A Feast to Remember

Photo by Scott Benesiinaabandan

On the evening of October 24, 2011 we had a feast to make sure we gave gratitude to all the spirits that are helping us along our journey into making this festival a go.

 Native Earth also had a chance to welcome Ernie Sandy to our feast for the first time.  Mr. Sandy was an elder that most of the staff met during an Indigenous bus tour arranged by the Centre for Indigenous Theatre.  He blessed the food, and explained to us that we give thanks to everything that went into providing the food that will nourish our bodies. 

 With an attendance in the 30’s we were pleased to see an assortment of food shared and faces smiling. I had the chance to talk to a couple of the Animikiig playwrights to see how their experience was going, and I also got to talk to some of the actors who were all excited to be a part of their respective pieces.  Festival photographer Scott Benesiinaabandan was in the house and we are excited to see what memories he captures throughout the festival. 

This feast marked the opening of our Festival, with professional development workshops happening the morning of October 25^th and 26^th, then we get into the swing of things with our first night of pieces, starting with Hoofs and Huff on October 26^th. 

Elder, Ernie Sandy
Photo by Scott Benesiinaabandan

~Jantone

Between us playwrights...

Kenneth T. Williams

Kenneth T. Williams is a terribly interesting man.  Over the past two weeks I’ve watched him eat, drink, make merry with his fellow artists in the Stratford Shakespearean Festival’s 2011 playwrights retreat.  And the wheels were always turning.  The man is a storehouse of trivia, data and stories – oh the stories.  Did you know, for example, that there is a species of ants that survives by enslaving other ants, even enlisting beetles which they ride like cows?  Or that String Theory, some kind of sub-atomic science marvel which I have not yet begun to grasp, has already given way to the more advanced M Theory?  Or that one of Canada’s top minds on the matter is Dene scholar Percy Paul?

During the course of the residency, a number of artists gathered for what I will affectionately call You’re Welcome, That’s Enough Now Day, where each artist shared a poem.  Yes, he writes poetry, too.  Ken’s reflective contribution came from his 2008 play, Suicide Notes (published in the Signature Editions anthology Three On The Boards), and is well worth the read.  

There is something about a playwright’s process that turns all of these little things into a greater understanding of universal order, of human nature.   This is evident in the latest draft of his new play, Deserters, which was winner of the 10 Days of Madness festival's 24-hour playwriting competition in 2009.  Ken has gone to task in Stratford, turning out a full and compelling examination of motivations and rationales around conflict.  Director/dramaturg Tara Beagan and our fabulous cast joined him there on October 18 for the first day of workshop, and now the whole gang is in house, preparing for Saturday's public reading.  You should come!

-DM

Michael Greyeyes honoured at Canadian Dance Assembly AGM

"It is observed with alarm that the holding of dances by Indians on their reserves is on the increase, and that those practices tend to disorganize the efforts which the Department is putting forth to make them self-supporting. I have, therefore, to direct you to use your utmost endeavours to dissuade the Indians from excessive indulgence in the practice of dancing. You should suppress any dances which cause waste of time, interfere with the occupations of the Indians unsettle them for serious work, injure their health or encourage them in sloth and idleness. It is realized that reasonable amusement and recreation should be enjoyed by Indians, but they should not be allowed to dissipate their energies and abandon themselves to demoralizing amusements. By the use of tact and firmness, you can attain control and keep it, and this obstacle to continued progress will them disappear.¹³

Duncan Scott to Agents and Inspectors, RG10, Volume 3826, file 60,51101 Part 1 (August 19, 1915)"

 

 

-sourced on Tawow website.

 

 

 

Michael Trent, CDA President and Nathalie Fave, Executive Director hold the award recognizing

the contributions of outgoing Board Director Michael Greyeyes. (Greyeyes was in the rehearsal hall!)

contributed by Tara Beagan

Tulugaq

Thank you to: Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, The Theatre Centre and Kaneq Pictures for helping to support, welcome and document the company from Greenland to Turtle Island. Karitas Productions dance/theatre piece called Tulugaq is on tour across Canada.

On Wednesday August 17, 2011, Native Earth prepared to welcome with open arms our Kalaallit cousins with a hearty feast at Council Fire but because of communication problems, due to language barriers, they were nowhere to be found.  After about 45 mins, we were all united and feasted together trying to communicate and get to know each other. While we were cleaning up after the feast, the Tulugaq cast were excited to tell us that the feast was so inspiring and creative that they wanted to show us new work during their show the following night.

The Theatre Centre was generous enough to host Tulugaq and the show kicked off with the house being a little over half full. Tulugaq is a movement piece that has Kalaallit music serenading each movement piece. From my perspective it was a story of a love triangle that had a fourth character (the older sister whose partner was a part of the love triangle). The fight scene between the men and the dance of choice, where the lead woman chose which man she wanted, was a good performance and the language barrier was not a problem.

The extra pieces that the group worked on during the feast were a hip hop dance piece from Vilhelm Egede, a mask dance from the women (Arnatsiaq Reimer Eriksen and Najattaajaraq Jolesen) and some songs from Mike Thomsen. I found the mask piece to be similar to the clowning that was taught to me while I was at school and the audience responded well with a roar of laughter as the women kept flirting with some of the male audience members. It was fun to see the hip hop piece as it wasn’t really expected and the songs were beautiful. No one would have thought they would yodel like the polka, or at least that is not what I expected to come out of Mike’s mouth when he said that the next song was a traditional song of Greenland.

From the confusion of the feast to the wonderful movement story, the awesome hip hop, clowning mask dance and yodelling, our time with our cousins was full of fun and laughter and we will look forward to working with them in the future.

- Contributed by Shannon & Migizi Mishkiki

The Tao of US

I fear if I say this, I'll be punished.  I got this thing in me that doesn't want to trust it, doesn't want to believe it, doesn't think I deserve it ...

But the truth is I feel lucky.  I feel happy. It's been going on a few years now, it's a project still incomplete, I still got a lot of messed up small me to sort through, but as an adult I've never known this. I'm thankful for it, I'm lucky for it. But the truth is, if you asked me, how's it going, I gotta say, it's going good.

For long time I've been living out of a frustrated worldview, illusions of what my age means, what and where I should have been, things I long should have achieved.  There was no now.  There was a tormented past of almosts and should have beens, and a future I thought I wanted that seemed forever receding into non-being.  And then, in time, you get older, you sink into the now more, the this is it, this is truly where and who you are.

We just wrapped the Strong Medicine theatre to video promo shoot.  A piece about anti-smoking, respecting tobacco, etc.  But the prayer that was answered here wasn't about the "educational message" of the show (that was brilliantly created in the script by Yvette Nolan I should add), it was about touching upon another "you're a lucky human being" experience. 

I'm supposed to write about the process, filmmaking stuff, and I thought I would sit down here and chat about that.  But the truth is, and I realize this could sound heavy handed, but I don't really care about "filmmaking"

anymore, this shoot helped confirm that.  I want to share this profound experience of being alive.  That's it. I have no idea if I'm any good at what I do, or try to do, or if what I do is any good, or if I have anything insightful to say about an art form I'm struggling to get better at.  But I do know this: NEPA has human beings involved in its doors.  Human beings with spirit.  Kindness. Smiles.  A chance to celebrate and be alive with other good souls.

I'm sure I sound like a wanker by now.  A little hammered at an after party?

I'm not.  I'm in an airport lounge by myself. Drinking water and eating a granola bar.  Sexy, I know.  But you know what I really think about the shoot? I'm gonna miss them.  Life's funny that way.  For all the studying of the craft that I've done, which began 17 years ago in the same location we shot this project at (York University campus), I've learned this: the art form ultimately doesn't matter.  The deliverable doesn't matter, or any sense of job well done.  It's the people.  The relationships. Them. That momentary and all too fleeting Us. And while there was that Us I was stupidly happy.  And I hope the path leads to more Us's, with all of Them.

-Contributed by Shane Belcourt

Dispatch from Aotearoa

The second annual Matariki Development Festival kicked off on Monday, June 20^th, in Wellington, New Zealand. Native Earth and Tawata Productions enjoy a tuakana – teina relationship, an elder sibling – younger sibling dynamic, that has allowed us to offer guidance and advice as Tawata developed their festival.

Hone Kouka and Miria George, Executive Producer and Artistic Director of Tawata, participated in Weesageechak XXI and XXII, working with our actors on Miria’s new plays Urban Hymns (2009) and Sunset Road (2010), both of which went on to successful productions in New Zealand. Last June, they launched Matariki Festival, which is modelled on our own Weesageechak Festival, a week of developmental workshops of new plays by Maori writers, public readings of those plays and a number of ancillary events.

Both years of Matariki, Hone and Miria have showcased a work by a First Nation writer from Canada. Last year, Tara Beagan directed a reading of Two Old Women; this year, Keith Barker’s The Hours That Remain is getting a reading.  Hone and Miria’s thinking is that the Maori writers get the opportunity to see where their Canadian cousins are at in terms of playmaking, to see what issues we share, how and whether our worldviews are similar. 

Another annual event in the Matariki festival has been a korero, a discussion about First Nations Canadian theatre, with the Tawata whanau. This year, while a slideshow of images from Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, Almighty Voice and His Wife, Café Daughter, Gathering Light, Thunderstick, and Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way looped on the wall of the Circa Two Theatre, the talk turned to home, and primacy of place.  Like us, indigenous theatre practitioners here are without space, and therefore at the mercy of the mainstream producers who do have facilities.  As in Canada, there appears to be a swelling interest in indigenous work here, which is heartening, although it does mean that what gets produced is still being filtered through a certain gaze, because most of the artistic directors here are pakeha, as in Canada.  The news that Native Earth is going to be the operator of the studio space at the new Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre galvanized the assembly, and now, suddenly, all the talk here is about space, a home for artists, for programs, for our stories.

More to follow.

-contributed by Yvette Nolan

Our Day!

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not theatre in a business environment can work, let me assure you… it can!

Native Earth was welcomed into the Ontario Power Generation Native Circle’s National Aboriginal Day Celebration yesterday to communicate sensitivity in the work place. The celebration opened with an introduction from the wonderful David Harney, a prayer from  Bill Woodworth of Six Nations, kind words from John Murphy, and a beautiful opening song by the incredibly talented Rosary Spence.

The show,  titled Win-Talkers (written by Craig Lauzon and Tara Beagan), is a satirical look at "sensitivity training" in the workplace. The premise is that OPG has brought in a facilitator to instruct non-Caucasians on how to better understand their "Visible Majority" co-worker. It starts with a highly entertaining intro  by  Aloysius (yes, spelled with a “y”) played by Isaac Thomas. He begins by shedding light on Canada’s not - so - sunny past in its relations with the First Nations, and graciously introduces his seminar “Win-Talkers: Speaking with Sensitivity”. A crowd pleaser by the name of Marianne  (played by Michaela Washburn)  is soon after stirred out of her seat  in the auditorium by the subject matter. She snags the spotlight for as long as she can. Kurt,  (AKA Kent, Kristy or Klurp) played by Craig Lauzon, is summoned to the stage to reenact his experience with insensitivity with a fellow co-worker deemed a “Non-Sensi-talker”. Through some  reluctant role-play, a dispute at a printing centre line -up  is explored by Kurt (AKA Kent, Kristy, or Klurp) played by Craig Lauzon and the big bully Stuart played by Jeremy Proulx.   

Using great chemistry on stage and constant humour, the characters teach the audience how they to can become Win-Talkers  - primarily by never assuming one's make-up by one's appearance. 

Everyone was treated to some lovely venison and rice, with a refreshing strawberry beverage , all  provided by Council Fire.  

On the whole, Native Earth felt very welcome in  OPG's corporate domain, and have been invited back! 

-contributed by Richael Laking