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Jane Harrison's "The Visitors" teachers' review
Posted:
November 09, 2023
Brief description and distinctive features
For Stage 5
Brief description of The Visitors:
Sometimes theatre touches a nerve. The Visitors does more than that. It stings and burns and blazes. And yet this new play from Jane Harrison is not a volley of accusations or a catalogue of trauma. Rather, it draws you in and invites you to think.
- Harriet Cunningham (Sydney Morning Herald, 2020)
The Visitors takes readers and viewers back to a vital moment in Australian history. But we see this moment from a First Nations perspective. It’s January 26, 1788, and a group of First Nation Elders is gathering at a key lookout on Sydney Harbour and looking out at a giant nowee or boat anchored offshore. Gradually the number of ships builds as more and more boats arrive. The meeting has been called to discuss what to do about “the visitors” and six elders plus a young representative of a seventh Elders have gathered to discuss whether they welcome the visitors as is customary or fight them or send them away.
Jane Harrison is an Indigenous Australian playwright, a descendant of the Muruwari people of NSW and her plays Stolen and Rainbow’s End have both been set for the NSW Higher School Certificate. Jane Harrison has also adopted her play into a novel The Visitors Jane Harrison (2023) Harper Collins 290 pp.
Distinctive features of The Visitors:
- The Visitors is a work of speculative historical fiction based on the history and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
- The play uses the perspective of First Nations peoples as they watch the First Fleet take anchor
- This is First Nations storytelling from pre-colonisation times, the trauma/sorry business is yet to come
- The protocols, culture and relationships of First Nations people are embedded and explored in the play
- Time is concertinaed with ancient and modern times connected. e g. the Elders are in formal Western attire with First Nation accessories so that audiences associate them with power, leadership and the formality of the meeting and common Anglo-Saxon names mingle with Indigenous language
- The play is set on a lookout over Warrane or Sydney Cove on a hot summer day and in performance a striking set of sandstone outcrops is used so actors can move between higher and lower areas
- In the latest performance of The Visitors in 2023 women play the two key roles of Wallace and Jaky
- There are excellent additional readings and background material: Wesley Enoch’s Introduction and Jane Harrison’s Acknowledgments, Glossary of Aboriginal Words, Introduction to Annotations and six pages of Annotations which are informative and amplify the extend of Harrison’s impressive research.
Pre reading
Read Cara Shipp’s Listening from the Heart: Rewriting the Teaching of English with First Nations Voices (2023 AATE 150pp) to explore better ways to engage with First Nations People and their stories, their history and culture and to understand the protocols and appropriate terminology to use when reading and studying texts by First Nation authors. This warm, wise and generous book will be a huge help in the classroom.
Ways to use The Visitors in the classroom
Background information: decolonising history
Students will need to have some understanding of the process of colonisation and these two websites will be useful in informing them about this process and its impact on the original owners.
1. About the history of First Nations peoples
2. First Nations perspective on the colonisation of Australia
- Indigenous Perspectives of Cook's Visit - Endeavour 250th Anniversary | YouTube link
Consider sharing 1-2 media reviews of the play to orient students to plays as performance and their contemporary relevance. For example:
- Larissa Behrendt's review in The Guardian, 19 Sep 2023
- Harriet Cunningham's review in the Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Jan 2020
Performance
Plays are written to be performed and the Sydney Theatre Company have produced a short trailer from their production which provides an excellent introduction to the play as performance and will help students to visualise the play as they act it out. Watch the trailer on YouTube here.
Other excellent Sydney Theatre Company resources can be found on their website under The Visitors.
Characterisation
Characterisation is pivotal in this play. Individuals and archetypes are intermingled. Each Elder is distinguished from the other characters through costume, personality, voice and gesture and through the archetype they represent. The characters are:
- Gary
- Lawrence
- Gordon
- Albert
- Jaky
- Wallace and
- Joseph.
They represent the Northern Parramatta River mob, the Botany Bay mob, the Sydney Cove Clan, the South Shore Clan, the Manly Cove -North Shore Clan, the River Mob and the Spear Clan. The Sydney Theatre Company allocates various archetypical roles such as the bureaucrat, the general, the youngest, the engineer, the joker, the philosopher and the doctor/healer. Provide students with three jumbled lists; the characters, the mobs and the archetypes and ask them to connect them up.
Group representation of a scene
While the playscript does not have specifically-designated scenes, there are symbols which indicate a “change of mood, physical action, position relative to one another, soundscape or lighting”: ▼
In groups students are to choose a “scene” which they think best explores the play’s intent and mood. Each group is to represent their scene through a Reader’s Theatre style or a performance of the scene and could consider sound effects including music or traditional Aboriginal instruments. Each group could open their presentation with a brief explanation as to why they chose this specific scene.
Student reflection: which two representations best captured the key messages and mood of this play?
Group discussion and class report: Visitors leave. Right?
Seven representatives must choose whether to send these strangers on their way or welcome them. Gary thinks visitors don't normally stay but the audience knows these ones do. In groups discuss the various arguments the Elders advance regarding the vote on fight or welcome the visitors and report your conclusions to the class.
Relevant details in relation to the new English 7-10 syllabus
The Visitors is a play by Australian author Jane Harrison, who is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. The Visitors contains intercultural and diverse experiences and cultural, social and gender perspectives.
Concepts could include Representation • Perspective • Narrative.
Relevant NSW English 7-10 Syllabus content
Reading, viewing and listening to texts | EN5-RVL-01
- Engage in sustained and varied reading that presents increasingly diverse and complex perspectives and experiences, including those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and respond in a range of ways, including through extended written responses
Understanding and responding to texts A | EN5-URA-01
- Analyse how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors use figurative language and devices to represent culture, identity and experience
- Analysing how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, and authors from a range of cultural backgrounds, choose to represent their identities and experiences through texts.
Understanding and responding to texts B | EN5-URB-01
- Engaging with a selection of narratives, poetry and artworks by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, and discussing how words and images are used to reflect connections to Country/Place
(English K-10 Syllabus 2022 © NSW Education Standards Authority for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2023)
Connecting texts
Jane Sherlock and Deb McPherson are experienced and passionate English teachers. They have also been involved in the education sector as authors and presenters at teaching conferences.
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