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PICK UP FROM 9400 - 2017 House Program_G&D_BC_p29.pdf PARMALAT EXTERNAL AD PRODUCTION SPONSOR: SUPPORT FOR THE 2017 SEASON OF THE STUDIO THEATRE IS GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY SANDRA & JIM PITBLADO PRODUCTION SUPPORT IS GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY ESTHER & SAM SARICK 2 PICK UP FROM 9400 - 2017 House Program_G&D_BC_p29.pdf NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE EXTERNAL AD 3 NEW ART! ANTONI’S MESSAGE 1 PICK UP FROM 9400 - 2017 House Program_G&D_BC_p29.pdf 2017 SPONSORS 2 NEW ART! 2017 SPONSORS 3 RANDY HUGHSON RANDY PICK UP FROM 9400 - 2017 House Program_G&D_BC_p29.pdf RHEO THOMPSON CANDIES and VINTAGE HOTELS EXTERNAL ADS 4 RANDY HUGHSON RANDY A CONFLUENCE OF CULTURES AND SOULS BY KENN HARPER Colleen Murphy’s play script begins with an That shaman was Aua, a man from the epigraph from an Inuit shaman: western shores of Foxe Basin in farthest northern Hudson Bay. This was but one “The greatest peril of life lies in the fact piece of the wisdom that he imparted to that human food consists entirely of Knud Rasmussen, the Danish ethnologist souls. All the creatures that we have to and adventurer, himself part Inuit, who had kill and eat, all those that we have to arrived in this land in 1921. Rasmussen was strike down and destroy to make clothes intent on collecting the tales of the Inuit for ourselves, have souls, like we have, before they disappeared in a confusion souls that do not perish with the body, of cultures brought on by missionaries, and which must therefore be propitiated traders, police – the triumvirate of the lest they should avenge themselves on Qallunaat advance force that would us for taking away their bodies.” overwhelm Inuit beliefs. 5 “The technique of mauliqtuq – hunting at the breathing hole – although technologically sophisticated, was a tough way to feed one’s family” “We explain nothing, we believe nothing,” into the mouth of a freshly caught seal, to Aua explained. “We fear the weather spirit quench the seal’s thirst so that the animal’s of earth, that we must fight against to wrest soul might appear again in another seal and our food from land and sea. We fear Sila.” offer itself to mankind. Sila – now there’s a word that packs a And how are these seals – this life-blood wealth of meaning. Ubiquitous in Inuit of the Inuit – caught? For most of the year, culture, it encompasses the weather, Inuit hunt using the technique of mauliqtuq the outside, the environment, and – in a – hunting at the breathing hole. The farther different sense – intelligence, knowledge, one ventures into the deepest recesses of wisdom. The modern-day Nunavut Arctic the Arctic, the more long-lasting becomes College, in the bilingual world of today’s the ice cover, and the longer the mauliqtuq north, uses Sila as the root of its Inuktitut technique is used. It has come to epitomize name, Inuit Silatuqsarvik. Rasmussen, on the Inuit seal hunt. But one needn’t the basis of what he learned from Aua and sentimentalise it. Although a difficult and other shamans, called Sila a great and technologically sophisticated method, it was dangerous spirit that threatened mankind a tough way to feed one’s family. Charles through the powers of nature. Francis Hall wrote about the Inuit hunter Kudlago waiting patiently over a breathing Yet Sila was but an agent, an embodiment hole for two days and two nights before of something greater. Aua told the explorer, he achieved what passed for success – a “We fear Takannakapsaaluk, the great single seal to feed his family and dogs. woman down at the bottom of the sea, that rules over all the beasts of the sea.” Colleen Murphy’s play is set in the harsh Elsewhere she was known as Sedna, a landscape of the central Canadian Arctic. It being well beloved of Inuit carvers and comes as a shock to most Canadians, who art collectors. Sila was the force that live in a thin line just north of the American she unleashed when angry, to bring border, to learn that this isolated area near inclement weather to punish mankind the Northwest Passage is barely north of for its transgressions of the rules which the geographic centre of our peculiarly circumscribed their lives. shaped country. Here, an Inuit woman uncharacteristically risks her life to save “We fear the souls of dead human beings Angu’juaq, a polar bear cub, and teaches and of the animals we have killed.” him to be calm and helpful, against the Aua tells us melted water had to be dripped advice of the hunter Nukilik that “none of us 6 can go against our nature.” Murphy, Angu’juaq succumbs to a world made worse by man – not the men of his Three centuries later, Sir John Franklin experience, the Inuit, nor even the first and his desperate crew share this wave of invaders, the British explorers, but same unchanged geography with the modern, acquisitive man. descendants of the Inuit who rescued Angu’juaq, and with the bear itself, now Director Reneltta Arluk inhabits an three hundred years old. The Qallunaat – intersection too, the juncture of a white men – couldn’t have chosen a worse smorgasbord of indigenous cultures. I time or place. Science hasn’t yet given the first encountered her in Iqaluit when she name “Little Ice Age” to the frigid period in performed in Christopher Morris’s play which they make their unfortunate attempt Night. Reneltta brings to her craft a deep on the Northwest Passage. Having failed to understanding of native culture and a adopt Inuit clothing and travel techniques, strong awareness of the fragility of her they perish, to a man, over a hundred of northern environment. them. The search for Franklin, seemingly A hunter – is it a man or a bear? – stands never-ending due to the single-mindedness over a breathing hole, hostage to Sila. The of his wife, the indomitable Lady Jane, great woman at the bottom of the sea is results in the charting of the final stretches angry. of this man-killing coast. But the men and the ships are never found, not until the Kenn Harper is a writer and historian who summers of 2015 and 2016, when first the lived for fifty years in the Arctic. He is the Erebus and then the Terror are discovered author of Give Me My Father’s Body: The almost intact, preserved in warming waters, Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo and the the last one more or less where Inuit had series In Those Days: Collected Writings predicted it would be found. Sir John on Arctic History. He is a Fellow of the remains, his resting place unknown, his Royal Geographical Society and the Royal legacy uncertain; Margaret Atwood called Canadian Geographical Society, and a him a “dope,” but one Inuit researcher has Knight of the Royal Order of Dannebrog (Denmark). recently proclaimed him “a good guy.” Almost two centuries pass. The modern machinery of an oil platform throbs incessantly. The ice is deteriorating. Now, in the heart of winter, cruise ships ply the waters which were once impenetrable ice even in summer. The anthropomorphic polar bear, old and tired now, is not what the tourists expected; zoömorphic humans in costume prove more appealing to the paying passengers. Angu’juaq lived at the intersection of land – or in winter, sinaaq, the ice edge – and sea. For Inuit, a complex set of taboos governed their relationship with nanuq, this beast both feared and sought, whose soul remained with its corpse for three days after it gave its life to a hunter. Like the playwright, natives anthropomorphized the polar bear in their legends – it hunts at the same breathing holes as they do. Climate change threatens this iconic predator now. In the future as imagined by 7 DIRECTOR’S NOTES IF EVERY STEP YOU TOOK WAS MARKED, WHAT WOULD IT LEAVE BEHIND? BY RENELTTA ARLUK There is much to discuss with this new Stratford Festival is a new agreement. An work. The playwright. The director. The agreement that commits the Festival to be content. The process. The Inuit involvement. part of Indigenous reconciliation. Breaking Inclusion. Exclusion. The many perspectives. trail. Bridging gaps. Breaking down the The puppets. Sir John Franklin. The length. power structure. To be responsible for The space. The times. It’s epic and it’s such a beautiful and exceptionally talented necessary. Now more than ever. Set in the multi-cultured cast and design team is all expansive Arctic environment, this play privilege and all pleasure. I am so grateful. asks us to imagine the life of a 500-year-old polar bear. Can we imagine what it was like Every facet of the creative process being a Netsilik Inuk in the 1500s? Can we engaged Inuit. Shared skills. Shared imagine Sir John Franklin with ships afloat, knowledge. Quyanainni to Qaggiavuut pre-cannibalism? Can we imagine the future Nunavut Performing Arts for allowing of the Northwest Passage? Fully melted. space and dramaturgy. To Lucy Tulugarjuk Nothing left but an oil slick and still making for Tunniit designs. To Alethea Arnaquq- a profit. Can we celebrate that? Well, we do. Baril, Hovak Johnson, Stephanie Papik, We are. That is exactly what we are doing. Heather Igloliorte and Marjorie Tahbone Except it isn’t 150 years. It’s 500 years and for Tunniit guidance. To Beatrice Deer for we still want more. costume design consultations. To Kuzy Curley for designs shared with Props. To In 2011, sculptor Mark Coreth said: “When Kevin Eetoolook and Elder Arnaoyok for you touch this [ice] bear, you will feel the ice translations and regionalizing the Inuit melting under your hand.

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