In the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century the great theatrical circus shows of PT Barnum hid a dark and tragic secret. Behind the lights, spectacle and magic was a history of First Nations circus artists coerced or kidnapped from Australia and the Pacific and forced to perform.
Their stories are revealed in Natives Go Wild, a searing cabaret-style spectacle that combines political satire and hidden histories with burlesque, acrobatics and old-fashioned vaudeville.
Written and created by the head of First Nations programming at the Sydney Opera House, Rhoda Roberts, and featuring a cast of six First Nations performers and artists, the show pays homage to acts such as the Aboriginal Cannibal Boomerang Throwers, the Wizard of the High Wire Con Colleano, and William Jones, known as “Little Nugget” and Master Parello Frank, a tightrope walker extraordinaire able to jump 21 horses.
Many of the performers were treated as freak shows and human oddities, forced to perform and treated inhumanely until illness claimed them. Ironically, escaping to work for PT Barnum or the Ringling Brothers was often a path to economic independence and the ability to provide for their families still living on Aboriginal Missions.
“The show reveals how the Aboriginal people made the best of a bad situation, their resilience and ability to adapt and survive,” says Roberts. “The circus was a real opportunity for many people to get away from the Aboriginal Protection Board, which regulated where they could live and work. So Con Colleano, for instance, whose father had set up a travelling family circus in Queensland in the early 1900s, became the Spanish Matador. He was the highest-paid high wire act of his time and paid £1000 a week.”
Bangarra dancer Waangenga Blanco, descendent of the Mer Island people and of the Pajinka Wik in Cape York, who plays Colleano, says the show unveils important truths of his history.
“As an Indigenous performer I find that it’s my responsibility to tell these stories and to educate the public about our past,” he says. “There are a lot of forgotten heroes in this show. Con Colleano was hugely celebrated throughout the world but, at the time of his death there was no coverage here in Australia despite being on the front page of all the American papers. He is still considered one of the best high wire artists who ever existed and acrobats still find it difficult to replicate his famous forward somersault on the high wire.”
Colleano and Jones did manage to prosper. Colleano changed nationality and they both became producers of their own acts.
“But sadly a lot of the ones who were kidnapped or coerced in those early days, they’d be in America or England and were dead within three or four months because of pneumonia,” Roberts says. “Often their fate is unknown and they were buried I guess in paupers’ graves and left behind.
“In his time PT Barnum was a great marketing man, a bearer of fake news and I don’t think people knew of the humbugs that he did. When people questioned him keeping acts in cages he basically said, ‘Well, they’re cannibals. They’ll eat each other if we don’t treat them like animals'.
“But, in that era, they really thought that the Darwinist theory that anyone with brown skin was a monkey was true. Oh, I’m sorry we actually think that in Australia with one of our footballers don’t we. Hello, have we changed?”
Natives Go Wild is at the Studio, Sydney Opera House, Oct 22-27, sydneyoperahouse.com
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