rim Region. The Kalwun is the Indigenous name for the Albert’s Lyre Bird – a native bird of the timber getting parts of our region. This bird has the uncanny ability to mimic perfectly any voices and sounds it hears with amazing precision. If you go into the mountains of Scenic Rim – it is still possible today to hear the sound of “cross saws” that haven’t been used in this area since the early nineteen hundreds. The birds started mimicking the saws more than a hundred years ago and have passed the call on through time to their chicks again and again. They are, as a result, carriers of stories from another age. Sadly, these birds in some ways have done a better job of passing on the stories of this place to their progeny than we have.
Cries of the Kalwun was a multi-generational community arts and cultural development project driven by young people from Scenic Rim. Around 100 young people from across the region worked with around 100 older people from their community in order to explore the social / historical and cultural impacts of war on this region. The youth were primarily derived from the five high schools from across Scenic Rim while the older participants/ storytellers were sourced through our partners at the nine historical centres and museums as well as community organisations, nursing homes, army personnel and local Indigenous Elders.
After these stories were collected they were presented back to the community in multiple platforms, most significantly, a new piece of theatre “Aletheia”. This play was not a retelling of the stories captured but a reframing of the issues/stories raised that young people felt compelled to respond. As such their role surpassed the simple echoes offered by the Kalwun, singing a song they do not truly understand. They have listened and questioned in order to respond with a breadth of understanding that an interaction with real people offers.
“Aletheia” is the story of an Afghanistan a hero, Aletheia, who has returned from war. But she has lost a comrade, and her memory. She is to be awarded the Victoria Cross for an act of bravery she knows nothing about.
Now Aletheia is asleep. Her alarm will wake her in one hour. Her memories have been locked away and she must fight through the deepest recesses of her mind to reclaim her history before the alarm sounds and her memories are lost forever.
She has left the war in Afghanistan to fight this new war – in her head. Piece by painful piece, she begins to reconstruct her story, leading her to a truth she would rather forget.
