WILLAGEE playwright David Milroy and mate Geoffrey Narkle planned to write a play about travelling boxing shows, but something kept getting in the way.
“Once we started, the big issue, the stolen generation, kept coming up,” Milroy says.
King Hit was the renowned playwright’s second play, written in 1997, 10 years before the 2007 Bringing Them Home royal commission.
“It captured the sentiment of that time. [The] issue of the stolen generation wasn’t in the Australian political landscape or consciousness,” Milroy says.
Banned on health grounds in 1971, travelling boxing tents had been an iconic feature at agricultural shows around the country. Many boxers were Aboriginal, drawn to the dangerous job as they were unable to find work elsewhere.
The play is based on Narkle’s time fighting as Barker Bull Dog with the Stewart Boxing Troupe.
“Boxing became a metaphor,” Milroy says. “King Hit could be an emotional hit.”
At a young age Narkle was forcibly removed from his family and grew up at Wandering Mission (during the writing of the play he was at pains to ensure it was the story of many Aboriginal people, not just his).
• Clarence Ryan stars in Yirra Yaakin’s King Hit, from September 23 at the State Theatre in Northbridge. Photo supplied
“Geoffery didn’t want people coming up to him saying ‘this is my story’– so many were similar,” Milroy says.
King Hit is a hard-hitting look at the stolen generation and its devastating, ongoing impact on so many lives,
It was too much for some, who reacted angrily when it was first performed, despite critical acclaim.
“[Letters] were sent to the company saying that never happened. Even politicians said it. It was very hard and bitter thing for people to accept Australia could do something like that,” Milroy says.
Narkle fought more often than other boxers, and the play shows his determination, and strength, to walk away from the downward spiral of his life, tracing his family and finding inner peace.
He became a pastor at the Aboriginal Evangelical Church, a respected and strong advocate for the Noongar community, and died in 2005 aged just 54.
The smell and atmosphere of the boxing tent will be reproduced at the State Theatre, with the play performed in a tent set up in the courtyard.
The Yirra Yaakin Theatre production features Karla Hart, Clarence Ryan, Benj D’Addario and Maitland Schnaars and is directed by Kyle Morrison.
King Hit is on September 23 to October 4, at the State Theatre in Northbridge.
by JENNY D’ANGER