)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.