Cirrus@Austlit

'This article explores Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri artist Leah Purcell’s recent multigenre project, “The Legend of Molly Johnson”. Beginning as an adaptation of Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife”, the project fundamentally defamiliarises and subverts Lawson’s story from the standpoint of an Aboriginal woman. Evolving across different genres—from play to novel and film—Purcell’s project is a unique case of adaptation, identity-making and transmedia world-building. This article considers Purcell’s adaptations as a form of franchise storytelling, and central to her cultural and political interventions is the figure of Molly Johnson. As an iconic Aboriginal heroine, Molly is empowered by her deep connection with Country and her role as a mother. Central to the narrative is the theme of maternalism, which allows Purcell to weave her personal experiences and family history into the character of Molly, who encapsulates the strength and resilience of generations of Aboriginal women. Purcell’s “Drover’s Wife” project also mounts an intersectional critique of mainstream White feminism through the juxtaposition of Molly and Louisa Clintoff, a character introduced in the novel and film versions.'  (Publication abstract)

'One of the many rewritings of Australian Henry Lawson’s iconic 1892 short story “The Drover’s Wife” is the 2016 play The Drover’s Wife, written by Aboriginal actor, writer, and director Leah Purcell. Purcell’s rewriting evidences a much more significant presence of Indigeneity. The play not only introduces Yadaka, an Aboriginal fugitive, as a key character, but the drover’s wife herself is revealed to have Indigenous origins. This powerful twist offers several implications: a tour de force of frontier violence with disturbing and haunting images of racism, rape, lynching, and murder, the play confronts the foundations of the literary canon and of settler belonging, providing an alternative to both. Borrowing Fiona Probyn-Rapsey’s term “kin-fused”, this close reading of the play’s text argues that its resolution implies a critique of Indigenous–settler reconciliation, pointing to a lingering desire to redress colonial violence, desire embodied in the play by a “kin-fused” revenge.' (Publication abstract)

'During the original 2016 production of 'The Drover's Wife', her adaptation for the stage of Henry Lawson's famous short story, Leah Purcell reports that her costume designer found a quotation from Lawson that seemed the perfect summary of the shared drive powering their creative work: "It is quite time that our children were taught a little more about their country for shame's sake." This opinion, sourced rather ironically from a nationalist piece Lawson wrote for 'Republican' in April 1888 called "A Neglected History," was pinned up and presided over both rehearsal and production, and later became the epigraph of the playtext in all its subsequent editions. Purcell already knew she had her grandmother's blessing for the theatre she wanted to create, delivered in a dream during the early process of playwriting itself: "I asked her, am I doing all right? And she bowed to me. The ancestors are happy, you know?" (Purcell, 'SMH' 2016). she also recognised the positive force of Lawson's statement: "a sign that Henry's going, 'you go, girl' " (Purcell, 'The Guardian' 2017). Lawson's 1888 statement and his short story of 1892 are both profoundly renovated by intertextual repurposing in an indigenous context and by an indigenous writer.'  (Publication abstract)