Principal speaker
Angelina Hurley
Angelina is a Jagera, Gooreng Gooreng, Mununjali, Birriah, and Gamilaaray women born and raised in Brisbane. Her writing debuted with her short film Aunty Maggie and the Womba Wakgun, 2009. A Fulbright Indigenous Scholar she's undertaking a Doctoral study at Griffith University Film School, South Bank entitled Pointing the Funny Bone: Blak Comedy and Aboriginal Cultural Perspectives on Humour, and writing a set of scripts for an Aboriginal comedy television series. Angelina is a creative writer with a focus and love for the genre of laughter, humour and comedy, and a goal to communicate ideas and critiques about Aboriginal humour and comedy through her work.
Under theorised in comedy studies is the fact that humour is at the core of being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Until a recent resurgence on television and a rapidly growing stand-up comedy industry, Indigenous humour remained mostly underground and prevalent only within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community itself. This was primarily through traditional practices of oral story telling. However, there is now a rich archive where humour has been represented through various media including theatre, dance, film and music.
Angelina writes about how events in her life have been shaped or tempered by humour and the comedic stimuli of family, friends and community.
"Many of us have lived via the old clique of 'If ya don't laugh you cry'. This is part of my being as an Aboriginal person, and more specifically, an Aboriginal woman. Humour is our survival, our healing, our super power. My life, family and culture have influenced my choice of career, to write comedy and to write humourous stories."
This presentation will not only speak to how the genre of comedy influenced Angelina from a young age in many art forms including film and stand up comedy. The presentation also investigates how laughter for Indigenous peoples worldwide can be seen to reinstate positions of for example belonging, ownership, communication, identity, survival, and healing. Angelina will discuss how Aboriginal peoples have an affinity with humour broadly throughout the world.
Through shared values, the world's Indigenous peoples use humour, on the one hand, to resist ongoing oppression, racism, and colonial-based white supremacy and, on the other, to express strong, resilient identities. In spite of the impacts of colonisation, racism, conflict, and oppression, the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples in Australia prevails through humour. However, the speciality is that it is part of our everyday being and allows our unique DNA to be expressed in idiosyncratic ways.
Event categories
RSVP
RSVP on or before Friday 17 April 2020 , by email RED@griffith.edu.au , or by phone 0755529107 , or via http://events.griffith.edu.au/d/knq2bh/4W