There was a sense of history being made at the premiere of Yirra Yaakin’s Hecate. It is, to my knowledge as a wedjela (white) critic, the first full-length theatre work performed in an Indigenous Australian language – namely the Noongar language of the peoples of Perth and South Western Australia. Yirra Yaakin has taken the decision to present Hecate without projected English language subtitles. If ever there was a moment for white audiences to be humbled by being let into a different cultural realm, to which we must pay respect, this was it.

Cast members of Hecate. Photo © Dana Weeks

This is therefore not an easy production. Director and translator Kylie Bracknell has observed that language is not only about “words,” crucial as the text is. Rather language is also about bodily gesture, visual images, values, songs, yarning, jokes, laughter and tears. The multi-skilled performers work hard to bring out this expanded idea of performance, and although there is a sense that speech, breathed, shouted, sung and whispered into being, is at the heart of the production, it is nevertheless a profoundly theatrical work.

Hecate is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tale of vaulting...