"Composer by Necessity": the Theatrical Imperative Behind the Impact, Legacy and Cultural Politics of Deborah Cheetham Fraillon's Pecan Summer (2010)

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s Pecan Summer (2010) is an enduring work telling a story based on the 1939 walk-off by residents and workers of the Cummeragunja Station in Yorta Yorta Country. The walk-off was a pivotal moment in the history of Indigenous protest in Australia and an act of necessity: for Indigenous Australian self-determination and for survival. This chapter will examine this “imperative” in the creation of innovative and socially engaged works, the “imperative” meaning that they are story-driven and yet connected to historical truths, whereas so often the canonical power structures that feed genres like opera are wedded to colonial matrices of gender, race, language and geography. In my interview with Deborah Cheetham Fraillon in 2009, she observed that “this story had to be written”. Moreover, in her Peggy Glanville-Hicks Address of 2019, the composer-singer referred to herself as a “composer by necessity”.