Blood, shame, resilience and hope: Indigenous theatre maker Jacob Boehme's blood on the dance floor

Abstract

In this essay Indigenous Australian artist Jacob Boehme discusses the genesis and dramaturgy of his play Blood on the Dance Floor. As a performance maker, Boehme has a multi-disciplinary practice that fuses theatre, dance, ceremony, monologue and image as a method for sharing stories. Boehme talks about his cultural heritage and living with HIV, he dwells on questions of shame and resilience and the need to find Indigenous dramaturgies to tell his own story. Blood courses through Boehme's process of making the work, as both material and metaphor for addressing his self-identity as Blak, Poz and gay. Boehme stresses the importance of finding dramaturgical solutions to resist repeating colonial Western models, moving towards an innovative hybrid form merging traditional and contemporary modes.