DOCSLIB.ORG

Forward with the Road Forward: a Conversation with Marie Clements

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Forward with the Road Forward: a Conversation with Marie Clements )RUZDUGZLWK7KH5RDG)RUZDUG$&RQYHUVDWLRQZLWK 3HWHU'LFNLQVRQ0DULH&OHPHQWV Canadian Theatre Review, Volume 164, 2015, pp. 36-43 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI7RURQWR3UHVV For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ctr/summary/v164/164.dickinson01.html Access provided by Simon Fraser University (28 Nov 2015 21:37 GMT) FEATURES | Forward with The Road Forward: A Conversation with Marie Clements Forward with The Road Forward: A Conversation with Marie Clements by Peter Dickinson The Road Forward came about from looking at these Native Brothers and Native Sisters and, artistically, from looking at my colleagues and asking them to come with Left to right: Corey Payette, Cheri Ma- racle, Russell Wallace, and Jennifer Kreis- me on this journey … this strange musical berg performing “This Is How it Goes,” journey. The Road Forward, by Marie Clements, PuSh Festival, Vancouver, February 2015. Photo by Tim Matheson, courtesy of red diva projects On 28 February 2010, Marie Clements’s The Road Forward was ence, over the course of the day’s costume fittings and make-up the closing performance at the Aboriginal Pavilion during the tests, technical rehearsal, and the six consecutive evening stagings Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Created and directed by of the show, Clements shot more than four hours of video footage. Clements, the eight-minute live musical performance and mul- She subsequently edited this into an award-winning ten-minute timedia installation featured an original composition by Jennifer music video that screened at more than sixteen film festivals across Kreisberg, a sculptural set by Connie Watts, and choreography by the Americas. Meanwhile, with her company red diva projects, Michael Greyeyes. The performers included Kreisberg, Michelle Clements began developing The Road Forward into a full-length St. John, Leela Gilday, Pura Fé, Byron Chief-Moon, Kevin Loring, “Aboriginal blues/rock musical,” a workshop version of which OsTwelve, and Evan Adams. Wanting to document the experi- premiered for one night only at Vancouver’s PuSh International 36 ctr 164 fall 2015 doi:10.3138/ctr.164.006 Forward with The Road Forward: A Conversation with Marie Clements | FEATURES Performing Arts Festival cabaret, Club PuSh, in 2013. After some further fine-tuning,The Road Forward was remounted for a three- night run at the York Theatre in Vancouver as part of the 2015 PuSh Festival, produced by red diva projects in association with Visceral Visions, in a co-presentation with the Vancouver East Cultural Centre and Touchstone Theatre. Clements is currently working with the National Film Board of Canada to develop a music docudrama based on themes of art and activism as created in this work. The Road Forward is based on Clements’s research into the archives of the Native Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) of British Columbia (NBCC), formed in 1931 and Canada’s oldest active advocacy group on First Nations issues. In particular, Clements was astounded to discover and read through back issues of the NBCC’s newspaper, The Native Voice, which became a power- ful mouthpiece for and documentary record of Indigenous social justice activism—and not just along the coast of BC, but also across Canada and the Americas. Video projections of scanned Ostwelve performing “If You Believe,” The Road Forward, by Marie pages from The Native Voice have appeared throughout the dif- Clements, PuSh Festival, Vancouver, February 2015. ferent performance iterations of the work, along with filmed foot- Photo by Tim Matheson, courtesy of red diva projects age from the Constitution Express, an important cross-Canada consciousness-raising event led by George Manuel in advance of Marie Clements: It was offered as a commission from the Cul- the repatriation of the Canadian constitution. tural Olympiad. Then I just started researching, or reimagining, Working with lead composer and musical director Kreisberg, BC’s history, and obviously I wanted to do something that was Clements, as writer, director, and producer of The Road Forward, very specific to where I was, and where I grew up. I wanted to has turned this history into a series of nineteen songs that marry celebrate that in the work, and I also wanted to be conscious of celebration and lament, resistance and requiem, all with a driv- where the Aboriginal Pavilion was, and to acknowledge parts of ing drum beat that announces unambiguously Indigenous pres- our society that we were still trying to bring forward. So, I just ence, sovereignty, and futurity. As Selena Couture notes in her started reading, and doing that Google research that we do, and contribution to this special issue, The Road Forward is a work came across the Native Brotherhood. I found out that the offices of “performative activism” very much rooted in its placed-based were still in West Vancouver—the Fisheries Union. For some rea- context of British Columbia, both past and present. To this end, son, just by chance, things started connecting, and one thing led alongside the celebration of The Native Voice as a mouthpiece for to another. I ended up calling them and asking if I could come down and see what they had, and look at some of the newspapers. I think they were right in the middle of digitizing a lot of their The Road Forward came about from looking files, but they still had a lot of hard copies. Everything else was at these Native Brothers and Native Sisters going into another kind of archive form. Bill Duncan [Director and, artistically, from looking at my of the NBCC] allowed me to go into one of the boardrooms and just sit with stacks of newspapers, of [copies of] The Native Voice. colleagues and asking them to come with I didn’t really have any one thing in mind, but you know how it is me on this journey … this strange musical when you start reading—you get excited about something you’ve never read before. And, to be honest, I was overwhelmed by what journey. I didn’t know. I was really emotionally engaged that I had never known these activists, and what they had done—that activists had formed this newspaper, and that they had celebrated and exposed Indigenous rights, Clements uses the piece to mourn the Aborigi- and given voice to moments in our history in Canada and the US. nal women who have been murdered or gone missing along BC’s So that’s where The Road Forward started to come from—out of Highway of Tears and in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and to this discovery of things I had lived right close by, but had never indict all levels of government for failing to address the issue in really known. any substantive way. This alone makes the work as relevant today PD as when it first premiered in 2010. : So you had the commission, and then you went to do your research. When you were doing your research, how conscious were * * * you—or were you conscious already—of the form that this piece Peter Dickinson: Which came first, your research into the NBCC, would be taking? [MC shakes head no.] Okay, no. But, I’m still or the commission from the Cultural Olympiad’s Aboriginal Pa- curious, was the platform of the Olympics at all in play here in vilion? Or was it a case of you knowing you had a great story and terms of how you were conceiving the multimedia aspects and the deciding to apply to the Cultural Olympiad for a place to tell it to musical aspects of the piece? as large an audience as possible? doi:10.3138/ctr.164.006 ctr 164 fall 2015 37 FEATURES | Forward with The Road Forward: A Conversation with Marie Clements MC: No, because I’d never really written anything musical. I’d never even thought of writing a musical, or of telling a story that The participation of the Four Host First way. But I was incredibly conscious of wanting to celebrate our shared Aboriginal history—where we’re standing. And I also Nations stated very clearly that the Olympics wanted to celebrate the cutting-edge and sharp musical talent that were on Coast Salish territories, and I love we had. I mean, it would have made sense, I guess, for me to write a play. But it wasn’t necessarily … it was only supposed to that it was with that kind of activism that we be at most 20 minutes or half an hour. And the commission mon- brought about a very clear showcasing of ies represented that (generously). So it was really about trying to Aboriginal talent across genres and disciplines. find a gem that I felt could reawaken this idea of history and this idea of who we are—and that could smash ideas of what people thought we were and are today. And so The Road Forward came about from looking at these Native Brothers and Native Sisters MC: Yes, that’s right. and, artistically, from looking at my colleagues and asking them PD: How many people in that original performance in the Ab- to come with me on this journey … this strange musical jour- original Pavilion stayed with the show all the way through? Did ney. And it was a gift that they did come and that that they did they all stay? bring their voices and their experiences and their histories to this MC project, this one song that was eight minutes. It’s epic, it’s an epic : No, they didn’t. Leela Gilday and Pura Fé were [two of] journey within that eight minutes. It took a lot to bring them here the original singers who left the show. And we brought in Cheri and to craft it in that amount of time.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Untold Stories of the Past 150 Years, Canada 150 Conference, UCD
    Untold Stories of the Past 150 Years, Canada 150 Conference, UCD [as of March 28, 2017 and subject to change] Friday, April 28, 2017 Registration: 11.30 am to 1 pm, Humanities Institute 1.00 pm – 2.15 pm: Panels - Panel 1A (Humanities Institute): Urban Indigenous Experiences Aubrey Hanson (Métis, University of Calgary), “Indigenous Women’s Resilience in Urban Spaces” Jeff Fedoruk (McMaster University), “Unceded Identities: Vancouver as Nexus of Urban Indigenous Cultural Production” Renée Monchalin (Métis, Algonquin, Huron; University of Toronto), “The Invisible Nation: Métis Identity, Access to Health Services, and the Colonial Legacy in Toronto, Canada” - Panel 1B (Geary Institute): Disrupting Normative Bodies and Gendered Discourses Kit Dobson (Mount Royal University), “Untold Bodies: Failing Gender in Canada’s Past and Future” Kristi Allain (St. Thomas University), “Taking Slap Shots at the House: When the Canadian Media turns Curlers into Hockey Players” Rebecca Draisey-Collishaw (Memorial University), “Listening Between the Lines: Curating the Normative Canadian” Jamie Jelinski (Queen’s University), “‘An Artist’s View of Tattooing’: Aba Bayefsky and Tattooing in Toronto and Yokohoma, 1978-1986” 2.15 pm – 2.30 pm: Break 2.30 pm – 3.45 pm: Panels - Panel 2A (Humanities Institute): Indigenous Aesthetics Sarah MacKenzie (University of New Brunswick), “Indigenous Women’s Theatre: A Tool of Decolonization” Lisa Boivin (Deninu Kue, University of Toronto), “Painting the Path of Indigenous Resilience: In this Place Settlers Call Canada” Shannon Webb-Campbell (Mi’kmaq, Memorial University), “On Reading Yourself Native: Notes from an Indigenous Poet to Established Aboriginal Writers” - Panel 2B (Geary Institute): Untold Diasporas Dagmara Drewniak (Adam Mickiewicz University), “‘We were coming back.
    [Show full text]
  • The Unnatural and Accidental Women
    I See You Sisters Like Yesterday Today: The Unnatural and Accidental Women Sharon Sullivan is an Associate Professor of In “Archimedes and the Paradox of Theater and Chair of Women’s and Gender Feminist Criticism,” Myra Jehlen writes that Studies at Washburn University, Topeka, “feminist thinking is really rethinking, an Kansas. She is particularly interested in the examination of the way certain assumptions intersections between art and activism. Her about women and the female character enter current research interests focus on modern into the fundamental assumptions that or- slavery, domestic violence, and incarcerated ganize all our thinking” (Jehlen 1981, 89). women. Métis playwright Marie Clements examines and challenges assumptions about gender Abstract and indigeneity in her play, The Unnatural This paper argues that Marie Clements’ play, and Accidental Women (UAW). Based on a The Unnatural and Accidental Women, pro- true story of a man who killed at least ten motes a (re)creation of a women’s community indigenous women in Vancouver, British that empowers women and nurtures indi- Columbia (B.C.), by poisoning them with alco- vidual identity. Inspired by the true story of hol, Clements recreates/rethinks the events women murdered by a serial killer in Van- from the victims’ points of view. Ultimately, couver, British Columbia, Clements focuses she reveals not only what has been rendered on the indigenous women victims whose stor- invisible about the women’s lives, but also the ies were not told in the media. possibility of a different cultural reality based on both inclusivity and respect for difference. Résumé Marie Clements has been a perform- Cet article soutient que la pièce de Marie er, playwright, director, and artistic director in Clements, The Unnatural and Accidental theatres across B.C.
    [Show full text]
  • A New Opera by Marie Clements and Brian Current
    A NEW OPERA BY MARIE CLEMENTS AND BRIAN CURRENT Invitational Concert Performance for blood families and families of the heart MISSING Wednesday November 1, 2017 Russian Hall 600 Campbell Avenue, Vancouver 7:30pm Ceremony | 8:00pm Performance | 9:45 Talking Circle Murdered and Missing Women and Girls Memorial Rock, Crab Park and Girls Memorial Rock, Murdered and Missing Women TONIGHT’S CONCERT IS PRESENTED IN THE CONTEXT OF CEREMONY LED BY ELDERS Opening Blessing and Welcome Delhia Nahanee with Rosemary Georgeson Opening Honour Song M’Girl Words Marie Clements (Librettist), Peter Hinton (Director) Facilitators Rosemary Georgeson, Delhia Nahanee Closing Honour Song Casandra Eastman, Eunice McMillan Conductor Timothy Long Lighting Kougar Basi Sound Andrew Smith Crew Bill Beauregarde Production Coordinator Kerriann Cardinal Community Engagement Liaison Rosemary Georgeson Downtown Eastside Advisory Fay Blaney, Casandra Eastman, Eunice McMillan, Lorelei Williams Organizing Family Charles Barber, Kerriann Cardinal, Cathleen Gingrich (City Opera); Rosemary Georgeson, Terry Hunter, Savannah Walling (Vancouver Moving Theatre) Special Thanks: Native Court Support Workers, Oppenheimer Park Ladies Tea Party (medicine bags), Eunice McMillan (bannock), Amy Young (Russian Hall), Homestart (furniture), Wicks and Wax (candles). Tonight’s special presentation made possible with fi nancial support from the City of Vancouver and BC Gaming. Information Tables: Vancouver Rape Relief, The Moosehide Campaign. This Invitational Concert Performance is co-produced by City Opera Vancouver and Pacifi c Opera Victoria in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre/Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. CITY OPERA VANCOUVER PRESENTS Missing is a world premiere, and a co-production of City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria, presented in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre and The Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival.
    [Show full text]
  • Children of God Study Guide
    STUDY GUIDE 1 Content Advisory and Self Care Please be advised that this play contains explicit descriptions and depictions of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and suicide. The play also deals with the history of residential schools in Canada. This is a recent history, as the last school did not close until 1996. These topics can be distressing, traumatic, and/or or triggering for members of the audience, especially those who have had firsthand experiences with these issues, or who know someone who has. With regards to res- idential school, some audience members may have Elders or other family members who went to residential school, or even may have gone to residential school themselves. Trauma is an overwhelming reaction to stressful and distressing situations. It can occur from a direct expe- rience of trauma or from witnessing or listening to stories that are traumatic. Even if we don’t experience a trauma reaction, it is important to acknowledge when a situation is overwhelming so that we can take care of ourselves. The caring professions have found that witnessing trauma and becoming invested in overwhelming emotion- ally stories can impact our health, well-being, and energy; if we don’t engage in self care. Self care is import- ant after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic situation; it can help us reduce the stress of processing the event. Some self care strategies include: • Exercise • Adequate sleep • Eating healthy • Mindfulness techniques (meditation or yoga) • Speak with a counselor, or someone you trust Our communities also play a role in our self care. Having people around us that we trust, to help us debrief, laugh, and give us comfort; these are important parts of self care.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Download
    Introduction: Marie Clements Reid Gilbert, Guest Editor “. white people look up and down without seeing you—like you are not worthy of seeing. Extinct, like a ghost. .” (Marie Clements, The Unnatural and Accidental Women 82) But inside it is a beautiful woman, alive with happiness and living. The ancient ones talk to us. (Marie Clements, Age of Iron 7) arie Clements is a complex and fascinating theatre artist: Mdramatist, actor, and director. Her plays are intellectually provocative and challenging, presenting Aboriginal 1 and feminist issues in a highly “painterly” style; her website describes Copper Thunderbird as a “two-act play on canvas.” As Brenda Leadlay, Artistic Director of Presentation House Theatre, comments, the work is consistently “poetic, imaginative and moving.” Mixing western theatrical practice with techniques of Aboriginal story - telling and ritual, Clements interrogates specific historical events (as, for example, the serial murders of Aboriginal women, the development of the atom bomb, the reductive depictions of “The Indian Musicale”) and individual memories (as, for example, of domestic abuse, the traumatic residue of Residential school, and the repression of “The System Chorus”). As I have elsewhere argued at greater length, her vision is never simple. Typically, she considers a number of overlapping themes at the same time, simultaneously locating both the differences and the links among these political, racial, and gender strands in a layered semiosis (“Shine”). She combines visual and sound patterns ,2 physical movement, and the fluidity of dreamscapes moving through time and space with hard, urban diction and apparently realistic plots (“Profile”). Her stylistic palate is equally complex: she embraces and—again—queries both the Western and Aboriginal modali - ties she employs, appropriates, re-appropriates, and revises (within the complexity of allusion in her early plays and more directly in her most recent work).
    [Show full text]
  • Missing Artistic & Production Technical Information Package
    Missing Artistic & Production Technical Information Package For touring or rental productions Libretto by Marie Clements | Music by Brian Current World Première Production, November 2017 Co-commissioned and co-produced by Pacific Opera Victoria and City Opera Vancouver In English and Gitxsan A new chamber opera by Métis playwright Marie Clements and Juno-winning composer Brian Current, Missing gives voice, in English and Gitxsan, to the story of Canada's missing and murdered Indigenous women. Set in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and along the Highway of Tears, Missing is a poetic expression of loss and hope, its creation led by aboriginal theatre and opera artists. Pacific Opera Victoria and City Opera Vancouver collaborated on the co-commission and co-production of this important new opera. World Première Performances York Theatre, Vancouver, November 3 to 11, 2017 Baumann Centre, Victoria, November 17 to 26, 2017 Private previews for families (invited audience) November 1, 7 pm. Russian Hall, Vancouver November 16, 7 pm. Baumann Centre, Victoria Missing Music by Brian Current | Libretto by Marie Clements Sung in English and Gitxsan, with English surtitles Approximate running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes, with no intermission Conductor Timothy Long Director Peter Hinton Scenic and Projection Designer Andy Moro Costume Designer Carmen Thompson Lighting Designer John Webber Sound Designer Sandy Scofield Dramaturg Paula Danckert CAST in order of vocal appearance Ava Caitlin Wood Native Girl Melody Courage Jess Heather Molloy Devon Kaden Forsberg
    [Show full text]
  • Download Download
    Spring 2006 185 Birds, Trees, Stones, and Politics: Agency & Ecology in Some Recent B.C. Performance Nelson Gray Ecology involves interrelationships, and interrelationships, by definition, require multiple agencies. This is a paper about the significance of agency in ecologically informed performance, with reference to some recent productions from British Columbia and with particular attention to the SongBird Oratorio, a work focusing on the interrelationships between birds and humans, and The Unnatural and Accidental Women, a play in which trees and stones take part in the transformation of a criminal injustice. While ecologically informed productions might be considered solely as those that foreground conservation issues, my argument is that the performances under discussion here, and others like them, can also be deemed ecological by virtue of the way they situate human action vis-à-vis physical agencies that are other than human. Such performances, it seems to me, present action (that often-cited Aristotelian term) as interaction, and extend the field of this interaction by tossing out the entrenched anthropocentric assumption that human conflict and its resolution is the be-all-and-end-all of meaning and existence. The term “agency” has a branching number of meanings, all of which stem from the notion of action; it can denote a faculty of action, an action itself, or the personification of an action. Agency as a human attribute is an important concept in post-colonial discourse,1 but the term may also be applied to non-human forces. The O.E.D., for instance, lists a wide range of examples including fire, the Supreme Being, citizens, insects, government organizations, an invisible force, and ‘a strong east wind’.
    [Show full text]
  • "We Acknowledge Our Past but Look to the Future:"1 First Nations Theater in the New Millennium
    23 BIRGIT DÄWES "We acknowledge our past but look to the future:"1 First Nations Theater in the New Millennium A Tradition of Native Theater In April 2018, Playwrights Canada Press published This is How We Got Here, the most recent work by Métis actor and playwright Keith Barker. Barker has, since May 2017, also served as artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts, Canada's oldest and most widely known professional Indigenous theater company, and is thus a suitable reference point from which to unravel the major developments of Native theater in Canada over the past fifteen years. Both This is How We Got Here (FP [first performed in] 2016) and his previous play, the award-winning The Hours That Remain (2013, FP 2012), are emblematic of contemporary First Nations theater in four substantial ways. As I will outline in more detail later in this chapter, these plays focus on themes of loss and death within families, inviting trans-ethnic, universalist human empathy and thus providing grounds for transcultural exchange and dialogue. At the same time, the underlying historical experiences microcosmically address political issues of settler colonialism, racism, and the current political situation of First Nations in Canada. Third, the plays' specific spatial and temporal structures, the erosion of boundaries between life and death, and the presence of supernatural characters on stage indicate a larger epistemological framework that privileges Indigenous knowledges over Western discourses of science. And finally, their use of humor and their emphasis on what Gerald Vizenor terms "survivance" – i.e., "more than survival, more than endurance or mere response" but "an active presence" (1998, 15) – demonstrates a strong sense of resistance against victimhood, a refusal to accept tragedy, and an overall positive outlook on interior and exterior circumstances.
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenous Catalogue 2020-2021 Oscar Louis-Charles Nathalie Grace Rangel Mignot-Grenier Bourdon Marzella
    CONTACTS INDIGENOUS CATALOGUE 2020-2021 OSCAR LOUIS-CHARLES NATHALIE GRACE RANGEL MIGNOT-GRENIER BOURDON MARZELLA AGENT, SALES & MARKET AGENT, SALES & MARKET DIRECTOR, DISTRIBUTION AGENT, SALES & MARKET DEVELOPMENT, DEVELOPMENT, & MARKET DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT, US / LATIN AMERICA / IBERIA CANADA / EUROPE / VR / DIGITAL PLATFORMS, +1-514-995-0095 / AFRICA / MIDDLE EAST / INFLIGHT [email protected] WORLDWIDE ASIA-PACIFIC +1-514-242-6264 +1-438-990-1537 +1-514-629-5174 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] NFB.CA/DISTRIBUTION © 2020 National Film Board of Canada. Printed in Canada. NOW IS THE TIME | CHRISTOPHER AUCHTER TIME | CHRISTOPHER THE IS NOW FREEDOM ROAD NOW IS THE TIME THE ROAD FORWARD THE MOUNTAIN OF SGAANA 5 SHORT FILMS | 2019 | ANGELINA MCLEOD | NFB 16 MIN | 2019 | CHRISTOPHER AUCHTER | NFB 101 MIN | 2017 | MARIE CLEMENTS | NFB 10 MIN | 2017 | CHRISTOPHER AUCHTER | NFB Freedom Road is a five-part documentary When internationally renowned Haida carver Marie Clements’ musical documentary connects A magical tale of a young man who is stolen series that tells the inspiring story of one Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights away to the Haida spirit world, and the young First Nation’s battle to resolve a brutal colonial carved the first new totem pole on British history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism woman who rescues him. Without words. legacy that uprooted and transformed a self- Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century. in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of sustaining community into an isolated island, On the 50th anniversary of the pole’s raising, First Nations activism today.
    [Show full text]
  • Theatrical Activism in Vancouver: from the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood of BC to Marie Clements’S the Road Forward and Back…
    Theatrical Activism in Vancouver: From the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood of BC to Marie Clements’s The Road Forward and Back… by Selena Couture On the final day of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, the Aboriginal Pavilion showcased a six-day run of The Road Forward, a musical performance installation created and directed by Marie Clements, composed by Jennifer Kreisberg, and choreographed by Michael Greyeyes. Clements filmed the technical rehearsal for this performance and developed it into an award-winning music video that toured film festivals in North America and Europe and can be viewed online (“History of Development” 2).1 Red diva projects (Clements and Michelle St. John’s company) developed a full-length “Aboriginal blues/rock multi-media musical” that was staged for one night only at the 2013 Vancouver PuSh International Performing Arts Festival cabaret, and was subsequently remounted in the 2015 PuSh Festival program for a three- night run.2 Since a full analysis of all four iterations is beyond the scope of this article, I will mainly discuss the 2013 live performance as it was the fullest blend of phenomenological performance modes emphasizing the theatrical tensions between presence and absence. There is a history in Vancouver of Indigenous theatrical intervention during mega-events that aims to interrupt a colonial understanding of authentic Indigeneity as static culture of the past. Clements invokes this history in her tribute to the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood of BC and, using these multiple modes of performance, demonstrates a continuing Indigenous presence. Before I begin my analysis of the performance, however, I would also like to link this work with some of Rebecca Schneider’s ideas of historical reenactment.
    [Show full text]
  • Where the Blood Study Guide
    Where the Blood Mixes b y K ev in L orin g a Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company and Belfry Theatre (Victoria, BC) revival production in association with The Savage Society (Vancouver, BC) co-presented by the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad Study Guide THE NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE ENGLISH THEATRE PROGRAMMES FOR STUDENT AUDIENCES 2009-2010 SEASON Peter Hinton Artistic Director, English Theatre This Study Guide was written and researched by Jane Moore for the National Arts Centre, English Theatre, January 2010. UIt may be used solely for educational purposesU. The National Arts Centre English Theatre values the feedback of teachers on the content and format of its Study Guides. We would appreciate your comments on past Study Guides, on this current one, or suggestions on ways to improve future Study Guides. Comments may be directed to Martina Kuska either by email at [email protected] or by fax at (613) 943-1401. Note to Teachers This Study Guide contains articles on Where the Blood Mixes and its background, as well as an interview with the writer, Kevin Loring, and some suggested activities or students in Drama or English classes. It also includes some in ormation on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and on apologies made by churches and the government o Canada to the Aboriginal peoples. Teachers are expected to choose whatever topics they and their classes will ind use ul. The sub)ect matter o the play may not be suitable or everyone. It is a good idea to do some research be ore seeing the play, so that you can deal sensitively with the issues that arise.
    [Show full text]
  • POWER SHIFT: the Story (Summit/Study/Repast)
    POWER SHIFT: The Story (Summit/Study/Repast) May 5-16, 2015 – Debajehmujig Creation Centre, Manitoulin Island, ON Written by Co-Curator Sarah Garton Stanley & Associate Artist Corey Payette Photographs by Marnie Richardson, Dr. Mique’l DangeLi, and Study participants 1 Table of Contents 1. The Indigenous CycLe - OverVieW 2. About this Document 3. The GoaLs 4. The Summit Participant List 5. Summer Turns to FaLL 6. MoVing into Winter 7. The Shape of Things 8. The First Signs of Spring 9. Intercultural Collaboration 10. The UnpLugging 11. A Month to Go 12. The Study 13. The Study Company List 14. The Elasticity of the ColLapse 15. The Repast 16. The Repast Program 17. Looking to the Future 18. The Appendices i. The InVitation ii. The Big ScheduLe iii. The Body of Work iv. The Staff Lists of the Three CoLLaborating Organizations v. The Repast Package Vi. The Support 2 The Indigenous Cycle - OvervieW The Summit From ApriL 22-24, 2014 at the Banff Centre, NAC EngLish Theatre, aLongside the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Luminato FestiVaL, the Indigenous Performing Arts ALLiance, the Canada CounciL for the Arts, the AustraLia CounciL for the Arts, and the Making Treaty 7 Society, hosted tweLVe Indigenous Leaders and ten institutional Listeners oVer three days about the breadth and scope of Indigenous work created across this vast land. Back: Corey Payette, Cole Alvis, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Michael Green, Nathan Medd, Collette Brennan, Brian Calliou, Ryan Cunningham, Herbie Barnes, Jillian Keiley, Daniel David Moses, Andy Lunney, Guylaine Normandin, Jorn Weisbrodt, Brian Quirt. Front: Margo Kane, Jani Lauzon, Yvette Nolan, Tara Renwick, Elder Tom Crane Bear, Sandra Laronde, Rachael Maza, Naomi Campbell, Sarah Garton Stanley, and Monique Mojica.
    [Show full text]