It is usually in the company of strangers that we experience art.  We may have a friend or two with us but we are surrounded by people we don’t know, sometimes aware of their reactions often oblivious.  RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW brings people, strangers, together in an art experience that moves groups of friends-to-make through the streets of Blacktown with the jostling camaraderie of immersion.  It’s enormous fun and rousing, appreciative viewing facilitated by extremely discreet and skilled stage management.

Beginning with a Welcome to Country from 94 year old Uncle Wes Marne.  As he stands in smoke, a storyteller man, he speaks of a time far away when his experience of our country hits our ears like a foreign land.  A time when he, as a little boy, had to run back to the mission when it rained because he was not allowed to shelter with the white children.  It’s better now, he says, the last ten years, we are on our way.

With a superb female voice rising with an afro beat, after Uncle’s speaking we are summoned to our groups for the call to wander and wonder through the streets and the pre-renewal city centre shops.  The three guides await us.  Nitin Vengurlekar is a very funny bloke and Kween G is an unearthed icon in the Western Sydney music scene.  And that leaves Nancy Denis, the possessor of that voice and the hostess of the group in which I will spend the next three and half hours.

It may not be the ideal circumstances for the Opening Night of this show from Blacktown Arts and Urban Theatre Projects, a heatwave hits the west.  But there is plenty of water provided, seating always available and there’s the opportunity to drop in and out of the experience if needed.  There’s not too much walking, kids will love big chunks of it and the meal I had was delightful.  (I ate at Dark Blue but Pameer Restaurant and Bakery and Abyssina Ethiopian are also included)  It’s there that you really get to know some of the people you have been travelling with and you are pretty hungry, the hot coal, bread rising smells of the city’s many restaurants entice you all along the route.

And over dinner you get to talk about the artworks you have immersed in.  A film concerning a local place about which, to my shame, I knew nothing.  Darug women Corina Norman-Dadd and Julie Jones, together with Uncle Lexodious Dadd, feature in a short-film shot on location at the Blacktown Native Institution site which is seen by some as the progenitor of the Stolen Generations. As the people on the screen sing up country and take the children to connect and heal, I know I will now pay silent respect each time I pass.

Music in the form of Beat-A-Numeric, percussion extraordinary, moves the feet and brings the smiles and nods with strangers near.  With some very gentle microphoning, the sound fills the space and the virtuosic movement of the hands on the drums is skilled and sways one like a snake charmer.  Then bring on some Visual Arts in the clever weaves of trampolines … of all things.  Adelaide textile artist Meg Wilson has collaborated with Sydney artist Nicole Barakat to weave eight trampoline mats from different textiles and fabrics in collaboration with local residents and students from Rooty Hill High School. This is part installation, part choreographed live performance with amazing leaping and falling from the athletes as a light show and pumping music adds to the excitement.  We see their balletic, circus-like feats from above and some of the moves are hair-raisingly close to the edge of the superbly created mats.

There’s an auditory experience, too, as award-winning theatre director Roslyn Oades in collaboration with six young people has created an immersive audio-led theatre work based on the provocation, What Happens After Midnight?. The work builds on research begun in 2016 which saw the artist set up a night-line phone message service to collect audio and the technical skill in the creation of this experience is exceptional.

The experience is in the viewer’s hands as we can edit what we hear.  For me this experience was a bit too long but it did give me a contemplative space to work out why I listened to what.  I was drawn to the young people’s voice, the four decades of teacher in me will always surface.  What were the concerns that made them ring an empty answering machine in the middle of the night?  Did you cut off the whingers, I asked someone on way out?  Because the sharing is the second best fun of the night.

The best is personified in our host, Nancy.  With a killer singing voice, an empathetic genuineness in her work with the group and an evident love of sharing, Nancy is the perfect guide to a place she obviously loves.  But I am tempted to go back to get the feels from Nitin and Kween and to eat at the other places.  RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW is urban renewal at the grass roots of cultural sharing and artistic immersion.  And it’s just a fun night out!

RIGHT HERE. RIGHT NOW.  from Urban Theatre Projects[Facebook] is produced in partnership with Blacktown Arts[Facebook] and presented in Blacktown’s Main Street.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday across three weeks from 1-17 November 2018