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Interpretive Theatre at Sovereign Hill
Background
Sovereign Hill’s Outdoor Museum interprets aspects of the fabulous mid-Victorian era
gold rushes in the Ballarat region.
The discovery of gold changed everything in Victoria and Australia. Every dimension
of our nascent national life—socially, culturally, politically, economically,
technologically—was utterly changed. The wealth generated by gold created
unprecedented development in the colony of Victoria.
Driven by a tenfold increase in the population in the decade after the discovery of
gold in 1851, Melbourne grew from a small town to become ‘Marvellous
Melbourne’—one of the great cities of the British Empire. Ballarat itself developed
incredibly from a rude goldfields encampment of bark and canvas and bush poles
into something that rivalled Melbourne’s claim to marvels.
The 1850s was a time when the fabric of a quieter, pastorally-based colonial life was
unravelled and rewoven into something new and shocking. An intriguing liberalconservative tradition of reform and political and social development emerged from
the mid-1850s. Secret ballot, a form of universal male suffrage, the 8-Hour Day, a
new Constitution, a new Legislative Assembly—all were achieved in that first golden
decade.
There was good and bad luck, ingenuity, entrepreneurial fervour, love and loss,
tragedy and triumph. The massive migration comprised thousands of stories of
leaving and longing. It was a massive human drama fuelled by expectation and hope
of life-changing discoveries.
There was bloodshed: the Eureka Uprising in Ballarat shocked everyone. The
colonial Government under Governor Hotham had enforced a system requiring every
Digger to have a current Gold Licence in order to mine for the Queen’s gold. The
licence was bad enough—30 shillings was a heavy burden—but the manner in which
the Goldfields Commissioners and their roughneck troopers enforced it offended
everyone. The goldfields populace was rife with discontent and agitation to get rid of
the Commissioners and the Licence system and to gain a voice in the parliament.
That the tension exploded in Ballarat was unexpected. The diggers built a stockade
at the Eureka Lead to keep the Commissioners out. It was attached by soldiers and
troopers in the dawn of 3 December 1954. Twenty-two diggers and eight soldiers
were killed in the 20 minute skirmish.
It was a period in which the Indigenous people of the goldfields were dispossessed of
their traditional lands. Some Indigenous people sought ways to participate in aspects
of the exotic new life around them, others left their country for good, others took up
jobs on pastoral stations abandoned by goldseekers, many were left with nothing and
nowhere to go.
The establishment of a Chinese Protectorate system sought to herd the thousands of
migrating Chinese miners into camps where they could be ‘managed’. The Chinese
were not passive in the face of this discrimination. They sought recourse through
petitions and the Parliament to remove the taxes imposed on them alone amongst
the goldfields population. The taxes were intended as a disincentive to Chinese
migration.
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The 1850s was an amazing period replete with human drama—of fantastic stories to
tell.
Sovereign Hill
The idea that became Sovereign Hill was conceived in the mid-1960s by a group of
local citizens who were concerned by the loss of heritage elements from the historic
landscape around them, and wanting to see the City’s gold mining heritage and its
historic infrastructure preserved and authoritatively interpreted for future generations.
They also recognised the potential of heritage tourism as an economic driver to
sustain their vision. Their vision focused on interpreting life on the Ballarat goldfields
between 1851-61—the high tide of a fabulous heyday as the boisterous, energetic
expression of that first generation’s aspirations to make something of themselves.
As well as reconstructions of the stores, trades and industries in and around
Sovereign Hill’s Main St, the Outdoor Museum includes a Chinese Camp modelled
on the one at Golden Point in Ballarat during the days of the Chinese Protectorate;
domestic dwellings interpreting the diversity of economic success of their inhabitants
from small weatherboard cottages to elegant brick bungalows; kitchen and
ornamental gardens and orchards; and an extensive horse-drawn vehicle collection
operating in the streets. The township is populated by costumed interpreters
engaging with visitors in a range of interpretive strategies in telling the story of
Ballarat’s golden heritage.
The Red Hill Gully Diggings is a reconstruction of Ballarat’s first three years as a
goldrush township, when the majority of the population lived under canvas or bark,
and typically worked shafts in small claims. The Diggings is simultaneously one of the
museum’s most effective interpretive strategies and an icon in its marketing
messages.
The museum includes original buildings relocated to the site, and recreations of
buildings known to be (or representative of well-described examples) in Ballarat in
the period. Some are conjectural interpretations designed to add variety to the visitor
experience, and to represent interesting examples of goldfields life during the core
period that we interpret.
The later 19th century period of quartz mining once the alluvial gold had been
depleted is interpreted in the Sovereign Quartz Mine, an underground tourist mine
intersecting original late-19th century mine workings and artefacts amongst displays
interpreting underground mining. It includes an operating heritage steam plant, a
battery house and reconstructed mine surface infrastructure; and a gold smelting
works.
The adjacent Gold Museum extends the history we interpret from before the
discovery of gold to the present. It provides greater access to the collections in a
more controlled environment than is possible in the Outdoor Museum. Its semipermanent exhibitions interpret the story of gold, its physical properties as a metal,
and the particular heritage of gold mining in Ballarat. It has an extensive research
collection of gold mining artefacts, images and documents. A partnership with the
Ballarat Historical Society has been mutually advantageous: the Society has
developed a large and important photographic collection which is managed by the
Gold Museum staff, and extensively used in the Museum’s public programs and
research.
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The gold rushes provide an especially rich resource for examining patterns of
historical change within a relatively compressed period of time: a ‘rush’ is an entirely
appropriate descriptor for a period of such intense change in so many dimensions. In
attempting to encapsulate these profound changes, the work of many academic
historians, and the specialised expertise and experience of local historians, have
been invaluable to us. They have provided a body of work which is directly applicable
in our interpretive strategies, and serve as an inspiration to our research programme.
That research has informed decision making in the development of the building
programme, mine development, exhibit development, interpretive training for staff
and volunteers, and the development of our range of interpretive strategies.
The illustrations of Gill, Cogné, Ham, Tulloch, Huyghue, Deutsche, Strutt, von
Guerard and others have provided another invaluable resource on which much of the
Outdoor Museum is based. They embellish the diversity of private accounts, journals,
and books about goldrush experiences. Having so much visual material to draw upon
(including a large amount of early photography) to analyse the rich and diverse
meanings of the documentary and material-culture evidence has been a wonderful
gift to us.
The Interpretive Experience
The physical environment of Sovereign Hill is simultaneously the backdrop and the
centre stage for our interpretive strategies. Visitors are a part of the same
environment as the interpreters, and share the sensory experience of it.
Interpretation by costumed staff and volunteers is at the core of the visiting
experience at Sovereign Hill by day: it provides a capability to make a personal
connection between the visitor and the interpretive content, and a means of
contextualising the exhibits in more personal—and meaningful—ways. Live
interpretation in structured demonstrations of rare trade skills, guided tours,
interpretive theatre pieces, demonstrations and many spontaneous interactions,
create opportunities to explore a visitor’s personal agenda or interests, to help
visitors understand what they are experiencing, to make connections between events
and people in the past, and to explore what we have in common with them and what
is different. These interpretations also provide an opportunity to engage in
storytelling: evocative historical narratives that contextualise exhibits and extend the
structured interpretations.
Thematic interpretation, interpretive theatre techniques, and story-telling are powerful
interpretive tools in this context because they provide familiar entry points for the
visitor to make connections more readily with the interpreted content of the gold rush.
They help to make the content relevant to the visitor because it is meaningful (what
the visitor may know something about) and personal (what the visitor may care about
and empathise with).1 Theatre is an
ideal strategy for realising the ‘constructivist museum’, an environment where
visitors of all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to create their own
S. H. Ham, Environmental Interpretation: A Practical Guide for People with Big Ideas and Small Budgets,
Fulcrum, Colorado, 1992; S. H. Ham, ‘Making Meaning and experience: perspectives on interpreting the
goldfields’, Keynote Address at the Nothing But Gold: 150 Years of Goldmining Conference, Bendigo, 2001
1
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meaning and find the place, the intersection, between the familiar and the
unknown, where genuine learning occurs.1
Those moments in cultural performance — when the mind, the emotions and the
senses are all engaged by what we are doing — can have an extraordinary impact
on those who experience them, and their understanding of the experience and its
relevance to them.2
Sovereign Hill has also developed a capacity to use technology to tell stories about
the heritage of the goldrushes. Technology has provided a reliable, engaging, and
cost-effective means of providing access to those stories in appropriate contexts and
in environments where live interpretation is difficult, or, where delivery in languages
other than English is needed.
It has enabled us to tell the story of one of Ballarat’s unique deep lead mines — the
Red Hill Mine — where the massive Welcome nugget (69kgs of pure gold) was
discovered and changed the lives of 22 hard-working and determined Cornish
miners. In the Quartz Mine, video technology has enabled mine guides to show
visitors otherwise inaccessible historic underground workings created by nineteenthcentury miners. Exhibits underground in the mine interpret the Chinese experience in
mining in The Secret Chamber and Woah Hawp Canton Gold. They tell stories in
Cantonese, Mandarin and English. In the Gold Museum, the Land of the Wathaurong
uses contemporary indigenous voices and video, artefacts, light and shade to tell the
story of the indigenous people of the region in an indoor sound and light programme.
The story of the Eureka Uprising is told in a 90 minute sound-and-light program
called Blood on the Southern Cross which is told across the entire 25 hectares of the
Sovereign Hill site.
These presentations are highly theatrical in their use and design of space, of lighting,
character development and narrative direction in telling a powerful story.
Interpretive Theatre at Sovereign Hill
For many years now, performance has been a part of Sovereign Hill’s interpretive
program. It has evolved over time to see a stronger skills base in theatre skills with
the emergence of theatre and performing arts programs available through the
University of Ballarat and its Arts Academy. We are now able to recruit into our
workforce people with theatre training.
1
L. Bedford, ‘Storytelling: the real work of museums’, Curator, 44/1, p 33
C. Hughes, Museum Theatre: Communicating with Visitors Through Drama, Heinemann, Portsmouth,
1998; C. Hughes, ‘Theatre and controversy in museums’, in Too Hot to Handle: Museums and Controversy, H.
A. Hess, and M. McConnell, (eds.), Journal of Museum Education 23/3, 2000; C. Hughes and L. Maloney,
Case Studies in Museum, Zoo an Aquarium Theatre, AAM, Washington, DC, 1999; C. Hughes, ‘Raising the
curtain on museum theatre’, Keynote Address, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2002; C.
Cameron and J. Gatewood, ‘Excursions into the un-remembered past: what people want from visits to
historic sites’, The Public Historian, 22/3, 2000; M. Csikszentmihalyi, and K. Hermanson, ‘Intrinsic
motivation in museums: why does one want to learn?’, in J. Falk and L. Dierking, (eds), Public Institutions
for Personal Learning, AAM, Washington, DC, 1995; D. Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence,
Bantam, New York, 1998; D. Schaller, S. Allison-Brunnell, M. Borun, and M. Chambers, ‘How do you like
to learn?’, Visitor Studies Today, V/11, 2002
2
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Theatre at Sovereign Hill has to be broadly defined. We use it as a device for
underpinning training and awareness of the period we interpret. Each new piece is an
opportunity to engage the staff who will perform it in discovering the content.
The skills of theatre contribute to building improved communication skills. Some
pieces require a higher level of skill, especially where there is an emotional journey in
the narrative. And we have to do that to be effective in our use of theatre. We know
learning is deepest when the emotions are engaged. Theatre provides a powerful
tool for achieving that engagement with the wide diversity of ages and audiences we
have here.
Our structure provides an opportunity for people with acting training and talent to
sustain themselves and exercise those talents broadly. It also provides mentoring
and skills development for others around them in interpreting better.
Participation in our interpretive theatre pieces is just a part of the role performed by
our staff. They are also involved in the wide range of tasks in running a large Outdoor
Museum by night and day. Our staff are categorised by skill levels appropriate to the
tasks required in the Outdoor Museum. Performance pieces are generally created
with the skills levels of the staff in mind which can be a challenge in ensuring the key
performers in a piece can carry off the role. This approach has been successful in
identifying potential talent in staff who have not come through an arts training
background but have the capability to perform and develop skills through in-house
training.
The program is under the Deputy CEO & Museums Director (Tim Sullivan) and
managed by the Interpretive Theatre Manager (Barry Kay). Barry’s responsibilities
include the training program in interpretive techniques and the development of our
holiday programs.
The portfolio of interpretive theatre pieces at any one time will contain a mixture of:
1) short re-enactments of known, described events and stories about the period we
interpret—the heyday of the alluvial gold rushes in Ballarat in 1851-61 (including,
e.g., the visit to Ballarat by the fabulous danseuse, artiste and courtesan Lola
Montez), Licence Hunts; sly grog searches (alcohol was banned on the goldfields
and so lots of ‘coffee’ tents sprung up);
2) short pieces interpreting underlying issues and themes in the history we interpret
for a contemporary and diverse audience, a generation further removed from a direct
connection to the goldfields. This would include The Night Cart, a piece relating to
hygiene, sanitation and contagious disease; our new Redcoats parade which
addresses a Crimean War theme of Empire and alliances formed by Western
countries to fight other countries in a place other than their own about an issue in yet
another country, and with uncertain objectives; a politician discussing the
campaigning on the latest issues of his time—e.g., the shortage of water and
government inaction in planning for the growth of the goldfields population (we are
still having that argument 150 years later and in the grip of the worst drought in
memory);
3) longer productions including reproductions of period texts; productions of our very
popular holiday pantomimes or melodramas on goldfields themes or conceits;
productions written in-house on large themes drawing on research done to develop
the pieces in 2) above; music theatre; and
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4) demonstrations of technology, medicines, etc. which are typically more
informational but theatrical in their design.
We are much more likely now to start our thinking about developing a new piece by
considering the relevance of the concept—how will visitors relate it to their own
experience and decisions. Why will it matter to them? What will it say about our lives
and the challenges we face today? The biggest challenge for all museums is that
they work towards being and staying relevant to their societies, to communicating
about issues that will bring us to some reflection on our lives, on the values that have
shaped us and are shaping us.
We are also much more conscious of the processes of learning and the ways in
which visitors learn in settings like museums. Finding those points of relevance that
learners will know or understand from their own experience and then stretching them
to new perspectives, new questions, new solutions is a critical part of creating theatre
that is interpretive—i.e., theatre that communicates something meaningful about an
exhibit, a place, a person or an idea.
We know that the deepest learning occurs when the learner is emotionally as well as
cognitively and perhaps physically engaged—when they care about what happens or
can empathise with the characters. Theatre provides a framework for that emotional
content to play in.
We are generally aiming to introduce two completely new pieces on themes/issues
each year.
In the years ahead, we are aiming to build the theatre and performance skills in our
people through closer collaboration with local educational institutions, to develop a
more flexible program so that the program can be varied more frequently to suit the
skills of the people working on a particular day, and to take greater advantage of the
theatrical potential of our site and our assets.
For further information, please contact:
Tim Sullivan
Deputy CEO & Museums Director
The Sovereign Hill Museums Association
[email protected]
Barry Kay
Interpretive Theatre Manager
The Sovereign Hill Museums Association
[email protected]
27 March 2008
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