At Meyne Wyatt’s father’s wake, Ken and Ben Wyatt were talking politics.
Ken Wyatt, Meyne’s uncle, was until recently the Liberal minister for Indigenous Australians; Ben Wyatt, Meyne’s cousin, who at the time was treasurer for WA’s Labor government.
“They were having a little political debate,” Wyatt, 32, says. “I said to dad’s friends: ‘Look over there at Uncle Ken, and Ben, talking about Liberal and Labor – and pretending to be different!’
He laughs, then adds: “To me, same shit, different face.”
He may make highly political art, but Wyatt has no desire to follow their footsteps.
“As a politician you don’t get to be who you are – you have to compromise your values to work with the drum of the party,” he says. “You have to kiss arse. Yeah, politics is not my bag.”
Such straight speaking has become part of the Meyne Wyatt brand.
Many recognise him from the powerful monologue he delivered in June 2020 on ABC’s Q&A, recounting what it’s like to experience a full spectrum of racism, from outright hatred to micro-aggressions – and arguing that complacency is complicity.
That 3 minutes and 52 seconds changed his life, racking up more than 3 million views and garnering him a place on the Time100 Next list of emerging leaders. And it came from an 11th hour decision by a Q&A producer, who had seen Wyatt’s semi-autobiographical play City of Gold, which features a longer version of the monologue.
“It was last minute; George Floyd had died, #BlackLivesMatter was at its height. Q&A wanted to focus on the treatment of Aboriginal people here,” he says. “I was aware I was representing – I had to bring it.”
When we sit down between two performances of the play, which is back with a new production for Sydney Theatre Company this month, the 32-year-old Wongutha-Yamatji man is full of energy and gesticulation.
City of Gold depicts an Indigenous actor traversing two worlds: one in the city, which demands he play tired stereotypes; another in Kalgoorlie, where his family faces up to internal tension, external prejudice and injustice, and the loss of his recently deceased father.
When he wrote the show, his anger at the world’s systemic racism was full throttle – and he was fully aware that very anger would be weaponised against him, stereotyping him as the “angry Black man”.
His own father’s death was still raw, too – but with the professional distance of quasi-fictionalised characters, he was able to take his broken heart and make it into art. It was a lesson in how audiences respond to his authenticity.
Since the “unexpected, overwhelmingly positive” reaction to that Q&A monologue, Wyatt has never stopped working. “It took my career into another direction,” he says. “People now see me as a performer and writer.”
‘I was the class clown’
The energy with which Wyatt speaks represents the fulfilment of a childhood spent looking for any creative outlet with which to express himself.
As a boy he knew every AFL player that ever played. He’d leap around his lounge commentating games even when they weren’t on – he’d invent them. He sang in the shower, played air guitar around the house and staged performances with his siblings. He drew, painted, wrote, danced, performed – and joked.
“I was the class clown. I was always a bit of a ratbag,” he says. “I knew when I was about six I wanted to be an actor.”
Shari Sebbens first met Wyatt at NIDA in 2008. “We were two of four or five Aboriginal students and we did what every Aboriginal student does: sought each other out!” Sebbens, also a theatremaker and actor, says. Their rapport was instantaneous. “He said to me once: ‘We’re the weird kids from Black families who grew up amongst sports – but wanted to be actors’.”
The two became housemates in 2020. Sebbens played his sister in the original City of Gold, and is now directing him in the new production.
“Every creative decision, I crosscheck with Meyne. He always has the same response: ‘That’s your show, homie.’ That’s generous of any writer – it shows how willing he is to trust those he works with.”
Fellow writer Nayuka Gorrie first became aware of Wyatt when he was working on Neighbours.
“I love that he’s both very political, strategic and really competent,” Gorrie says. “It takes a lot to call people out, then face those people quite often.”
She names his support of the LGBTQI community as evidence of his “beautiful masculinity”.
“As far as I’m aware, he’s a straight man, but he genuinely goes out of his way to bring queer blackfellas along with him,” she says, citing the upcoming LGBTI+ themed episode he wrote of Heartbreak High, and the fact he called out homophobia on the Neighbours set.
As for the Q&A monologue, she describes how it felt to hear an Aboriginal person speak directly to other Aboriginal people.
“Meyne doesn’t exist for white audiences, he’s mostly concerned about what other blackfellas think of his work,” she says. “So when we see Aboriginal people speaking to us through the Black gaze, it feels good; people are forced to shut up and listen. It probably feels how white people feel all the time.”
‘I didn’t do art at school’
With many creative outlets shut off during lockdown, Wyatt did what he hadn’t done in a decade: picked up a paintbrush. “It was my ‘baking bread’ of the pandemic,” he says.
The first viewer of his self portraits was his most encouraging. “I sent photos to mum; she said: ‘Enter the Archibald!’ I was like, hell, no! I was too frightened. I didn’t do art at school. I’m not a trained painter.”
His mum, Sue Wyatt, is herself a prolific artist, who was an Archibald finalist in 2005 for her portrait of Doris Pilkington Garimara. And in 2020, after taking her advice, Meyne became the first Indigenous artist to win the Archibald packing room prize.
It’s a pursuit he has continued, most recently illustrating his children’s book, Maku, which carries an anti-racism message. “That book is for the child version of every person who’s said to me, ‘I’ve never met an Aboriginal person; I was never taught Indigenous history at school.’”
Racism, he says, is learned, not inherent. “We need to teach the antithesis of that. Unfortunately, some people are too far gone when they’re adults.”
And after playing Neighbours’ first Indigenous character from 2014 to 2016, he says the racism and homophobia he alleges he witnessed on set is industry wide.
“Look at channels 7, 9 and 10 – all the faces are white. People don’t know what they want to see unless they see it.
“Look at the streaming platforms – the more boundaries they push, the more people want to see it. Take a look around, people don’t all look the same … But I don’t see that reflected on network TV.”
‘We don’t all think alike’
We meet days before the federal election. If he was sat opposite his uncle’s successor – the new minister for Indigenous Australians – what would he say should be on their urgent to do list?
The Uluru Statement from the Heart isn’t one of them – Wyatt doesn’t support it. He feels a truth-telling and treaty process must come first, or else it’s a “shallow” tool.
“There’s an assumption all Indigenous people support it, but we don’t all think alike,” he says. “I understand the urge. But being in a constitution still means we’re connected to the commonwealth and don’t have sovereignty, or a treaty.”
Despite professing to not being political, Wyatt expresses distaste for Scott Morrison. “Who on Earth would want him back in?” he asks. Maybe Wyatt’s Uncle, for one, I venture. There’s a pause.
“Look, I’m not going to sit here and shit on my uncle because I have respect for him,” he says. “But I don’t believe in his politics.”
Wyatt has been commissioned to write a second play for STC, but is still deciding in which direction to take it.
“I enjoy writing funny stuff, but then I think: does it need to be hard and gritty to mean something?”
One thing he’s not planning on doing is more Shakespeare (Wyatt was cast as Edmund alongside Geoffrey Rush’s King Lear in 2015-16).
“I don’t need to see another Shakespeare. He’s had a pretty good run for 400 years,” he says.
“The beauty of new writing is you’re getting a slice of life that is now. And life is for living.”
City of Gold is on at Sydney Theatre Company until 11 June
