While multidisciplinary artist Ian ‘Moopa’ Wilkes is a man of many talents — director, writer, theatre-maker and dancer — every now and then he likes to jump back on stage where his career began, as an actor.
Last seen under the theatrical spotlight in Black Swan State Theatre Company’s 2024 encore season of Barracking For The Umpire, his return to the boards for the co-production of Jacky with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company felt like the right role, due to the challenge it presented.
Playing the titular character, Wilkes fell in love with Arrernte playwright Declan Furber Gillick’s script that explores the complicated world of a young Aboriginal man trying to build a life in contemporary Australia through the gig economy, navigating the complex realities of identity, ambition and belonging.
Jacky’s carefully constructed life, which includes separated couple Linda and Glen (Amy Mathews and Steve Turner), is thrown into chaos when his younger brother Keith (played by Ballardong Wajarri actor Rueben Mongoo) arrives unexpectedly.
“There’s a whole lot of layers in Jacky,” says 36-year-old Wilkes, a Noongar man with connection to the Wadjuk and Ballardong people.
“The main theme for me is ‘what does it take to be a blackfella in this modern society? What kind of compromises and boundaries are we willing to overstep to live, and what’s important?’
“Especially in a suburbanised area, we seem to lose track of what it takes to be a blackfella. That’s a big one for Jacky, but there’s also a whole bunch of history that goes with that, of confronting cultural issues and the base of our racist colonisation and capitalism history. Hence, why there’s a double cast of two First Nations, two Indigenous blackfella characters, and two white Australian characters.”
Despite its relevance, the difficulty for Wilkes has stemmed from not seeing himself reflected in Jacky at all, given his strong cultural leadership in his family and understanding of protocol within his Noongar community.
“That’s purely because I’ve got the ancestral connection, so I stay strong in my own country,” Wilkes shares, as he describes Jacky and Keith as like apples and oranges.
“In fact, when we were doing the audition process, I read for both Keith and Jacky . . . I connected with Keith and could do Keith easily because I can jump into that energy. That’s me, I’m a big extrovert.
“I talk about culture and I really understand the ethics and morals around the work life and where we sit today with questionable capitalism, and that kind of stuff. Jacky was going to be a challenge for me because there’s a lot of things that I see in Jacky that I don’t do, but I was interested and up for that challenge.”
Directors Kate Champion (Black Swan artistic director) and Maitland Schnaars (Yirra Yaakin artistic director) have said they waited a long time to find a suitable play to collaborate on, the two theatre companies joining artistic forces for the first time since sci-fi comedy Skylab in 2018.
They found it in Jacky, with Wilkes explaining the Indigenous connotations and historical significance of his character’s name.
“All blackfellas, we have these Jacky Jacky stories where it’s not just a name,” he says.
“A ‘Jacky’ is someone who is a worker for the white man and does anything for the white man, even to the detriment of his own community. He will work to make money, live and survive and do whatever it takes to please the white man, get his money, get his work done, even if that means he has to reject and do terrible things to his own community. It goes back to the old tracking days where trackers would track their own people.”
Wilkes says the differences between the two brothers led to some interesting debates and heated arguments around what it takes to live and survive in the city.
“Jacky works and has got this prim and proper attitude because he’s a city black, then his little brother comes in, and he’s the chaos and the storm,” Wilkes says.
“Keith just completely flips Jacky’s world upside down because he doesn’t believe in this kind of culture of working for the boss and working for the man at the 9-to-5 gig, selling your soul and selling your energy just to make a little bit of money, so that everyone else can get rich.
“It’s very clever writing. There is so much detail, little hidden gems and intricacies and meticulous points . . . there’s no room to ad lib or improvise or be loose on the script.”
After co-directing Black Swan production York in 2021 with Clare Watson, and the 2025 season of Blue, Wilkes admits to his initial struggle in the rehearsal room to relinquish his directorial skills.
“The first week, I found myself maybe overstepping the boundary a little bit with my suggestions and going, ‘oops, I shouldn’t direct the show, sorry guys, I’ll just shut up now’,” he laughs.
“I mean, that comes with trust and the amount of time and energy you’ve spent building a relationship with people in the room. I’ve known Maitland for a long time, and Kate to a degree, so we’ve got a trusting kind of collaboration instinct already that’s been good to build on.”
Jacky is at Subiaco Arts Centre, October 23 to November 8. Tickets at artsculturetrust.wa.gov.au.