By Jack Davis No Sugar (1988) – Playwright:Jack Davis Stage Drama, based on historical events Faction (uses real life events for the bases of a fictional dramatisation) Greater degree of realism and emotional connection with audiences because of the reference to real life events (Billy’s emotive account of the massacre) Jack Davis manipulates his audience to see past race relations, and into the lives of a close Aboriginal family, displaced from their homes and their traditional lives. By creating an ironic dialect of humour and suffering within his unquestionably dramatic style, Davis enforces a personal sympathy and understanding from the audience. The point on which the entire play operates is the difference in cultural understanding between colonial audiences and Aboriginal characters. Jack Davis manipulates this wide visual distance to his advantage. He differentiates between audience preconceptions of Aboriginality and its reality. In fact, it is as a result of this distance that much of the play's humour is formed.

Born 11 March 1917 Moore River Settlement Descendant of the Nyoongarah people Worked as labourer, drover Wrote down what he saw First play 1972, The Steel and the Stone, history of the Moore River Settlement

Set during the Great Depression Moore River settlement a place to which families are forcibly resettled This comes after 40-80,000 years of history of inhabitation of Australia Country as religion – ‘Dreamtime’/ alcheringa – land as life, so if you are forcibly removed from your land….?

Indigenous Australian ancient history Early contact history Invasion and wars Genocide Protectionism and Control Policy period Assimilation Policy and the height of the stolen generation period Path to Reconciliation – Native Title, Land Rights, Apology /detail/assimilation /detail/assimilation

2. The richly varied modes of dialogue in No Sugar are central to viewer’s experience and their understanding of the characters in the play.’ Discuss.

Remember there are distinct types of language used in the play:

The aborigines often speak in their own dialect to show their own unique relationship to culture, land and lifestyle. Many aboriginal terms are used to authenticate the aborigines’’ experiences (such as “inji sticks”, the “gugha”, the “jeering meear”); these expressions capture their unique relationship to land and reflect their diverse cultural systems (“mummari” and “boolyaduk”) and lifestyle customs. Their use also reinforces Davis’’s point that many aboriginal words simply do not have a corresponding word in the white man’’s language, because of cultural and lifestyle differences. They cannot be translated. Furthermore, audiences are invited to identify with the alienating affect of a foreign language which the aborigines have to deal with on a daily basis. This alienation is also exacerbated by their lack of access to education.

Overly formal language. Use of idiom Serves to emphasise themes of power and oppression Neville’s formal speech – language of the bureaucracy of the motherland. Power and authority. Detachment and disconnection = unable to empathise.

The use of ‘everyday spoken language’ by the indigenous characters and the sympathetic white characters serves to increase the realism of their lives and situation, and in doing this, their situation becomes more real to the reader/audience. It increases the affinity the audience has with the characters.

This ‘put down’ language serves to highlight how racist some of the chite characters are and how lacking in sympathy they are. It shows them to be racist and unpleasant. It alienates the audience from the character.