Rhoda Roberts facts for kids

Rhoda Ann Roberts AO (born 1960) is an Australian theatre and arts director, arts executive, television presenter, and actor. She was head of Indigenous programming at the Sydney Opera House from 2012 until 2021, among many other roles. She is also a highly respected Aboriginal elder, being afforded the title "Aunty" (Aunty Rhoda). She was a co-founder of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust in 1987; has written for, produced, and presented work on television; was a producer at the Indigenous media agency Vibe Australia; founded the Festival of the Dreaming in 1997; and was cultural advisor for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. She has also acted in, written, and directed numerous stage productions.

Early life and education

Born in Canterbury Hospital in Sydney in 1959, Bundjalung woman Roberts grew up and completed Year 10 in Lismore, then moved back to Sydney, where she qualified as a nurse at Canterbury Hospital in 1979.

Career

Roberts was a co-founder of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust with Brian Syron, Lydia Miller (daughter of Pat O'Shane and activist Mick Miller and later executive director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts at the Australia Council), and others, with Justine Saunders as adviser. The ANTT arose out of the First National Black Playwrights Conference and Workshop in Canberra, in 1987, becoming formally incorporated in 1988. Second (1989) and Third National Black Playwrights Conferences followed. In 2016, Roberts said that the living person she most admired was Lydia Miller, as a "true Cultural Custodian who pass[es] on knowledge to ensure there is wealth and richness of understanding the environment and country and they do it with such humility and spirit of generosity always astounds me". Miller had also been a nurse, and they became friends and continued to work together. Roberts says that she was the originator of the idea to do Welcomes to Country before the conferences, and galleries and arts organisations followed suit.

In 1989, she presented the SBS Television program First In Line along with Michael Johnson, becoming the first Indigenous presenter on prime-time television. Roberts was employed as presenter of Vox Populi, an SBS Television program, in 1990, becoming the first Indigenous Australian to present a prime time current affairs program. She also wrote, produced, and directed several documentaries for SBS, including In the gutter, no way? in 1990.

From 1992 until 2014, Roberts was a producer at the Indigenous media agency Vibe Australia, where she produced and was broadcaster on its Deadly Sounds national weekly radio program until 2012. During this period she also worked for Network 10 and ABC Radio National (RN). In 2007 she was a presenter on the Indigenous culture program Awaye! on RN.

In 1997 she founded the Festival of the Dreaming, an Indigenous arts festival which ran in Sydney from 1997 until 2004, relocating to Woodford, Queensland in 2004. She was artistic director of the festival until 2009. The success of this event let to further appointments as director of large-scale public cultural events.

In 2000, Roberts was appointed Indigenous Cultural Advisor for the Olympic Games in Sydney. She was creative director of the Aboriginal segment, "The Awakening". From 2008 until 2011, she was creative director for the Sydney New Year's Eve celebrations, which in 2016 she regarded as her greatest achievement.

Roberts was appointed head of Indigenous programming at the Sydney Opera House in 2012, a job which was created for her. She held the position until March 2021. During her tenure there, she presented the weekly national program Deadly Voices from the House, which included live talks and a monthly podcast.

She has been working on several film and TV projects, including one about Tom E. Lewis (Balang) for SBS.

Stage productions

In 1988, Roberts performed in Akwanso, Fly South, which went on tour, playing at the Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney, ANU Arts Centre in Canberra, and Space Theatre in Adelaide.

She co-starred with Rachael Maza and Lydia Miller in Belvoir's 1993 production of Louis Nowra's play Radiance. This was a groundbreaking play, that ushered in a number of touring performances of Indigenous plays.

In 1998 she performed in a one-woman show Please Explain, written by Mick Barnes and directed by David Field at the Belvoir, and created the solo production Bible Boxing Love, which toured the east coast in 2008.

In October 2009, Roberts directed an international production of the opera Miracle in Brisbane by the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli for the Brisbane Festival at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts. In 2010, she directed and produced BodymARKS, which featured at the 2010 Darwin Festival.

In 2012, she wrote and directed Yarrabah the Musical for Opera Australia, as well as directing and producing BodymARKS, which featured at the 2010 Darwin Festival.

In October 2019, Roberts' production Natives Go wild was staged at the Sydney Opera House.

As of 2021, she was involved in the creation of the World Indigenous Art Orchestra.

In late August 2024, Roberts presented a new play, My Cousin Frank with Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA) in Lismore and Byron Bay. It is about her cousin Frank Roberts, a boxer who was the Aboriginal Australian to participate in the Olympics, at Tokyo in 1964. Directed by Kirk Page, Roberts narrates the story of "a family's journey from the tumultuous era of dispersal and silence to navigating a world controlled by government policy". The show includes the story of Cubawee, the self-managed reserve established by her grandfather. My Cousin Frank is a lead-in to a planned production in 2025, called The First Aboriginal Olympian, and Roberts hopes to unite the community of Lismore in their pride in being the home of this significant man and family history.

Other roles and activities

From 1979 until 1982, Roberts taught windsurfing.

In 2010 she was consultant festival director of the Garma Festival.

After Ruby Hunter died in 2010, Roberts was artistic director of a series of tribute concerts to the musician and partner of Archie Roach, called Nukkan Ya Ruby. She is ambassador for the Archie Roach Foundation.

Roberts was guest curator of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre's Clancestry Festival from 2012 until 2014. Around 2014, she established Dance Rites, a dance competition for Indigenous dancers.

As of 2016, she was creative director of Rhoda Roberts Gallery & Events, and festival director of the Boomerang Festival at Byron Bay. She was also doing consultancy work for Northern Rivers Performing Arts (NORPA), JUTE Theatre in Cairns, and Opera Australia. In January 2022, she was still directing Boomerang, and was First Nations consultant for NIDA, curator of the Parrtjima festival in Alice Springs, and First Nations programming creative director at NORPA.

She has also worked with the museum Quai Branly in Paris, and other First Nations groups worldwide.

Roberts has also served on many boards, including the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, Welcome to Country, Actors Equity, National Aboriginal and Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA), the NSW Australia Day council, the Yothu Yindi Foundation, Indigenous Tourism Australia, Australia International Cultural Council, Playwriting Australia (chair), Sydney Opera House Trust, and Darling Harbour Authority.

In September 2024 she was appointed a member of First Nations Arts, a newly-established division of the government arts funding body Australia Council focused on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts, for a term of four years.

She has also written a novel, Tullymorgan.

Recognition

Awards and honours

• 1997: Sidney Myer Facilitator's Award
• 1998 Deadly Award for Broadcasting
• 2016: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2016 Queen's Birthday Honours for "distinguished service to the performing arts through a range of leadership and advocacy roles in the development, promotion and presentation of contemporary Indigenous culture"
• 2017: Centenary Sue Nattrass Awards, presented at the 18th Helpmann Awards by Live Performance Australia
• 2019: Ros Bower Award from the Australia Council

Other recognition

British photographer Penny Tweedie's image of Roberts, taken around 2000, is held by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Actress Deborah Mailman paid tribute to Roberts' power as a role model as well as her achievements and legacy during her tenure at the Sydney Opera House: "Her ability to change things. Her fierceness in making sure the Opera House doors are open to our mob. Creating those events not just for our mob but for all audiences alike to celebrate First Nations stories".

In September 2021, Roberts was named as the inaugural elder-in-residence at SBS Television. The new position, in which the office-holder is intended to be a "guide and counsel" on Indigenous content, had an initial term of one year, with the possibility of a two-year extension.

She is also a highly respected Aboriginal elder, by the 2020s being afforded the title "Auntie".

Personal life

Roberts' twin sister Lois, a hairdresser, was involved in a car accident around 1970, aged 20, and received severe brain damage. In July 1998, aged 38, Lois went missing, after being seen getting into a white car while hitchhiking near Nimbin. Police were dismissive and would not file a missing person's report when her family went to them within two days. Her body was found in Whian Whian State Conservation Area six months later. ..... The crime was still unsolved as of 2024, and the trauma has continued to affect the family. Ivan Sen made a documentary film about the event and the grief of the family, called A Sister's Love. The film was screened in Lismore and aired on ABC TV in 2007.

Roberts has three children, the eldest being her twin sister's biological daughter, Emily, whom she raised from birth.

Roberts married actor Bill Hunter in 1993 and they lived together and raised Emily together until around 1999, when he suddenly announced that he wanted to leave the marriage. She did not know why until he visited her shortly before his death from liver cancer in 2011 and told her that he did not want her to have to nurse him. They did not, however, get divorced.

Her later partner is Steven Field, a landscape designer and stonemason whom she met around the time of her sister's disappearance, and he stepped in as stepfather to Emily. They had two children together, Jack and Sarah. As of 2019 they were building a home at Jacky Bulbin Flats, in Bundjalung country. Roberts intended to hold a number of "women-only cultural retreats" in places across the Northern Rivers.

Roberts also had a cousin called Frank, who was a champion boxer. There were a number of other boxers in the Roberts family, and the Robertses became known as "the fighting family of Lismore".