Dallas Winmar – November 20 2016

Universal Children’s Day – November 20 2016

Dallas is a Western Australian writer who first worked with Company B in 2001 on the staging of her play Aliwa!. This play was first showcased in Perth by Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theatre and developed at the Australian National Playwright’s Conference in 1999 and 2000. She was commissioned by Kooemba Jdarra Theatre Company to write Skin Deep for their 2000 program. Yibiyung, her third play, was workshopped at the Australian National Playwright’s Conference in 2006 and the PlayWriting Australia National Script Workshop in 2007. Dallas was jointly awarded the Kate Challis RAKA Award in 2002 for Aliwa! (alongside Jane Harrison for Stolen). Aliwa! was also shortlisted for the script category of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and nominated for commendation for the Louis Esson Prize for Drama: shortlist 2003.

ALIWA!
Currency Press, 2002; ISBN 9780868196886
Full length play; 4 female, 2 male adult
Based on a true story of an Aboriginal family’s struggle to stay together, Aliwa! traces the true story of three Aboriginal sisters whose mother was determined to keep her children when officials wanted to remove them following the death of their father. The story is that of the three sisters of the playwright Jack Davis.
“Humanity and humour are at the fore … a gentle and vibrant evocation of an Aboriginal family’s relationship with each other and the land on which they struggle to live.” – Bryce Hallett, Sydney Morning Herald

Yibiyung
Australian Script Centre, 2013; ISBN 978987392992
Full length play; 6 female, 3 male (opportunities for larger cast with no doubling)
Cast age: 16 to 18, 18+; Audience age: young adult, adult
Yibiyung was Dallas’ grandmother and this is her growing-up story. She was one of hundreds of girls swept up in the forced removals of the 1920s and trained to become model domestic servants. But it’s Yibiyung’s break from this regime and her extraordinary flight across Western Australia which gives her story its rolling, expansive rhythm of survival. Yibiyung is about finding a way out of centuries-old cycles of anger and despair. As the Army moves into the Northern Territory and Australia lurches into its next phase of paternalism, Yibiyung is a song of hope and change, a celebration of fronting up and finding place and family.This is a song of hope and change, a celebration of fronting up and finding place and family.