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Speaker 1: The star of mystery row Jack Irish to name but a few. Aaron Petterson. Lovely to see Aaron. Nice to meet you.
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Speaker 2: Welcome. Yeah, nice to meet you too. Late.
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Speaker 1: How was last night opening?
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Speaker 2: No, fantastic, well received. Yeah, the audience were amazing.
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Speaker 3: It was a great show too, actually, probably one of our better ones.
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Speaker 2: So you know, it was good to hit the straps at the right time. Are you?
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Speaker 1: Are you someone who? I mean you TV and movies and supper when you have that instant feedback, that gratification of looking into people's eyes, is it?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? I do love theater.
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Speaker 3: Is There's something great about the intiverscy of it and the connection that you make with people and the effect that you have on them, and the immediacy of it, you know, like TV takes a long time to make and say this film and sometimes it's never guaranteed.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: To go ahead.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: So the beautiful thing about locking in theater is that you can at least plan your life around it, and it's beautiful, like you get to travel around the country. We just came from Brisbane, did a season there and now we're here in Adelaide and we'll see where the show goes later on.
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Speaker 2: But I love theater.
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Speaker 3: It's something about the craft element of it all, yes, but the repetition element, and it changes every night, yes, because you've got a different audience every night, you know, So you're you're performance on stage is kind of I believe that we affect each other. Yes, it's serh, it's kind of synchronicity, beautiful synchronicity with audience and actress on stage.
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Speaker 1: How do you take a role? What makes you decide to take a role? Was it the personal aspect of this particular performance?
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Speaker 3: No, I think Look, I think it's just more the fact that I love the scripts, if I mean, I love the dialogue and the stories that are in the scripts.
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Speaker 2: Also, I love the people that I'm working with.
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Speaker 3: I suppose every now and again most people would say, you know, just take work because you need it. But the beautifling about it is you get to do TV, film, and theater and so many different kind of platforms which are all really really different for me. So, I mean, I choose the work because it's just kind of a it's more of a mood situation too. I feel like theaters where I want to be at the moment, like it's something I'm really enjoying, but I also pick up on a pick up doing TV and film. But I do love theater. I really love it, you know, I mean secretly, I wouldn't have I would have loved for have been a role.
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Speaker 2: Really, but I can't sing? You can you the next? Well? It is?
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Speaker 1: That's right, you get that immediate? Can you have you got any musical chops at all?
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Speaker 2: Nothing? No?
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Speaker 1: Come on now everything you do triangle really the man Butcher's the symbols.
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Speaker 2: Hey.
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Speaker 1: So Thomas Mayo came in once with Kerry O'Brien and we talked about his book and we were talking about the Voice Department. So this book, which was from twenty twenty one, is the celebration of First Nations manhood, culture and family. So letters from a number of great First Nations and Indigenous people, people like stand Grant and Troy Cassadali that people would know when you read the book. When you heard about the book, what did you think?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I was immediately, I mean immediately felt for the for the stories. Because what's really intriguing about writing letters. It's an old form, you know, like no one really writes letters these days.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and you soon learned that it's a pretty hard you know, it's it's hard to.
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Speaker 3: Soak your energy into writing letters and putting thoughts on paper and translating it for someone to read. But the biddle thing about it is we are the vessels for it and the voice for it. So the letters are written in such a way that for us as performers, that it becomes quite poetic.
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Speaker 2: Yes, So I.
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Speaker 3: Really enjoyed the fact and the process of how they went about writing the letters, what were their trepidations, their anxieties about what they reveal, and also where their love lighted it and how much and how intimate they were with us when they were sharing those stories. I think it's a really difficult post, you know, like it's a hard place to go and write. We've kind of thought about it as doing it personally, and it's you know, for me, it's quite difficult.
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Speaker 2: I think, where do you start, how do you start? What do you reveal?
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Speaker 3: It's kind of I would have thought that there would have been a number of drafts that went through. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. So I mean that's the reason why I took it on, because I thought, Wow, this is really interesting it's quite it's really quite radical when you think about it, because it's almost.
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Speaker 2: Like love letters from the battlefield of Australia.
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Speaker 3: Yes, a policy of legislation and the governments at the time. Because this goes back to nineteen twenty six. Some of the stories are of their fathers, so it's different generations with different stories at different times, different circumstances. And for me, I find that really quite incredible because Charlie King's story is about his father, his white father.
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Speaker 2: And his Indigenous mother. He's averaging a mother.
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Speaker 3: They had a relationship, so it's that interracial relationship that's happening at a time yes, you know, in the like almost a hundred years ago, you know, I mean that's that's yeah, I mean, that's true love. That's real love. It's a great love story too. So it's beautiful to see that he reminisces on that and that's the effect that it had on him that he thought it was the greatest love story ever told.
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Speaker 1: Can we talk about your personal situation? So you don't have kids, no, but have you had a situation where because of your upbringing and growing up as a kid, you became a father figure for your brother Vinnie.
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Speaker 2: Yeah I did.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Look, I mean vin and I are thirteen months apart, and when we're like younger, he always used to follow me around wonder what are you doing?
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Speaker 2: Bro? Can I come with you?
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Speaker 1: Come on?
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Speaker 2: Then?
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Speaker 3: You know, And so it's been like that our whole lives. Really, he didn't really want to live with anyone else. He just gravitated towards brother Aaron. He thought that's where the good life was. It's probably right, he is right, he knew from the start. But look, I think the great thing about it is that as we get older, the rewards.
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Speaker 2: Are more evident.
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Speaker 3: Yes, you know, we get to share our memories. He travels with my work. He's including a lot of my contracts. So you know, if you want me, then you and Vinny comes with it. So it's because I can't separate that life and he loves it. He becomes a bigger part of the whole picture, like the in the show that we're in. Now, he's a happiness consultant, so he calls he keeps us all happy and alive because he brings that energy every day.
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Speaker 1: Because he could have had a very different life without you. The fact that you were able to do that father figure finger which you're talking about in this show. I mean, that's amazing of you to do.
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Speaker 3: Look, no, I mean there was a really clear question with it, and that was, you know, how could how can I not do it?
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Speaker 2: You know, it's really simple.
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Speaker 3: I look at earlier on it was really quite hard because I was younger and I and there's no manual on there, so finding the balance and finding the reason behind it all. But for me, it just just it's it's kind of love is not a duty. It's it's one of those kind of uh feelings in life. You just got to You've got to go with it because it's just the.
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Speaker 2: Truth, and it's it's it's reality.
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Speaker 3: And looking in the work I work in, you know, it's kind of a fantasy, well because we're acting and we're taking on characters. But Vinnie's very much my reality and and we balance that beautifully. He he he joins everything that I've ever been involved in.
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Speaker 2: He's a big part of it.
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Speaker 3: He's he's something that's enhanced my life, you know, and I'm forever blessed because of that. I Mean, we've when our fathers were sons, and this is what I was saying, on stage. We're not fathers, we're sons. We descend from different fathers. We've never grown up with our fathers. But in this lifetime we've given each other and get and had the opportunity to be h to be each other's father and to be each other's son because he has been there for me a lot of times too. And you know, so there's a great balance there.
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Speaker 1: And that's a beautiful bond, isn't it.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, look at these beautiful to be around. Look at you know, I mean, it's a laugh every Minutely.
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Speaker 1: We don't have fit to say artistically. We don't have a lot of shows about fatherhood and even less about first nations.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and about and about beautiful masculinity, not toxic masculinity. This is quite a beautiful prose about men showing their love yep, and expressing their love to their fathers, sons or grandfathers. But you know, but it transcends across the whole family because really the end of the day, the most beautiful response that we've had from these shows is that it touches people immediately and it resonates in such a way that they leave the show, they pick up the phone and they ring their father and they tell them that they love them, and that's absolutely beautiful. There was a young seventeen year old in Bridgemond who did that and it just blew me away.
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Speaker 2: He was crying and.
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Speaker 3: I said, come here and give me a hug, and I had to console Hi.
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Speaker 2: I'm like, no worry, that's cool.
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Speaker 3: And the beautiful thing was he says, I just wrung my dad and told him that I loved him, and I'm bringing my dad next week. And he brought his dad and he came back with him and I saw him again and it was just beautiful that.
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Speaker 2: It had that impact on him. And he's like a young lab seventeen years old.
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Speaker 3: So it's just I think it's just if that's the bridge to you know, you know, beautiful masculinity or divine masculinity as we've kind of talked about, where men expressed their love and without any fear, because I think it's it's put a lot of people in a lot of situations where they've taken their lives and it's destroyed for family.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's so universal. But it's interesting with your culture because I think a lot of people like myself who didn't grow up in a First nation's house. We don't understand sometimes, so we get an insight at times. So I'll use Willie Rioli as the example here, the Port Adelaide footballer. So his father passes, he then takes on his dad's name junior year as a tribute to his father. Like, that's not something that we do in our culture. So I think it's fascinating a book like this and a play like this to show people not just to have First Nation heritage, but the rest of us to go, okay, just show us your world.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, just love, love, love. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: I mean, it's just not enough love in the world. Really, it's too much hate.
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Speaker 1: So that's I mean, that's a really strong bond that not a lot of people have with their fathers.
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Speaker 3: And you know, like my example is my relationship with my brother Vinnie.
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Speaker 2: He wakes up with.
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Speaker 3: Love in his heart every day, he goes to bed with loving his heart every night, and you know, he hugs me in the morning, he hugs me at night. He tells me he loves me ten times a day. So over the course of my life, you know, I've had a great teacher who's just taught me to say I love you, and I love you with meaning, and so it's not really fallen. It's not become something that I've ignored over my life.
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Speaker 2: I've seen it as a beauty.
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Speaker 3: And you know, like and when I ask for a Vinie hug, I get a proper hug, yes, you know, and he hugs me with all his might, and it's a I take that energy away with you.
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Speaker 2: I go on stage again, give us a hug before I go on stage, and he gives me a big hugger and I go on stage. I got, I got the Vinnie love with me.
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Speaker 3: You know, I've got that beautiful energy. But having that in my life, my whole life, I never noticed when I was a lot younger that that was a beautiful, beautiful medicine that I was receiving from another male. And he's not shy about saying that he loves you.
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Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
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Speaker 3: And when I was a lot younger, I used to think, oh Jesu, he just smothering me with all this love.
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Speaker 2: And I mean, what's a stupid thing to think?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, because you're young, Yeah, yeah, you know, he just loves me so many times and down like vin you've already said it to me.
00:10:35
Speaker 2: But these days, no, I don't stop him from saying it anymore. I never have.
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Speaker 3: It's actually been a while, but I actually love that he taught me that that's okay just to say I love you.
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Speaker 2: I love you, bro.
00:10:46
Speaker 1: I get that. Aaron Petterson is my guest. Dear Son is the name of the play. It's a State Theater Company production here. It's on at the Odeon Theater until the sixteenth of August. Everything you cover is what we talk about. And maybe they're not conversations that fathers and sons have with each other, but it's about strength, and it's about vulnerability. It's about in your case obviously culture and the importance of family too. And I think we've gone away from that.
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Speaker 3: I think so, you know, like it's about losing those moments, like you know, it's do Let's not have any more regrets. Let's not question our feelings, you know, Let's and let's not have you know, let's not block our thoughts out. Let's let's be open to how we feel about each other, and let's let's talk. Because when those moments are gone, those moments are gone, and that's what's beautiful about this. There's stories in this play where you say, you know what, Dad, I really didn't get a chance to tell you how much I admire you, and I really regret never telling you how much I loved you while you were alive.
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Speaker 2: And that's that for me, is just real simple.
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Speaker 3: It's just looking at each other and it's just embracing that moment, and you know, it's look, I've learned a lot from the play in such a short amount of time, and we all have. In this play. There's five of us on stage. That's become a men's within a men's group, which is quite beautiful because we're carrying each.
00:12:03
Speaker 2: Other through those tough times.
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Speaker 3: But we're supporting each other with having to, you know, perform these emotions every night.
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Speaker 2: But for us, it's quite healing. It's really it's incredibly cathartic.
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Speaker 1: And last night is standing ovation. First night critics are raving about beautiful, which is does that mean more to you when you're doing something And don't get me wrong, like TV and movies, you can do fun, but let's be honest, it's it's silly and nonset some of the things you do, whereas this is this feels like this is really more important.
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Speaker 3: This is like us sitting on an island, uh, you know, with an audience, and we're sitting around a camp for and we're having a yarn and we're.
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Speaker 2: Listening to each other.
00:12:41
Speaker 3: And I think that's the most beautiful thing about the piece, is it it resonates more when you listen, especially when we're on stage, because then we become audience members while you know, while actors are performing stories and connecting to characters in the show, so we join the audience. We're like, yeah, we're with you, and we're listening and we take everything in and I think the audience is experiencing exactly the same thing. So the beautiful thing about it is, you know, it's a it's a kind of a it's a two way journey, you know, in so many different ways. But for us, it's a it's a great men's group. It's been it was through the rehearsal period, and it's it is on stage and I think I will take this with ourselves out into the life and it'll make us better for it.
00:13:19
Speaker 1: Well, we're delighted to have you here. We know we went. You burn a big fan of the weather when you first got right now.
00:13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I came from queens and then come on, came from Queensland.
00:13:30
Speaker 1: Okay, before you go, this is completely self indulgent, but go with me on this. You know, all of us have someone in our lives that we went to school with that that makes it and becomes famous and everyone's excited about that. My sister in law, Melissa, Melissa woo Woom Marsa w went to school Melissa.
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Speaker 3: Yes, I do, I do remember Hamilton Hamilton College, mon College the same year.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: Actually, well you're good, Yeah, she was school along really well. Move.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, she's brilliant. I love Were you amazed? Do you have amazing s?
00:14:00
Speaker 1: Did you behave well at Montave?
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I think I did.
00:14:03
Speaker 1: Man, But do you realize how kids that you went to school with are so proud of what you're doing now, like they watch from afar and see you know, you reaching these holes.
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Speaker 2: I do love that.
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Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that's but you know, you've got to go to school with someone at the end of the day. But I mean, from Mel's point of your love, mel she was awesome. Please have my love.
00:14:19
Speaker 1: Will long times?
00:14:20
Speaker 2: Was there that name?
00:14:21
Speaker 1: Good to see you. Thanks so much for coming in, Thanks for bringing this to South Australia to you know, a State Theater company.
00:14:27
Speaker 2: Please come out and see it.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: That's what you want so and I'm sure you would notice that with your own eyes. Fathers and sons, generational people coming.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, look at it is.
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Speaker 3: There are so many different generations and look look it just resonates because it's it's just to do with the heart and the soul and the real moments that you have with people.
00:14:46
Speaker 1: And in this day and age, we need more of that.
00:14:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, can we have that moment on stage with everybody? So yeah, come along and we'll give you a bit of love.
00:14:52
Speaker 1: Dear son till the eighteenth or sixteenth or rather sixteenth of August at the Odeon Theater. Tickets and information, State Theater Company dot com dot au. The Great Aaron Petterson my guest. Lovely to see you, Thanks for coming. All the best
Speaker 1: The star of mystery row Jack Irish to name but a few. Aaron Petterson. Lovely to see Aaron. Nice to meet you.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: Welcome. Yeah, nice to meet you too. Late.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: How was last night opening?
00:00:08
Speaker 2: No, fantastic, well received. Yeah, the audience were amazing.
00:00:11
Speaker 3: It was a great show too, actually, probably one of our better ones.
00:00:14
Speaker 2: So you know, it was good to hit the straps at the right time. Are you?
00:00:17
Speaker 1: Are you someone who? I mean you TV and movies and supper when you have that instant feedback, that gratification of looking into people's eyes, is it?
00:00:25
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do love theater.
00:00:27
Speaker 3: Is There's something great about the intiverscy of it and the connection that you make with people and the effect that you have on them, and the immediacy of it, you know, like TV takes a long time to make and say this film and sometimes it's never guaranteed.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: To go ahead.
00:00:39
Speaker 3: So the beautiful thing about locking in theater is that you can at least plan your life around it, and it's beautiful, like you get to travel around the country. We just came from Brisbane, did a season there and now we're here in Adelaide and we'll see where the show goes later on.
00:00:50
Speaker 2: But I love theater.
00:00:51
Speaker 3: It's something about the craft element of it all, yes, but the repetition element, and it changes every night, yes, because you've got a different audience every night, you know, So you're you're performance on stage is kind of I believe that we affect each other. Yes, it's serh, it's kind of synchronicity, beautiful synchronicity with audience and actress on stage.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: How do you take a role? What makes you decide to take a role? Was it the personal aspect of this particular performance?
00:01:18
Speaker 3: No, I think Look, I think it's just more the fact that I love the scripts, if I mean, I love the dialogue and the stories that are in the scripts.
00:01:27
Speaker 2: Also, I love the people that I'm working with.
00:01:28
Speaker 3: I suppose every now and again most people would say, you know, just take work because you need it. But the beautifling about it is you get to do TV, film, and theater and so many different kind of platforms which are all really really different for me. So, I mean, I choose the work because it's just kind of a it's more of a mood situation too. I feel like theaters where I want to be at the moment, like it's something I'm really enjoying, but I also pick up on a pick up doing TV and film. But I do love theater. I really love it, you know, I mean secretly, I wouldn't have I would have loved for have been a role.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: Really, but I can't sing? You can you the next? Well? It is?
00:02:06
Speaker 1: That's right, you get that immediate? Can you have you got any musical chops at all?
00:02:10
Speaker 2: Nothing? No?
00:02:11
Speaker 1: Come on now everything you do triangle really the man Butcher's the symbols.
00:02:17
Speaker 2: Hey.
00:02:18
Speaker 1: So Thomas Mayo came in once with Kerry O'Brien and we talked about his book and we were talking about the Voice Department. So this book, which was from twenty twenty one, is the celebration of First Nations manhood, culture and family. So letters from a number of great First Nations and Indigenous people, people like stand Grant and Troy Cassadali that people would know when you read the book. When you heard about the book, what did you think?
00:02:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I was immediately, I mean immediately felt for the for the stories. Because what's really intriguing about writing letters. It's an old form, you know, like no one really writes letters these days.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: Yes, and you soon learned that it's a pretty hard you know, it's it's hard to.
00:02:56
Speaker 3: Soak your energy into writing letters and putting thoughts on paper and translating it for someone to read. But the biddle thing about it is we are the vessels for it and the voice for it. So the letters are written in such a way that for us as performers, that it becomes quite poetic.
00:03:11
Speaker 2: Yes, So I.
00:03:13
Speaker 3: Really enjoyed the fact and the process of how they went about writing the letters, what were their trepidations, their anxieties about what they reveal, and also where their love lighted it and how much and how intimate they were with us when they were sharing those stories. I think it's a really difficult post, you know, like it's a hard place to go and write. We've kind of thought about it as doing it personally, and it's you know, for me, it's quite difficult.
00:03:40
Speaker 2: I think, where do you start, how do you start? What do you reveal?
00:03:44
Speaker 3: It's kind of I would have thought that there would have been a number of drafts that went through. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. So I mean that's the reason why I took it on, because I thought, Wow, this is really interesting it's quite it's really quite radical when you think about it, because it's almost.
00:03:56
Speaker 2: Like love letters from the battlefield of Australia.
00:03:58
Speaker 3: Yes, a policy of legislation and the governments at the time. Because this goes back to nineteen twenty six. Some of the stories are of their fathers, so it's different generations with different stories at different times, different circumstances. And for me, I find that really quite incredible because Charlie King's story is about his father, his white father.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: And his Indigenous mother. He's averaging a mother.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: They had a relationship, so it's that interracial relationship that's happening at a time yes, you know, in the like almost a hundred years ago, you know, I mean that's that's yeah, I mean, that's true love. That's real love. It's a great love story too. So it's beautiful to see that he reminisces on that and that's the effect that it had on him that he thought it was the greatest love story ever told.
00:04:40
Speaker 1: Can we talk about your personal situation? So you don't have kids, no, but have you had a situation where because of your upbringing and growing up as a kid, you became a father figure for your brother Vinnie.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: Yeah I did.
00:04:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Look, I mean vin and I are thirteen months apart, and when we're like younger, he always used to follow me around wonder what are you doing?
00:05:01
Speaker 2: Bro? Can I come with you?
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Come on?
00:05:03
Speaker 2: Then?
00:05:03
Speaker 3: You know, And so it's been like that our whole lives. Really, he didn't really want to live with anyone else. He just gravitated towards brother Aaron. He thought that's where the good life was. It's probably right, he is right, he knew from the start. But look, I think the great thing about it is that as we get older, the rewards.
00:05:25
Speaker 2: Are more evident.
00:05:26
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, we get to share our memories. He travels with my work. He's including a lot of my contracts. So you know, if you want me, then you and Vinny comes with it. So it's because I can't separate that life and he loves it. He becomes a bigger part of the whole picture, like the in the show that we're in. Now, he's a happiness consultant, so he calls he keeps us all happy and alive because he brings that energy every day.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: Because he could have had a very different life without you. The fact that you were able to do that father figure finger which you're talking about in this show. I mean, that's amazing of you to do.
00:05:58
Speaker 3: Look, no, I mean there was a really clear question with it, and that was, you know, how could how can I not do it?
00:06:05
Speaker 2: You know, it's really simple.
00:06:07
Speaker 3: I look at earlier on it was really quite hard because I was younger and I and there's no manual on there, so finding the balance and finding the reason behind it all. But for me, it just just it's it's kind of love is not a duty. It's it's one of those kind of uh feelings in life. You just got to You've got to go with it because it's just the.
00:06:27
Speaker 2: Truth, and it's it's it's reality.
00:06:30
Speaker 3: And looking in the work I work in, you know, it's kind of a fantasy, well because we're acting and we're taking on characters. But Vinnie's very much my reality and and we balance that beautifully. He he he joins everything that I've ever been involved in.
00:06:44
Speaker 2: He's a big part of it.
00:06:46
Speaker 3: He's he's something that's enhanced my life, you know, and I'm forever blessed because of that. I Mean, we've when our fathers were sons, and this is what I was saying, on stage. We're not fathers, we're sons. We descend from different fathers. We've never grown up with our fathers. But in this lifetime we've given each other and get and had the opportunity to be h to be each other's father and to be each other's son because he has been there for me a lot of times too. And you know, so there's a great balance there.
00:07:15
Speaker 1: And that's a beautiful bond, isn't it.
00:07:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, look at these beautiful to be around. Look at you know, I mean, it's a laugh every Minutely.
00:07:22
Speaker 1: We don't have fit to say artistically. We don't have a lot of shows about fatherhood and even less about first nations.
00:07:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, and about and about beautiful masculinity, not toxic masculinity. This is quite a beautiful prose about men showing their love yep, and expressing their love to their fathers, sons or grandfathers. But you know, but it transcends across the whole family because really the end of the day, the most beautiful response that we've had from these shows is that it touches people immediately and it resonates in such a way that they leave the show, they pick up the phone and they ring their father and they tell them that they love them, and that's absolutely beautiful. There was a young seventeen year old in Bridgemond who did that and it just blew me away.
00:08:07
Speaker 2: He was crying and.
00:08:07
Speaker 3: I said, come here and give me a hug, and I had to console Hi.
00:08:10
Speaker 2: I'm like, no worry, that's cool.
00:08:11
Speaker 3: And the beautiful thing was he says, I just wrung my dad and told him that I loved him, and I'm bringing my dad next week. And he brought his dad and he came back with him and I saw him again and it was just beautiful that.
00:08:19
Speaker 2: It had that impact on him. And he's like a young lab seventeen years old.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: So it's just I think it's just if that's the bridge to you know, you know, beautiful masculinity or divine masculinity as we've kind of talked about, where men expressed their love and without any fear, because I think it's it's put a lot of people in a lot of situations where they've taken their lives and it's destroyed for family.
00:08:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's so universal. But it's interesting with your culture because I think a lot of people like myself who didn't grow up in a First nation's house. We don't understand sometimes, so we get an insight at times. So I'll use Willie Rioli as the example here, the Port Adelaide footballer. So his father passes, he then takes on his dad's name junior year as a tribute to his father. Like, that's not something that we do in our culture. So I think it's fascinating a book like this and a play like this to show people not just to have First Nation heritage, but the rest of us to go, okay, just show us your world.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, just love, love, love. Yeah.
00:09:17
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just not enough love in the world. Really, it's too much hate.
00:09:20
Speaker 1: So that's I mean, that's a really strong bond that not a lot of people have with their fathers.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: And you know, like my example is my relationship with my brother Vinnie.
00:09:29
Speaker 2: He wakes up with.
00:09:30
Speaker 3: Love in his heart every day, he goes to bed with loving his heart every night, and you know, he hugs me in the morning, he hugs me at night. He tells me he loves me ten times a day. So over the course of my life, you know, I've had a great teacher who's just taught me to say I love you, and I love you with meaning, and so it's not really fallen. It's not become something that I've ignored over my life.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: I've seen it as a beauty.
00:09:55
Speaker 3: And you know, like and when I ask for a Vinie hug, I get a proper hug, yes, you know, and he hugs me with all his might, and it's a I take that energy away with you.
00:10:03
Speaker 2: I go on stage again, give us a hug before I go on stage, and he gives me a big hugger and I go on stage. I got, I got the Vinnie love with me.
00:10:09
Speaker 3: You know, I've got that beautiful energy. But having that in my life, my whole life, I never noticed when I was a lot younger that that was a beautiful, beautiful medicine that I was receiving from another male. And he's not shy about saying that he loves you.
00:10:23
Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
00:10:24
Speaker 3: And when I was a lot younger, I used to think, oh Jesu, he just smothering me with all this love.
00:10:29
Speaker 2: And I mean, what's a stupid thing to think?
00:10:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you're young, Yeah, yeah, you know, he just loves me so many times and down like vin you've already said it to me.
00:10:35
Speaker 2: But these days, no, I don't stop him from saying it anymore. I never have.
00:10:40
Speaker 3: It's actually been a while, but I actually love that he taught me that that's okay just to say I love you.
00:10:46
Speaker 2: I love you, bro.
00:10:46
Speaker 1: I get that. Aaron Petterson is my guest. Dear Son is the name of the play. It's a State Theater Company production here. It's on at the Odeon Theater until the sixteenth of August. Everything you cover is what we talk about. And maybe they're not conversations that fathers and sons have with each other, but it's about strength, and it's about vulnerability. It's about in your case obviously culture and the importance of family too. And I think we've gone away from that.
00:11:11
Speaker 3: I think so, you know, like it's about losing those moments, like you know, it's do Let's not have any more regrets. Let's not question our feelings, you know, Let's and let's not have you know, let's not block our thoughts out. Let's let's be open to how we feel about each other, and let's let's talk. Because when those moments are gone, those moments are gone, and that's what's beautiful about this. There's stories in this play where you say, you know what, Dad, I really didn't get a chance to tell you how much I admire you, and I really regret never telling you how much I loved you while you were alive.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: And that's that for me, is just real simple.
00:11:46
Speaker 3: It's just looking at each other and it's just embracing that moment, and you know, it's look, I've learned a lot from the play in such a short amount of time, and we all have. In this play. There's five of us on stage. That's become a men's within a men's group, which is quite beautiful because we're carrying each.
00:12:03
Speaker 2: Other through those tough times.
00:12:04
Speaker 3: But we're supporting each other with having to, you know, perform these emotions every night.
00:12:10
Speaker 2: But for us, it's quite healing. It's really it's incredibly cathartic.
00:12:15
Speaker 1: And last night is standing ovation. First night critics are raving about beautiful, which is does that mean more to you when you're doing something And don't get me wrong, like TV and movies, you can do fun, but let's be honest, it's it's silly and nonset some of the things you do, whereas this is this feels like this is really more important.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: This is like us sitting on an island, uh, you know, with an audience, and we're sitting around a camp for and we're having a yarn and we're.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: Listening to each other.
00:12:41
Speaker 3: And I think that's the most beautiful thing about the piece, is it it resonates more when you listen, especially when we're on stage, because then we become audience members while you know, while actors are performing stories and connecting to characters in the show, so we join the audience. We're like, yeah, we're with you, and we're listening and we take everything in and I think the audience is experiencing exactly the same thing. So the beautiful thing about it is, you know, it's a it's a kind of a it's a two way journey, you know, in so many different ways. But for us, it's a it's a great men's group. It's been it was through the rehearsal period, and it's it is on stage and I think I will take this with ourselves out into the life and it'll make us better for it.
00:13:19
Speaker 1: Well, we're delighted to have you here. We know we went. You burn a big fan of the weather when you first got right now.
00:13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I came from queens and then come on, came from Queensland.
00:13:30
Speaker 1: Okay, before you go, this is completely self indulgent, but go with me on this. You know, all of us have someone in our lives that we went to school with that that makes it and becomes famous and everyone's excited about that. My sister in law, Melissa, Melissa woo Woom Marsa w went to school Melissa.
00:13:48
Speaker 3: Yes, I do, I do remember Hamilton Hamilton College, mon College the same year.
00:13:53
Speaker 1: Actually, well you're good, Yeah, she was school along really well. Move.
00:13:56
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, she's brilliant. I love Were you amazed? Do you have amazing s?
00:14:00
Speaker 1: Did you behave well at Montave?
00:14:02
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I think I did.
00:14:03
Speaker 1: Man, But do you realize how kids that you went to school with are so proud of what you're doing now, like they watch from afar and see you know, you reaching these holes.
00:14:10
Speaker 2: I do love that.
00:14:11
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that's but you know, you've got to go to school with someone at the end of the day. But I mean, from Mel's point of your love, mel she was awesome. Please have my love.
00:14:19
Speaker 1: Will long times?
00:14:20
Speaker 2: Was there that name?
00:14:21
Speaker 1: Good to see you. Thanks so much for coming in, Thanks for bringing this to South Australia to you know, a State Theater company.
00:14:27
Speaker 2: Please come out and see it.
00:14:28
Speaker 1: That's what you want so and I'm sure you would notice that with your own eyes. Fathers and sons, generational people coming.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, look at it is.
00:14:35
Speaker 3: There are so many different generations and look look it just resonates because it's it's just to do with the heart and the soul and the real moments that you have with people.
00:14:46
Speaker 1: And in this day and age, we need more of that.
00:14:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, can we have that moment on stage with everybody? So yeah, come along and we'll give you a bit of love.
00:14:52
Speaker 1: Dear son till the eighteenth or sixteenth or rather sixteenth of August at the Odeon Theater. Tickets and information, State Theater Company dot com dot au. The Great Aaron Petterson my guest. Lovely to see you, Thanks for coming. All the best
