Experience Guuranda: Celebrated Narungga stories from Australia come to Chennai

Experience Guuranda in Chennai: A captivating blend of Narungga stories, dance, music, and shadow puppetry celebrating Aboriginal culture.

An ethereal choir, shadow puppets, dance, animals, and stories, all set against the backdrop of a small water body inside Anna Nagar’s Tower Park. Guuranda x KM Music Conservatory, a first-of-its-kind production, even brought rats and lizards out of their shadows to watch this interesting mix of a performance, telling the tales of the many lives of the Narungga people (an Aboriginal tribe from Southern Australia).

It was a frankly simple decision to host this event featuring a mix of dance, music from a 20-piece choir, and shadow puppetry, amidst nature, says producer, Shreya Nagarajan Singh. “It is, after all, their story. Guuranda tells the tale of a people, their land, and their journey in a colonial world. There are several animals that feature in the show. It is only obvious that we had to keep it open, under the sky and in the same space as birds, bats, trees and turtles,” she says, speaking after their debut performance outside Australia on March 21.

Guuranda marks the first time the Narungga language has been used on stage in India. It is the name for the Yorke Peninsula in Southern Australia. Award-winning theatreperson and choreographer Jacob Boehme from the Narungga and Kaurna Nations of South Australia, says that the production goes back to his people’s creation myths, all set in a fantastical world and often told through the lens of an animal. “The creation myths are at least 11,000 years old but they seem to have foretold our present and the future too. Much of these stories are about not over consuming Earth’s resources because it is after all, finite,” Jacob says.

A shadow puppet performance | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Guuranda X KMMC adapts the acclaimed mainstage production Guuranda, which was originally commissioned and presented by Adelaide Festival in 2024. In three stories retold by Narungga Elder Aunty Lynette Newchurch, one hears stories of greed, violence, compassion, and empathy, all through well-choreographed dance moves, who sway to the transformative music by the choir. On the first day, a battalion of people were invited to participate in a dance around an emu puppet, and several audience members volunteered. “It has been interesting to see how every person in the audience has reacted to the play,” says Shreya.

Although the conversation about an international collaboration was broached on several occasions by the producer and the artistic director, it was only in the last 10 months that everyone swung into action. Singers part of the KMMC choir learnt the correct pronunciation. An open call was put out to dancers from across the country, out of whom, five were selected. Tholpaavai was incorporated to tell a story in Tamil by exponent