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Description
Skipping on Stars
Skipping on Stars, a 2004 theatrical production for young people presented by the Albury-Wodonga based Flying Fruit Fly Circus, tells the story of the life of Con Colleano, in his day the highest paid circus artist in the world.
Colleano earned his reputation as the 'Wizard of the Wire' for his mastery of the dangerous forward somersault in which the artist loses sight of the high wire just before he completes his turn. As probably the only exponent of this somersault, then and since, Colleano, dressed as a Spanish toreador, played the great circuses of the world, including the famous Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circuses. He toured Europe and performed before 'crowned heads', including the British Royal family. In pre-war Germany he played a number of times before Adolf Hitler, who declared Colleano's execution of the forward somersault his favourite circus act. Promoting Colleano as a fine example of the Aryan race, Hitler gave him a special passport to enter Germany at any time. (1) Colleano was also admired by the other Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who gave him a medal. (2) In the play Mussolini proclaims Colleano a 'beautiful Italian stud of a man, Con Colleano, he's a great'. (3) Colleano, however, was not European; he was an Australian Indigenous man of the Kamilaroi nation. In his own country he did not have the right to move around freely, to vote, or to earn a decent wage.
Written by Steven Sewell and Kim Walker, (4) Skipping on Stars is based on the biography of Con Colleano by Mark St Leon, (5) himself a member of a famous Australian circus family. In The Wizard of the Wire: the story of Con Colleano, St Leon deals in a factual way with Colleano's Aboriginality. He gives the family's genealogy, which included Indigenous ancestors and a West Indian grandfather of African descent. He documents anecdotes from Colleano's friends and colleagues and gives a description of the times, the early part of the twentieth century, when the circus was one of the few places in Australia where Indigenous people could work without prejudice. However St Leon does not explore in any great depth the reasons for the widespread discrimination against Aboriginal people which led Con Colleano to spend his adult life passing himself off as a man of Spanish descent.
In contrast, the playwrights have met the issue of racism head-on. They have used it as a starting point for the development of the play's themes of persistence, Indigenous pride and identity. Con's Aboriginality is woven into the text, not by portraying him as a victim, but as a catalyst for showing the young audience that there are ways of overcoming prejudice. Con and his family are shown as playful, positive and energetic members of a poor family leaping and tumbling over the barriers of racial discrimination. While the biographer passes over the serious issue of endemic racism, the playwrights invite the audience, the children, to confront the issue in terms of who we are, where we have come from, and what we should be proud of.
Skipping on Stars was devised to mark the 25th anniversary of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus as a professional theatre group. The company was established in the International Year of the Child as an educational institution for the training of young people as circus performers. Using their circus, dance and theatrical skills seventeen young performers tell the story of Colleano's life from the age of ten to his fifties. The youngsters play the parts of Con and his nine brothers and sisters as children and adults, Con's wife, circus colleagues, audiences, the press, police and Nazis. Only three adults appear in the production. The role of Con as an older man is played by Noel Tovey. An Indigenous man from Victoria, in 2004 he celebrated fifty years in the theatre. He is a playwright, dancer, choreographer, director, performer, and was artistic director for the Indigenous welcoming ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Tovey established the London Theatre for Children, and taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and Bristol's Old Vic Theatre School. Like Colleano, most of his professional life has been spent overseas--performing, directing and living the masquerade of colour, passing himself off as Greek, Jamaican, or 'whatever people wanted to believe'. (6) On his return to Australia in 1991, he set up the Performing Arts course at Eora, the Aboriginal College of Visual and Performing Arts in Sydney. In Skipping on Stars, Tovey maintains the thread of the story of Con's life, interacting with the young Con as narrator, commentator and guide.
The pivotal role of Con's mother, an Indigenous woman from Narrabri, is played by Lillian Crombie, who has had a long and distinguished career in film, stage and television as well as dance. The themes of the play--striving for the stars, being proud of who you are, not being brought down by prejudice--are carried in the dialogues between Con and the spirit of his mother. Con's father is played by Carl Polke, actor, musician and composer of the production's music.
Skipping on Stars brilliantly marries its performers' circus skills with the narrative of Colleano's life. The play opens with Con learning to walk on fences, and follows the family and their circus on the road round NSW and Queensland. It moves then to the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney where Con had top billing at the age of twenty-two. There Con perfects his performance of the feet-to-feet forward somersault on the high wire. Around that time Con met and fell in love with Winnie Trevail, a white dancer working in vaudeville. In 1924 the whole family including Winnie (known as 'Big Winnie' to distinguish her from Con's sister 'Little Winnie') left on tour for South Africa and England. While playing at the Alhambra Theatre in London, Con was booked for a 60-week engagement at the Hippodrome, the largest theatre in New York. The following year he was a star in Ringling Brothers Circus, the most famous circus in the world. Con Colleano had become the most famous wirewalker in the world.
The playwrights have rejected those conventions which shield children from the hard questions of life and have ended the narrative at the lowest point in Con's life when he loses all his hard-earned wealth through his mismanagement of a hotel in Forbes, NSW. Rather than dwell on this tragedy, however, Sewell and Walker use Con's depression to bring together the themes of the play. The last major scene is a dialogue between Con and his late mother. Continuing the play's metaphor of life as a delicate balance on the high wire of prejudice, she gives him messages of hope--be proud, be brave, aim for the stars and try again:
Con: I'm getting fat and old, Mum; I can't see the wire anymore. Con's mother: That wire ain't nothin', that's just a piece of string. Con: It's my life, Mum; it's my life and my fortune; if I don't have that wire, Who am I? Con's mother: You you're Kamilaroi man, just like all your people up at Nurrabarai. Con: No mum, that's not what I mean. Con's mother: They're your people Con, you have their strength, you always have, and your never gonna be nothin' till... |
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