In tune with a culture

It’s been called the Woodstock of the didgeridoo: a thousand people camping out in Joshua Tree for a weekend in October, some blowing on the ancient Aboriginal instrument, others dancing ecstatically to its otherworldly sounds. Still others learn to make a didgeridoo from a eucalyptus sapling.

Didgeridoo Festival 2003 was where theater director Simon Levy met Lewis Burns, a descendant of the Wiradjuri tribe in Australia’s New South Wales, and Venice Beach-based “didge” player Andjru Werderitsch. It’s also where he asked them to participate in the West Coast premiere of Lynne Kaufman’s 2002 play “Daisy in the Dreamtime.”

The Fountain Theatre production, opening Saturday at [Inside] the Ford (previews start Thursday), is based on the true story of Daisy Bates, an Irishwoman who abandoned her family in 1913 to live for 30 years with Australian tribespeople, recording their folkways, languages and spiritual beliefs. Among other things, the play provides a window into the 60,000-year-old Aboriginal culture, purported to be the oldest in the world. (“Aborigine” means “first people.”) Lisa Pelikan plays Daisy, and Anthony J. Haney portrays the Aboriginal King Billy.

Haney, an African American, has acted both in plays and in musicals such as “Pippin.” But he says he felt a particular responsibility to the people he was cast to represent in “Daisy,” especially in four scenes when he has to appear nearly naked on a dirt-covered stage, dancing and chanting. “When I took the part, I had to understand the Aborigine right-brain culture,” he says. “They aren’t just dealing on a cerebral level -- they’re closer to remembering things we’ve forgotten.”

To prepare, he studied videos of Aboriginal performances, and local dancer-choreographer Jamal of Avaz International Dance Theatre was enlisted to help teach him the four dances, including one depicting a kangaroo and another a funeral ceremony.

Says Jamal: “My approach was toward folk dance rather than contemporary Western. I worked on Anthony’s body line, and since I had studied a lot of animal movements, I used basic kinds of stamping and hopping, say, for the kangaroo piece. These kinds of dances have a sense of spirituality. Emotion has to be involved, but so does masculinity.”

Enter Burns, ruddy-faced, bearded, with graying hair. A painter of both traditional and contemporary Aboriginal art as well as a didgeridoo maker, he considers himself three-quarters Aborigine and has been to the U.S. a dozen times since 1999, when he began giving workshops at didge festivals (which are also held in such disparate places as Milan, Italy, and Devon, England). Levy asked him to consult on the production not only by helping the actors with speech patterns but also by tweaking the movement sections.

“The dances vary across Australia, but Anthony is doing a good job,” Burns says. “He can isolate parts of his body, and it looks quite real. The play seems close to the truth.

“I actually feel like I’m still learning some of these dances,” he adds, “and probably will until I die.”

In addition to Kaufman’s poetic dialogue, which gives a sense of the pre-World War I era as well as the desolation of the outback, the play’s mood is enhanced by live music courtesy of Werderitsch. He sits with one leg extended on a rock at the back of the stage, like a latter-day Pan, supporting his nearly 5-foot-long, 10-pound didgeridoo on the ball of his foot and blowing on it using circular breathing (in through the nose and out through the mouth). He says his cheeks act as a kind of bagpipe.

The Michigan-born Werderitsch says he can also use the instrument therapeutically.

“If you have a problem with your back, for example,” he says, “it’s played over that area. The sound waves are healing. Performing in this play is like that for me. I feel connected to not only the dance and the music but to the land and nature.”

It’s that sense of connection that director Levy says he wants audiences to feel as well.

“The beauty of this play is it’s about an extraordinary woman who dedicated her life to saving a people on the edge of extinction,” he says.

“If theater as art can influence people to have greater humanitarianism or a greater understanding of people, then I’ve done a good job.”

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‘Daisy in the Dreamtime’

Where: [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., Hollywood

When: Thursday-Saturday, March 18-April 24, 8 p.m.; Sundays, March 21-April 25, 2 p.m.

Price: $13-$25

Contact: (323) 461-3673