Ruby Lorraine

Ruby Lorraine is a performing actor and emerging director hailing from Perth. The family are unsure where she got her flair working in the Performing Arts, because she hasn’t followed anyone else’s footsteps, but she has paved the way for the generation that comes after. She would call that “a job well done”.

She has studied Aboriginal Theatre and Movement at WAAPA and a Diploma of Stage and Screen Performance at NIDA. She is an Aboriginal Woman from Darumbal/Yimen country located in Queensland. She has worked with remote communities with local Elders to help build the confidence of young Aboriginal people using the performing arts. Ruby was the assisting director for the Aboriginal theatre students at WAAPA for their showcase doing Coranderrk.

She has written two short plays; Stray Cat performed with Short and Sweet (Perth) and I promise, you promise performed with Ilbijerri Theatre in Melbourne.

She has held one-on-one workshops with first-time actors and was the first person ever, to perform in the Western Australian Parliament House for the celebrations of women’s rights in Parliament.

Ruby is a musician with a background in classical music, having toured internationally.

Over the last 10 years, the battle between a mining company and an Aboriginal community came to a troubling end, resulting in the loss of compensation for the destruction of over 250 sacred sites, and condoning the profits of a known figure in the Australian mining circle.

Swine River is an absurdist truth on the beginnings of this tale where the State is governed by Swine River Mining Company, and the Aboriginal people are ruled by a legislation enforcing two choices; join Swine River or die; “because you can’t let heritage stand in the way of economic progress”.

– Ruby Lorraine

In the process of designing for Swine River, there was an emphasis on collaboration between the sets, lighting, costume and sound designers with the intent of crafting a complete world; a ‘state of mining’. A design language for the show quickly emerged from this collaboration, where industrial materials come up against more fluid elements like sound, light, colour, and space, allowing the Dreaming to exist even as the land is actively taken away. The design team intended to demonstrate the absurdity of the legislation surrounding sacred sites and mining, and to create an atmosphere of reflection around these practices, with the hope that audiences will resonate and advocate for change in the future.

– Imogen Hale, Guinevere Fisher and Tom Hamilton

Explicit language, themes of death, gun violence, and alcohol abuse.

Use of fog and haze.

Content advice subject to change.