Stolen by Australian playwright Jane Harrison. 

Stolen is a project that began in 1992 when the Ilbijerri Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Theatre Co-operative commissioned Jane Harrison and a researcher to produce a work about the lost children as they were then known. The Brief was to tell many stories, not just one, and to not represent Kooris as homogenous people who think, feel and react the same way. 

Set in a children’s home Stolen tells  the  story  of  five  young  Aboriginal  children  forcibly removed from their families. The children: Anne, Shirley, Ruby, Sandy and Jimmy allow us  into  their  lives  and  they  share  with  the  audience  their  personal  and  unique  stories. Stolen shows  the  devastating  impact  that  removal  from  their  family  and  subsequent institutionalization has on each of the character’s lives.

The  play  begins  with  the  characters  as  children  and  ends  with  them  as  adults  finding their way ‘home’. The narratives are told in a non-linear manner as each character’s removal is interspersed with his or her later experiences. 

Without  access to personal stories,  understanding  the  policy  of  removal  of  Aboriginal  children  from their  families  can be abstract  and  remote.  Through  the generous sharing of  life experiences an emotional and accurate picture of what happened to generations  of  separated  children can be built.

Writing personal stories can be political because it is a way of informing people about how others' live. In Stolen, the  stories  that  are  presented  show  how  Aboriginal  people  existed  under  a government policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families and provides another way of thinking about this heart-wrenching chapter in our Australian story. 

Jane Harrison has not written Stolen in a traditional way containing acts and scenes but rather as a series of episodes.

The script is a non-linear narrative, which merges past and present. However, the play does begin with the characters as children and ends with the resolution of their characters – where they are at the present moment in time, the end result of all that has gone before.

Note Taking

STOLEN is a play about the Australian Aboriginal stolen generation. It was written by Jane Harrison. It was made possible by families and individuals who generously shared their personal histories. Jane Harrison and a team of researchers interviewed Aboriginal community members and then devised the script based on these life stories. 

FIVE CHARACTERS

• Anne: too young to understand why she was taken from her family.

• Sandy: a man in search of a place to belong.

• Shirley: a stolen child who becomes a mother and whose children are also stolen.

• Ruby: a used and abused young woman.

• Jimmy: a mischievous child who becomes a tormented man.

SYMBOLS IN STOLEN

• Filing cabinet: the government and institutional control exercised over people’s lives.

• Beds: the institutions where Aboriginal children were taken. Represents uncertainty, fear and institutionalisation.

• Ringing bells: strict authority.

• Children’s songs: lost innocence and loneliness

• Suitcases: each person’s life journey and the ‘baggage’ they carry.

Sandy

Sandy has spent his entire life on the run, never having a set home to live in. Stolen tracks his quest for a place to be, a place where he doesn’t have to keep hiding from the government (even though they are no longer after him), and a place he can call home.

Anne

Anne was removed from her family and placed in a Caucasian family’s home. She was materially happy in this home, a lot happier than many of the other characters, but when her indigenous family tried to meet her, she was caught in crossfire between her two “families”.

Into the hearts of the stolen

January 31, 2005 — 11.00am

Jane Harrison's play offers great insight into the experiences of the stolen generation, writes Jo-Ann Stubbings.

Problem: how do you produce a play on the stolen generation and encompass as broad a range of themes and issues as 112 hours will allow?

Solution: divide the action between five diverse characters, tracing their independent stories from childhood to adulthood.

Jane Harrison's Stolen is a brilliant amalgam of the experiences of representatives of the stolen generation. We have the sexually abused, the hopeful reduced to hopelessness, the stolen child whose own children are taken from her, the lost wanderer, the black girl in a white man's world.

It could never have worked as one story.

Harrison employs a series of vignettes, sometimes running parallel, sometimes intersecting. These are effectively snapshots of the greater story, the plight of young Aborigines taken by the ironically named Welfare. The shutter works overtime as light fades on one drama and ignites the next, often in tandem with sleeping and wakefulness, dreams and reality.

Anne's discovery that she is an Aborigine adopted by white parents is punctuated by the discovery of Ruby's abuse, and in the next scene the Home's insistence that Jimmy's mother is dead. The blows come thick and fast, the pace is relentless, the timelines chaotic. All contribute to the nightmarish world the characters inhabit.

Much of Stolen is surprisingly reminiscent of Stephen Schwartz's Godspell, where the story is presented by child-adults, the innocence of the child standing in marked contrast to the serious, often tragic, themes they present. Few scenes are more potent than the patty cake game where the children at the Home unveil Ruby's sexual abuse through song:

CHILDREN: "Can you keep a secret and promise not to tell Where did you go?"

RUBY: "Swings and slides."

CHILDREN: "Swings and slides./ What did you eat?"

RUBY: "Ate fish and chips."

CHILDREN: "She ate fish and chips. / What did he give to ya?"

RUBY: "Gave me a pitcha book."

CHILDREN: "He gave her a pitcha book./ What did he do to ya?"

The kids stop the rhythm. Ruby hangs her head and holds her stomach.

RUBY: "I promised not to tell."

Song, chanting and the repetition of phrases throughout promote the child theme and are effective devices in linking scenes and storylines. The young Jimmy, symbol of hope, repeatedly maintains that his mother is not dead. The older Jimmy, hopes now dashed and in a disciple-like denial, insists to the drinkers: "My mother's dead."

Elements of the absurd emphasise the degradation of the children. Bells dictate their activities; in the first "line-up" scene before potential adopters, the children arrange themselves in order of lightest to darkest.

Again Jimmy's hopes of being chosen - "I make my bed real good" - link subsequent line-up scenes.

The holy grail for the five child-adults is finding Mother, the mother figure more than the father figure - synonymous with home, identity and a sense of belonging. Some characters recall the moment of separation from mother and their rebirth into institutionalisation, a cold mother substitute. Much time is spent waiting, searching, hoping on the part of both mother and child. Ruby uses a doll to re-enact a normal family life.

Shirley waits to find her mother and to resume a mother role and, in the style of Ulysses' Penelope, knits her time away. Similarly, Jimmy's mother Nancy has prepared 26 birthday presents for the child who was taken from her.

At the prospect of a reunion, Jimmy and Nancy ponder their reactions. "Will she feel like my mother?" Jimmy wonders. "I don't even know what having a mother feels like."

Anne presents a fresh perspective, caught as she is between cultures.

Meeting her black mother comes as a surprise: "I thought they'd live in the country or the outback at one with the land." But here they were in a Housing Commission flat, all crowded in. The pressure to choose between the two worlds culminates in a true identity crisis, the voices of both black and white parents chanting off-stage: "Who do you think you are?"

The mother-child theme is reflected neatly in the use of beds as the predominant prop. The bed can be a womb substitute where characters repair for sleep and sanctuary. It can be home or its antithesis - a mental institution or a prison cell: Jimmy's bedhead with bars is turned to face the audience. The bed is effectively the individual stage from which the characters tell their story.

The sparseness of the stage emphasises the emotional, spiritual and material poverty of the characters' lives. It also adds greater weight to the few props that are used. The suitcase each carries is a kind of mobile home, underlining a life on the move, in flux, impermanent. The filing cabinet is a material representation of the Home itself, the slamming of the drawer appropriately punctuating various scenes.

Harrison employs the classical Greek tradition of voices-off for elements that are threatening or "too big" to appear on stage. So it is that the words of authority figures - representatives of the Home, of Welfare, and officious whites are generally spoken off stage. Matron tells Jimmy in a voice-over to forget his mother, a Voice abuses Jimmy with racist insults, a Voice attempts to sell Sandy a luxury apartment in the old Home. The disembodied voice thus becomes a greater threat through its possibilities.

The characters in turn are seen as smaller and more vulnerable individuals within a soulless environment.

Original use of black-and-white images reflects the dual worlds. Harrison plays with the idea, Anne buying white chocolates for her adopted mother and dark for her biological mother. Generally, the images are more ominous. In one scene, Anne sits under a spotlight in the dark (making her white) while the white parents are "represented by shadows falling on to a Venetian blind or a white sheet." In a later scene, Sandy speaks of the pale-skinned Mungee stealing black babies: "So, Ruby, it's not the dark you need to be afraid of."

The journey towards adulthood is tough for the stolen generation. By the end of the action, Ruby has gone mad and Jimmy has committed suicide in custody, effecting a bitter-sweet reunion with mother in the afterlife. There are keener elements of hope, however. Shirley fulfils her maternal longings through grandchildren and Anne ultimately finds love for both black and white families. Sandy's search for a sense of place, "that bit of red desert", is over, the final line of the play recalling the optimism of his childhood: "I don't have to hide. I'm going home. And I'm gonna catch that fish!"

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING

 BOOKS

 · The Fringe Dwellers, by Nene Gare.

· My Place, by Sally Morgan.

· The Burnt Stick, by Anthony Hill.

POETRY

 · Inside Black Australia, edited by Kevin Gilbert.

FILM

 · Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence.

· David Vadiveloo's Beyond Sorry