Ngapartji Ngapartji: intercultural dramaturgies for Indigenous language revitalisation

This paper responds to the Indigenous language turn in Australian performance to suggest approaches that are epistemologically significant. We look to examples of intercultural collaboration in Australia, where a close analysis of selected practices provides opportunities for situating problems and enhancing efficacy. We focus on two community projects from Ngapartji Ngapartji [You give me something, I give you something/reciprocity], a theatre and performance-based program for language revitalisation with the Aṉangu people of the Central Western Desert from 2005 to 2010. The question driving the inquiry is, ‘In what ways, if any, are Aṉangu epistemologies able to enter the performance?’ In focusing on the epistemologies, we respond to the deficit of intercultural collaboration which often sees dominant paradigms privileged, even when Indigenous languages are being drawn from and revitalised. Methodologically, we bring together an interactional sociolinguistic and performance studies analytical approach to highlight dramaturgies employed and epistemologies signalled. We argue that improvisation allows Aṉangu epistemologies to enter the performance, proposing them as intercultural dramaturgies for Indigenous language revitalisation.