The Pigram family is an arts and culture institution in its own right, and Black Swan State Theatre Company‘s recent production, Raised in Big Spirit Country, created by Naomi Pigram-Mitchell with musical direction by Bart Pigram, is testament to the family’s continuing importance to the history and ongoing vitality of Rubibi/Broome, the Kimberley, and Western Australia. In a night of music, laughter, and dance, the audience is transported in mere seconds to Broome through songs, old family photos, and a strong sense of story and place.
The cast of multi-talented musicians, with their impeccable harmonies and heartfelt vocals, convey a genuine love for the ‘Broome sound’ that’s unbound by genre and invites music fans of every ilk to be swept away by their tunes. The set list features classics from Kuckles, Scrap Metal, and The Pigram Brothers, and showcases the decades-worth of creative legacy, storytelling, and multicultural underpinnings that the Broome sound embodies.
The show itself also defies genre, especially for a theatre company – it’s a concert with staged elements in the form of short comedic/dramatic vignettes featuring Nelson Baker and expressive dance from Anne-Janette Phillips. MissGenius briefly joins the band for one song with some powerful lyrics to add another layer to the show’s landscape. The cast’s youngest member, Ryleigh Pigram (Pigram-Mitchell’s daughter), opened and closed the show with a self-assuredness that spoke volumes about how the family legacy will carry on.
The show’s lights (Kristie Smith) and set (Matthew McVeigh) with its mirrored flooring, small-scale dock, mangroves, and red earth platforms helped us imagine this unique country, and the visual design (Mark Haslam) provided additional historical, social, political, and visual context. Special credit goes to the folks who looked after and balanced the sound – the vocals were clear and rich, both during solo moments such as Naomi Pigram-Mitchell’s incredible ‘unplugged’ number (I’ll remember the effect it had on me for a long, long time) and in numbers where the entire cast sang and played every instrument on hand.
The audience was encouraged to stay on its feet for a boogie during the encore tunes, and it’s safe to say that’s what we’d been waiting to do right from the start. Raised in Big Spirit Country had a too-short, sold-out run, but here’s hoping it served to reinvigorate the creative connection between BSSTC here in Boorloo/Perth and these wonderful creators in Rubibi/Broome.
CICELY BINFORD
Raised in Big Spirit Country by Naomi Pigram-Mitchell was presented by Black Swan State Theatre Company in the Studio Underground at the State Theatre Centre of WA from 27 – 29 Mar 2025. For more information about this past event, visit here.
