Preparing Ground

Presented by Brisbane Festival in association with Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

A call to join First Peoples' care of Land — an urgent act for our shared future.

Preparing Ground is a powerful new language that dances the weight of history and the fire of resistance. It holds the warmth of family voices, quiet moments of care, and the heartache of displacement.

Three women share the stage, their bodies carrying stories through cycles of resilience and reclamation. Projections reveal a landscape that is both sacred and stolen, while sound and movement entwine to evoke a connection to Country for the audience, and for the performers one that cannot be erased. Over 60 minutes, Preparing Ground shifts between past and present, tradition and disruption, asking us to listen, witness, and remember.

Developed over six years through collaboration with the performers' communities on their Countries, Preparing Ground embodies First Nations storytelling Sovereignty, and what it means to belong to a land that remembers.

This is a call to join First Peoples' care of Land — an urgent act for our shared future.

Preparing Ground is supported by the Australian Government's Indigenous Languages and Arts program, and the Major Festivals Initiative, managed by Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body, in association with Brisbane Festival and Sydney Festival, with additional project funding from Creative Australia.