Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company’s Which Way Home with real-life father/daughter actors Derek and Shaquita Nannup

Derek Nannup’s association with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company stretches all the way back to teaching circus skills in the workshop programs when it was originally established as an Aboriginal youth theatre project. He regards the theatre company as his family and has fond memories of daughter Shaquita Nannup growing up in the theatre. “All the parents who worked in the theatre, while we’re workshopping a new show, our kids would be running around in the theatre, playing with the costumes and dressing up,” Whadjuk Noongar man Derek recounts. “She would come to the workshops, and she could play the theatre games with me, dummy in mouth . . . She was definitely a daddy’s girl. She’s my baby, and she’ll always be my baby, no matter how old.” Fast forward a few decades and actor, writer and director Derek — who also used to entertain patients at Princess Margaret Hospital as clown doctor Dr Munjong — now runs cultural tours as an eco education officer at Yanchep National Park, including cave and koala tours. “I could tell you all about koalas; I do have my koala-fications,” Derek amusingly dad jokes. While 25-year-old Shaquita has completed the WA Academy of Performing Arts Aboriginal performance course, appeared in television mini-series Cloudstreet and was last year part of Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company’s Kaarla Kaatijin, a children’s education program performing Noongar dreaming stories to students. The pair will perform together for the first time in Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company production Which Way Home, drawing on their own father-daughter relationship as Shaquita takes on the role of Tash and Derek plays Tash’s dad. The 70-minute WA premiere is directed by Cezera Critti-Schnaars, who also has experience working with her father, Yirra Yaakin artistic director Maitland Schnaars. Derek says he took leave from his Yanchep National Park position for the season, the opportunity to perform on stage with his daughter too important to pass up, building on their real-life relationship for these roles. “There’s already an understanding,” Derek shares. “We can take all those different elements in life, we can look at those situations, and we can put that into the play.” Written by Murriwarri and Yuggerah woman Katie Beckett, Which Way Home follows Tash and her dad on a road trip home to country following Tash’s very white suburban childhood. Beckett’s heartfelt play, and playwrighting debut, draws on her own experience growing up with her single Aboriginal father after the loss of her mother when she was five years old. “Katie’s done a great job on this play,” Derek says, who spent his childhood in the Mandurah/Pinjarra region. “We look at it and we see similarities. There are differences as well, but she (Beckett) understands when you’re trying to find out more about your past and where you’re from. “When you move away from country, especially for Aboriginal people, there’s a loss of connection. This whole story is about reconnecting and understanding that reconnection . . . and finding out who she (Tash) is. “The dad is a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke, but they’re on a journey, and as you know, it’s not the end that counts, it’s the journey itself. Tash is trying to find out about parts of her life and who she is, because they moved away, and now they’re heading home, back to country. She wants to know why they moved away.” Derek says children see their parents as flawless, until they don’t, and while much time is spent wrapping your child up in cotton wool to protect them from any generational trauma, there is the need for them to follow their own journey as they get older. “You know when somebody has an accident or somebody is about to die, and they see their whole life flash before their eyes?” Derek adds. “The same thing happens when your child is born, especially the dad of a daughter, because you want to protect them. You don’t want them to go through the things that you went through or make the mistakes that you made. But those mistakes are the things that teach you how to behave. They teach you how to grow up.” Which Way Home is at Subiaco Arts Centre, April 28 to May 9, tickets at artsculturetrust.wa.gov.au.