Gugu Dindi Gunyah: Many Rivers. One Home

PAYANGGATHA and Arts Centre Melbourne present
Gugu Dindi Gunyah
Many Rivers. One Home.
3 October | Ian Potter State Theatre

Rivers Meet. Stories Meet. People Meet.

The river is ever present, never silent. A carrier of memory, lore and connection - holding ancestral knowledge and guiding the journey of return.

Kutcha Edwards was born on the banks of the Murrumbidgee. A Mutti Mutti, Yorta Yorta and Nari Nari Songman, he knows this truth better than most: the course of his river was changed, but Country is alive and endures.

Gugu Dindi Gunyah. Many Rivers. One Home. is a powerful celebration of culture, resilience and collective belonging, shaped by rivers, songline, ancestral stories and shared memory. This multi-disciplinary performance of contemporary ceremony is grounded in ancient knowledge and culminates on the banks of the Birrarung, marking the first performance on the refurbished Ian Potter State Theatre stage, on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

Kutcha shares the stage with Song Keepers and cultural custodians from across the south-east nations: Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO (Yorta Yorta / Yuin), Wayne Thorpe (Gunnai), Alice Skye (Wergaia / Wemba Wemba), Stacie Nicholson-Piper (Wurundjeri, Dja Dja Wurrung and Ngurai-Illum Wurrung), Neil Morris (Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung, Multi-lineal Indigenous Sovereign Custodian) and Boorook - Brett Clarke (Kerray Woorroong). Each artist has spent time on Country with Kutcha, guided by cultural authority and deep listening. Together they carry a shared reclamation of story, language and strength.

Directed by Kylie Belling (Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri and South Sea Islander), the stage evokes Country itself - alive and changing beneath the performers. The ceremonial grounds ripple and morph, flowing with light and texture. Water moves. Footprints trace themselves in the sand. Under Music Director Aaron Choulai (Papua New Guinean-Australian), every song will be sung in the language of the Song Keeper who holds it.

Jason Tamiru (Yorta Yorta), keeper of fire and knowledge holder, carries the spirit of old Country. Like the river guides the journey, Tegan Murdock (Barkinji, Maurara / Yorta Yorta, Dhudhuroa) guides the performance through a lens of cultural practice, ceremony and weaving.

Where Tegan weaves the fish trap, dancers Brent Watkins (Gunai / Kurnai and Noongar /Yamatji), Phil Egan (Mutti Mutti and Yorta Yorta) and Teena Moffat (Yorta Yorta, Gunai / Kurnai and Gunditjmara) weave songline and stories together. On stage, there is no separation of cultural protocols. Everyone is part of the Waripa - ceremony.

Together, the knowledge holders and dancers share the beauty of singing up Country.