watchaupto? lily shearer
Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, Lily Shearer, Michelle Blakeney, working on Posts in The Paddock, My Darling Patricia & Moogahlin Performing Arts
photo Clare Britton
Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, Lily Shearer, Michelle Blakeney, working on Posts in The Paddock, My Darling Patricia & Moogahlin Performing Arts
Currently I’m the General Manager of Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation (GIS), a leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander media/arts hub based in Redfern, Sydney.
GIS is the home of Indigenous community radio and also plays a leading role in developing and promoting the careers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians, broadcasters, singers and songwriters. Its Young, Black & Deadly workshops support the creative aspirations of under-18s in performance and radio broadcasting. The Gadigal Music Label develops new and emerging talents and supports established performers through presenting a range of recording opportunities and distribution for our music. GIS’s annual Yabun event on 26 January is Australia’s largest one-day festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and its Klub Koori events are regularly held in various venues around Sydney.
Although busy with these projects, I also make time to undertake my own creative practice. After four long years of development, the performance work Posts in the Paddock had its premier showcase at Carriageworks in 2011 and a full spotlight at the Australian Performing Arts Market (APAM) in 2012. For Posts I was the cultural creative and ‘queen connector,’ which meant I connected up relatives and community who had an association with the material in the play. For This fella, my memory, a devised work, which has recently had a very successful reading for Moogahlin, I played one of the main characters, Aunty Toots. She’s a former country and western singer who left her homelands and thinks she knows all about culture but in the play it is clear that she has a lot to learn! I love the whole process of creating—working across the disciplines, acting, devising, creating, writing, connecting.
My next burning project will be to get the Moogahlin kids’ circus off the ground. And to get a production of This fella, my memory up at Carriageworks in 2013.
Lily Shearer is a Muruwaroi woman with over 30 years experience in Aboriginal Cultural Development, theatre and performance making. Since completing a Bachelor in Theatre Studies at the University of Western Sydney, Shearer has worked in Aboriginal community theatre in leadership roles on a remarkable number of performance projects. Her body of work in this field is unprecedented. Importantly, she has always worked for the betterment of Aboriginal communities and Aboriginal theatre and performance practitioners.
RealTime issue #111 Oct-Nov 2012 pg. 20
