Old Stories in New Ways

May 23, 2017

Left-to-right: Velmah Atieno, Sheilah Achieng, Collins “Apunda-boy” Ouma, Tololwa Mollel, Desai Ogada (background) Small groups work on small pieces of the story and present them to others.

We are two Canadian theatre artists working in Western Kenya in association with rural and urban community-based theatre, music, and dance performers. Some are committed to a social activist agenda as they make their art, and others are focused on building their skills and pursuing artistic career aspirations – many are involved with both. We are writing from the middle of a project that will be previewed within its originating community in two short months. This project raises a variety of interesting points for artists who make socially-committed performance.

The process we pursue involves a collaboration across several layers of difference – between individual Kenyan art companies, across art forms, and across artists from Canada and Kenya. The emerging play is an exciting mashup of traditional and contemporary Kenyan music, dance, and storytelling. Inspired by collective creation methods, a company of twenty investigated a local story theatrically and thematically in intensive workshops, spread over two years. There are three co-directors, two Kenyan and one Canadian, and a writing/dramaturgy team made up of the directors and two additional Canadians and one Kenyan. The process is challenging, but worthwhile. The gaps in our understanding require a commitment to revel in ‘not knowing’ and asking naïve questions.

Pictured: Members of the Old Stories in New Ways Company. A pause in physical exploration to contemplate where to go next.

We believe theatrical form and practice should emerge from intention, which must emerge from context. By entering a specific milieu – a particular cultural, social, and historical location – with open curiosity and high attention to seeing and listening, needs and aspirations of a community are revealed over time. When we are curious, patient, and open, we discover and invent meaningful processes and forms. Short-circuiting any of these phases – context→intention→process→form – risks undermining the others. Investing richly in each can create a vibrant theatrical event that is deeply embedded in the social fabric it is trying to serve. We attempt to avoid pre-selection of theatrical forms and pre-determination of the “issue” to be addressed. This creative engagement changes what is produced, including the forms, process, and how it impacts the audience and others.

This non-prescriptive and open-ended approach is often short-circuited by the relationship of agencies with specific social agendas to artists that they contract to meet them. This observation comes from Jan’s experience creating this kind of art in a wide variety of settings. While creating strategic alliances with organizations and agencies pursuing significant social and educational interventions creates opportunities for long-term interventions and demonstrably direct impact, it can also lead to instrumental yet thinner art than we dream of. With this project, we have had the enviable opportunity to take pre-determined agendas out of the equation. We are, however, driven to ask how art can play a vital role in much needed social change if we don’t go in a straight line after specific social problems or pre-determined interventions?

Our long term project is called Old Stories in New Ways. Situated in Western Kenya, we are looking at traditional stories as vehicles that express a specific cultural context. What are the stories that resonate and last and what might they say to the society today, particularly given the rapid globalization and urbanization the region is experiencing?

Left-to-right: Edward “Kwach” Otieno, Nancy Okuku, William Okumu, Velmah Atieno. Actors explore the “Great Warrior’s” approach to getting a wife.

Why an old-fashioned story? Yes, it is beloved in the community and evokes a deep sense of nostalgia, but it is also conservative in that it reinforces social values that are currently under question. For example, in the story we are currently working on, Lwanda Magere, divisive tribalism is reinforced and women as secondary citizens are normalized. So why stage such a regressive narrative? In order to progress culturally, we believe we need to start where the community is, rather than where we or anyone else thinks it should be. Through a collaborative adaptation process, adherence to tribalism is challenged, and women’s biographies, oppressions, and capacities are revealed. We hope that the community’s affinity and investment in the story builds high engagement and that when the story is both questioned and delved in new ways, a deep involvement with its challenges will occur.

Throughout the development process, questions such as “where did she come from?” “what would happen if she refused?” and “why did he behave like that?” were explored through theatrical improvisation. The play will invite the audience to join us in that exploration. It is called Kwe Kalyet: Lwanda Magere Revisited. The title represents three languages and includes the name of the original local story and a call for cool peace. As of writing we continue its creation and await the community’s response.

Artists’ responses are very positive. One actor, William Okumu, thinks that by “acting it out, I am a change agent, a change advocate.” Raphael Omondi, the Kenyan partner who was integral in bringing the artists together, has this to say: “We are using old stories as an advocate for peace and coexistence, especially at a time where we are experiencing a lot of social injustice[…] Using an old story, and not telling it just the way it is, but delving into it, will be very important for the community.” By starting from and challenging what the community knows, feels, and is familiar with, Omondi and many of the artist participants in this project believe crucial social issues will come to the surface.

Left-to-right: Pari Shalton, Vinzil Odour (foreground), June Rapsha, Tina Claris. Dancers and actors combine to tell a story in images.

The context gave us the story. Asking questions and theatrically delving beneath its surface exposed inequities in the community and the culture. That led to defining our collective intentions, to challenge unexplored gender inequities (despite current Kenyan rhetoric about equality) and to advocate for concrete, meaningful steps towards inter-ethnic peace that goes beyond generalized conversation about the importance of tolerance. The play reveals and confronts these conditions by exposing them within the radical adaptation.

Gauging success in community-based, socially-committed theatre is not a cut and dried process. Change comes slowly and not without challenges from within and without. If we believe in art as a change agent, surely we must also believe in pursuing the richest possible expression of that art. Theatre can delve below the surface, embracing and exposing contradictions and tapping emotional depths. It behooves us to keep experimenting with how to best do that.

This team’s engagement with context first, and only then intention, process, and form, has taken us to focus on story adaptation as a driving force that can engage, inspire, and challenge. It is our hope, and we eagerly anticipate experiencing the answer, that this production and the artists involved will spark real, active, and important discussions that move the community forward.

Building Participation

By Adrienne Wong

May 16, 2017

Kids engaging with their first assignment as co-designers in "Me on the Map". Photo by Matt Reznek. — Kids engaging with their first assignment as co-designers in “Me on the Map”. Photo by Matt Reznek.

Every couple years I get malaise. This has happened enough times that I recognize the pattern, coming as it does between finishing one creative cycle, but before the next begins. The malaise is characterized by restlessness; do I still have time to become a physiotherapist, an early childhood educator, a sound engineer?

Most of all, I wonder: why make theatre at all? Does it even matter?

The first time I experienced malaise, I was fortunate to be taking a workshop with Linda Putnam, so I sought her counsel. Linda said that we will rarely see the impact of our work because it happens after the audience has left the theatre. Moments before talking to Linda, I was playing with a colleague’s 3-year-old son. Linda nodded at him in the corner eating snack and said, “what about kids?”

When kids are the audience, the impact is immediately apparent. You can see if they are in or out. In the words of Richard Greenblatt, the only truly political theatre is for young audiences. What surprised me over the years is the way my interest in working with and for young audiences would converge with my interest to create within a participatory aesthetic as a political and artistic choice.

To me, placing the audience at the centre of the creation not only means making choices that will create a positive experience of the artwork, it means that their experience is the artwork: where they move, what they see and hear, what they touch, to whom they speak and what they say. Ideally, these experiential aspects are balanced with elements that conventional theatre-goers might recognize, like story, character, and conflict.

Creating participatory theatre is a process of weighing and balancing all of these aspects to design and execute a coherent and unified experience. Ultimately, I want to make theatre experiences where the artists (myself and the collaborators with whom I work) agree to become invisible, conceding space to the participants, the audience. What began as an experiment, (best articulated by Dustin Harvey’s question, “can there be theatre without actors?”) is now a place where the dialogue is not only spoken by the audience but in some cases invented by them.

Jan Derbyshire and audience participants in “Me on the Map”. Photo by Matt Reznek.

One of the current projects I’m working on is Me on the Map, a participatory show for kids about urban design and collective, ethical decision-making. Together with co-creator Jan Derbyshire, we’ve designed a theatrical experience performed in the style of “classroom” that begins before the kids reach the performance space, and (we hope) resonates long after they’ve left. Structurally, the performance alternates between the facilitator introducing new information, moderating dialogue, then breaking the audience into smaller groups to solve problems together.

Through the process of making Me on the Map, Jan introduced me to the notion of emergent dialogue – what the kids say to each other through the course of the show. This, to us, became a critical throughline for the action of the play. We eavesdropped and projected the kids’ observations on screens, typed it into show reports, or simply tried to remember the nuggets of brilliance to share with each other post-show.

These were the kids’ lines. And this dialogue of theirs was, arguably, more important than anything we wrote.

They talked to each other and listened.

These two actions are the building blocks of our societies. The talking, the listening, and the human impulses they grow emerge from. Before the written word, there is the spoken word. Before the spoken word, there are the ears hearing, the eyes seeing, the mind apprehending the presence of the other – and sometimes The Other.

To design a structure or container that allows for the audience – the kids – to fully see, hear and feel each other is a manifestation of Jan and my optimistic vision of humanity. It is utopian design. It says, “I see you and it is critical, absolutely imperative that you are here. And you. And you. And you….” The presence of each individual audience member necessarily changes the course of what is happening, it shapes the meaning of the event they are experiencing.

We hope that the kids who participate in Me On The Map might be more willing to participate in real life, too. That what we do will be interesting and meaningful enough that it will make some of those individuals want to keep speaking up. That their experience of affecting the course of events in a controlled environment might communicate, without words, that they could have this effect in real life, too. That the world is mutable and we, the people who live in it, shape it.

These ideas are not ground-breaking, google “Augusto Boal” for decades worth of work. Nor do these principles apply to kids only. In her article in last week’s CdnTimes, Chelsea Haberlin wrote about Act Two of The Pipeline Project as a necessary opportunity for audience members to talk to each other about the pressing ideas and issues introduced by the more conventionally presented Act One. The artists involved created space for the audience to grapple with difficult questions, and then the artists stepped back and allowed that to happen. I can only imagine that Act Two was just as emotionally gripping as the first act, with its own ups and downs, and possibly a sense of unpredictability that is difficult to construct.

As a wider community of theatre-makers, we frequently argue that one of the theatre’s key properties is its ability to pull individuals into the room together, to share space, and an experience. Participatory theatre takes this strength one step further and acknowledges the many subjective ways the performance can impact the audience. There is no objective, singular point of view. There are only each of our individual, blood-and-flesh-powered, meaning-making brains interpreting what we see, and determining how it makes sense to our individual selves.

Good storytelling is about unearthing and playing out our worst fears and having a few laughs along the way. What is more fearful than other people? This is exactly why I make theatre. To contrast the subjectivity of my own experience with that of another. To create a safe (and aesthetically pleasing) environment to attempt expression, to misunderstand, to hear, to correct, to be corrected, to disagree, and to endeavor to find a point of agreement, however small.

When faced with news stories describing abuse of authority, the rise of the extreme right, and hidden diseases waiting to be unleashed by melting ice caps, these small instances of connection seem like very good reasons to keep doing what we’re doing.

CdnStudio Launches May 15 @ Theatre Centre

By Em Piro

May 11, 2017

Rehearse, Converse and Perform Online

CdnStudio is an online ‘room’ that uses internet technology to bring collaborators from across Canada together. With a few key props such as a laptop with webcam, a blank wall, and a high speed internet connection, Canadian artists may “rehearse” in real-time and in a shared virtual space from anywhere in the country.

At a launch event on May 15, prospective users (as well as the generally curious) can learn more about this unprecedented tool for performance creation, and are invited to try out the groundbreaking new technology on their own laptops.

“CdnStudio challenges some of the core tenets of what theatre is”, says SpiderWebShow Artistic Director Michael Wheeler. “Do the physical bodies of audience and performer need to occupy the same physical space? Usually, but not with CdnStudio, where the a performance can occur live but the shared space is a digital one.”

Sarah Garton Stanley with two collaborators in the CdnStudio.

This is the first phase of CdnStudio. Already, the team is considering ways to refine and grow its capacity, based on ongoing contributions and ideas from the Canadian performance community. From new work development, to technologically fueled experimentation, to reimagined definitions of live performance, SpiderWebShow invites the collective creative imaginations of Canadian makers to consider how digital collaboration will refine our medium.

Talking Forward

By Chelsea Haberlin

May 9, 2017

“You’re a coward!” the woman in the back row of the theatre spat at Max Fawcett after the pipeline proponent stated that he wouldn’t wade into the issue of Indigenous land claims; he’d “leave that to the courts”.

Some audience members nodded enthusiastically, others became still as they realized that this was going to get real. I was thrilled. The debates that all too often take place anonymously online, or between politicians or ‘experts’ were now occurring between regular citizens – live – in the small studio at the Gateway Theatre in Richmond BC.

This was the first comment of the night.

This conversation happened during Act Two of The Pipeline Project. Act One is the play written by Quelemia Sparrow, Kevin Loring, and Sebastien Archibald. It’s a part-verbatim, part meta-theatrical exploration of resource extraction, First Nations Land claims, and first world guilt. Act Two is a community dialogue that allows the audience to unpack/process the first act. We call it a ‘Talk Forward’.

Each Talk Forward featured a different guest speaker who had experience relevant to the play. Speakers ranged from Clean Energy BC CEO Paul Kariya, to members of the Unist’ot’en clan from Northern BC, to Kai Nagata (Dogwood Initiative), to Caleb Behn (Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne Za/Cree lawyer and activist). On this particular evening, our speaker was Max Fawcett, a writer and former editor of Alberta Oil. Max is an outspoken supporter of the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion.

Each speaker took 10 minutes to respond, connecting what they saw in the show to their real-life experience. Then I interviewed them for 5-minutes to jump start a conversation. After that, we widened the circle and engaged the audience in a 20-30 minute facilitated dialogue. Each night ended with the speaker suggesting an action the audience could take, answering the question “but what can I do?”. This was intended to activate the audience rather than leave them feeling defeated by the weight of the issues. Suggestions ranged from “donate to the Pull Together campaign” to “use your head and heart.” Calls to action that were sometimes tangible and sometimes more abstract. The Speaker responses were filmed and posted on Facebook and Twitter where the conversation continued online.

We didn’t want the conversation to be about how long it took to create the play or the much dreaded “how do you learn all those lines?!” We wanted to dig into the meat of the piece, and hoped the audience would want to as well. Most importantly, for the conversations to be meaningful we needed to be sure they were occurring across cross-sections of the population. To that end, we secured a donation allowing us to offer 100 $5 tickets and hired a Community Outreach Coordinator to connect with and bring in groups of individuals who might not normally attend plays at the Gateway Theatre. This led to a diverse audience that had the more traditional wealthy boomers but also a wide variety of people who are less likely to attend theatre: youth, people with aboriginal heritage, environmental activists, millennials – to name a few.

It was an experiment and we were more than a bit nervous. Would people stay for the second act? Would they talk? Would it feel relevant? The answer to all three of those questions was yes. On average, 90% of the audience stayed and the conversation was going on so passionately at the end of the night that it carried on for over a half hour in the lobby.

For the most part, the conversations felt vital. Like the night a young white man who had spent time in prison rejected the idea of White Privilege and his comments sparked a fierce debate with our all-female youth panel. Or when someone asked a very straightforward question like “what’s the NEB?” and another audience member provided the answer. It was clear that many people in the audience were learning this information for the first time. Several nights there were Indigenous audience members who shared their personal experience. I witnessed an older white woman go up to an Indigenous woman of about the same age and thank her for the story she shared about her history with residential schools. Two Canadians living in this country at the same time with vastly different experiences, connecting face to face.

There is immense value in looking into another person’s eyes. There is great power in hearing a live voice and seeing a viewpoint embodied. Those of us who make theatre know this. This is why theatre continues to live on despite hundreds of years of being told it is on the brink of extinction. Because people in a room together is too powerful and too delicious to ever go away.

Sebastien Archibald in Act 1 of “The Pipeline Project”. Photo by Matt Reznek.

So now I am left with the question – how do I as a theatre practitioner do a better job of lifting the audience out of darkly lit obscurity? How do I shine a light on them and include them in the blood-pumping experience of real human contact in a theatre space? I think that Talk Forwards are a place to start. And I’m aware that I have only just started. There is much to be discovered about how to encourage uncomfortable conversations and making the theatre a place where debate can occur and not just be an echo chamber.

At the end of the night, after the conversation had shifted from name calling to pointed, informed questions, one of the co-creators Kevin Loring – a member of the Nlaka’pamux nation who is fiercely opposed to resource extraction on unceded territory – said he thought it was very brave of Max to do what he did. He respected Max for his honesty and his ability to stand in a room of people who disagreed with him and state his opinion. That takes guts and is the only way real change can occur. Kevin said he wanted to give Max a shot of whiskey to thank him. Then we stood together in the lobby drinking whiskey, talking about this land, and about what comes next.

See a full list of speakers HERE, and view the speakers’ responses on The Pipeline Project Facebook page HERE.

SWS Take Over: Exploder

By Caitlin Gallichan-Lowe Layla Ainsley, Grace Dillon, Ava Bishop, Simon Flint, Davina Gabe, Arman Hakimattar, Shaurya Joshi, Trent Lee, Jane Mackenzie, Jaqueline Paule, Nika Pierre Pierr, Haylee Turner, Joy Twum-Barimah

May 2, 2017

A scene from Exploder at Western Canada High School

“I can feel my heart, pounding away…”

So this is a first for us. We have had a lot of professional theatre artists work with us, but we have never had a company in residence, and boy has it been epic. I think we all feel proud to be joining forces with the award winning artistic team from Ghost River Theatre to present Exploder, an original devised theatre piece created with the radical young theatre artists that are part of the WCHS drama program. Ghost River Artistic Director Eric Rose, started us off with some basic question that vaulted us into some complex and exciting theatrical answers : “What does it mean to be a teenager right now? What are the joys, thoughts, triumphs, fears, stresses, and epiphanies? What makes the teenage heart beat faster?”

The answer to this has developed into a high octane theatrical experience that explores the increasing pressures surrounding youth in the contemporary age, with the concept of an exam being both a metaphor but also an ever present source of stress. Rose notes “Do well on an exam and success awaits – fail an exam and it feels like you are a failure and your future suddenly grows dim. There is an awful lot of pressure to deal with when you are trying to reconcile the collision between the past you, and the future you in the present moment.”

Featuring dance, song, movement, and a punk rock freak out that we think makes you want to quit your job and start a band, Exploder will reminds you of when your brain was mixed with a cocktail of hormones so intense it feels like the world is a cherry bomb some kid threw into the cafeteria. Grade 10 student and creator Aideen Reynolds says, “doing the show feels beautiful and it is so cool to hear the audience react to what we are saying.” Emalia Velasco, also in grade 10 and part of the cast says, “less than 4 months ago it was a concept and now it is a real thing, it is out of our brains and out there and that is so wild”.

We are pretty fortunate that along with artistic director Eric Rose, there is a large team of collaborators involved in the making of project – including an original sound design from Dewi Wood, scripting from recent ATP/Enbridge Playwrights Award winner Louise Casemore, and lighting design by Jessie Paynter. “It’s a chance to work alongside artists who will become our future visionaries,” says Casemore. “It’s been incredible to see the nerves from the beginning of our process melt away into something honest, bold, and raw.”

And it is raw because that is who we are right now. You remember.

And can we say this? Dear Canadian Theatre Community, we know it is hard to be theatre artists. We know that sometimes you feel unappreciated and unacknowledged. We know that just the act of making art is revolutionary. We want you to know that we see you. We want you to know that Exploder would not exist without your inspired work.

We are listening and learning and grateful.

Exploder ran April 25 – 28 at Western Canada High School in Calgary and plays at the Calgary High School Drama Festival May 3^rd at 7pm, University of Calgary Theatre. Tickets 10$ at the door!

SWS Take Over: Scene Study Selfies

April 25, 2017

Every year at Western Canada High School in Calgary, students in the grade 12 drama class are asked to choose a section of a play to direct. This is a long-standing tradition and has become a rite of passage for young theatre artists at WCHS. Below are some of the Drama 30 students of Western Canada High School and their plays of choice for the directing project. As Nika says “It is a challenge, but it is worth it. Honestly, I’m S H O O K at the beginning of every rehearsal.”

Haylee, a high school girl, is holding a copy of the script for The Trigger by Carmen Aguirre. — Haylee is directing The Trigger by Carmen Aguirre.

Jane, high school girl, holds a copy of Never Swim Alone by Daniel MacIvor while standing in front of a portrait of the author. — Jane chose Never Swim Alone for her directing project. We unabashedly love Daniel MacIvor around here and we will shout it from the roof tops.

Joy, high school girl, holding a copy of the script For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The End of the Rainbow is not Enough — Joy is directing For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange.

Jaquie holds a copy of the script for The Drowning Girls, she chose this play for her directing project. — Jaquie is directing The Drowning Girls by Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson, and Daniela Vlaskalic.

Trent, high school boy, holding a copy of the script for Red by John Logan. — Trent is directing Red by John Logan.

Ava, high school girl, holding a copy of the script for Hannah Moscovitch's Little One for her directing project. — Ava is directing Hannah Moscovitch’s Little One.

Grace, a teenaged girl, holding the script for her directing project. — Grace is directing Sue Balint’s Pagan Love Songs For The Uninitiated.

Nika holding the script for Time by Geoffrey Simon Brown — Nika is directing Geoffrey Simon Brown’s new play Time. World premiere. Not bad for your first directing project.

Every year I am so grateful to see my students take on such challenging material for their first formal stab at directing. They choose their material themselves, after perusing our big bookcase of plays. Sometimes I help them out by suggesting a few based on what they are interested in or who they want to work with. I try and suggest a diverse selection of plays. In the end, it is my hope they are making a statement about the kinds of stories they want to tell and about what it takes to fully commit to a piece of theatre as a young theatre artist.

– Ms. G (Caitlin Gallichan-Lowe, Drama Specialist and Program Coordinator, Western Canada High School)

Tune in next week as the Grade 12 Drama Kids from WCHS open Exploder – a devised collaboration with Calgary’s Ghost River Theatre and the SWS Take Over continues!

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SWS Take Over: Meet the Drama Kids of Western Canada High School (Calgary)

April 18, 2017

Meet the Grade 12 Drama kids from Western Canada High School. We’re handing over this edition of CdnTimes to them as they finish the school year and build their performance Exploder – a collaboration with Calgary’s Ghost River Theatre. Along with their drama teacher Ms. G, the drama kids from WCHS reflect on what they love, what they’ve learned, and what they look forward to next.

The WCHS Drama program is one of Western Alberta’s oldest high school drama programs. The program really began to gain recognition under the amazing and inspired work of Betty Mitchell in the early 1940’s. Betty Mitchell set up a tradition of creating and producing bold, forward-thinking work in what could be (and still is) a conservative city. Graduates of the WCHS drama program have gone on to work in theatres across the country (including SWS’s own Adrienne Wong!). WCHS is an inner city school that is populated with a diverse, wildly curious and bright group of humans. The drama kids at WCHS, ever inspired by the spirit of Betty Mitchell, strive to create our own pocket of radical artistic thought and action in our school.

Ms. G: Okay, so can everyone say their name?

Everyone answers: Davina, Jane, Arman, Trent, Shaurya, Jaqueline, Layla,Grace, Ava, Haylee

Ms. G: The world wants to know – what blew your mind this year in theatre?

Everyone answers at once: The High Performance Rodeo/Mouthpiece/The synchronicity of it was amazing/The passion behind the words/Brotherhood/Oh- I loved Da Kink in My Hair.

Ms. G: Why do you think some people don’t go on in theatre? People who may want to as kids?

Davina: Although I am not going on into theatre, I want to keep participating in it as an audience member. As a kid, my mom always told me there are no jobs in theatre and not to go on in that life, which is maybe more true back home than in Canada. In Canada there are lot more opportunities in theatre.

Jaquie: I am kinda the same because I was told I would not have a solid job or make a lot. So I am going into education and minoring in theatre. Then I can still have it in my life.

Grace: What’s wrong with not having a lot of money? I guess it depends on the person. I don’t care, I mean, it is only one part of my life. I don’t mind if I don’t have the best things. But I guess it depends on the person? What they need?

Shaurya: Other professions are easier to maintain. I want to become a doctor and that is easier financially in the sense that I will have a job. In drama, you can go years without working as an actual actor.

Davina: Also it can depend on how you were brought up. I have a single mom who struggled, and I remember when she was out of a job and it was really, really hard. And she has two jobs now, but it is still hard to have enough even when she has work. So, being unsure of when I will work next is not something I want to worry about, especially if I have a family.

Jane: I feel lucky to come from a place of privilege and choosing theatre is scary because of the lack of financial stability. But the lucky thing I’ve had is to be able to meet lots of artists and hear about how they do it. So, that has been really inspiring because it makes me believe I can do it. And it will be hard, but I feel like this is what I have to do with my life.

Grace: I had it set in my mind that visual arts was all I wanted to do, but I came to this school and joined drama and it really opened up my world. I am still going to school for visual arts but I really don’t want to limit myself as an artist anymore. I realize now I can incorporate so many different things into visual art like movement. You can have a lot of things. Theatre has helped me with that.

Ms. G: Who is inspiring you these days? Who is keeping you going?

Davina: I am really inspired by this kid at U of C, Connor, who I met at the High Performance Rodeo and he gave me lots of ideas of how to keep creativity in my life which has really helped me out. He is really comfortable just being himself. I think that is amazing.

Jane: Karen Hines is really important to me right now. There is something about the soul of her work that speaks to my soul. I love her ideas and looking at her heart in her work. She is so raw and honest.

Arman: I really loved Brotherhood and Sébastien Hines. I loved hearing about his thought process. And Judith Thompson. I love her work. Working with her words has been so incredible.

Trent: My aunt and uncle work with Cowtown Opera. They inspire me because they have their own jobs and it doesn’t stop them from doing work with Cowtown Opera. They can still be actors.

Shaurya: Sébastien Hines for me was so easy to relate to – his upbringing was so relatable to me. I really loved his show. I wish we could have spent more time listening to him because he was so smart and had such cool things to say about theatre and how he sees it.

Layla: Anyone doing work with teens and not because I don’t think we are understood, but because I thnk people are afraid of us. We care and we are not scary. We have a lot to offer. We can make theatre too – we can do this and we have something to say.

Grace: Andy Moro and Tara Beagan. I met up with them to talk about set design and that was really inspiring for me. And the creators of Mouthpiece. And you guys [the class] – being away from you while I was sick was hard. You guys are inspiring to me and this space is inspiring to me.

Ava: I think that a theatre I love a lot and expect a lot from is Vertigo Theatre and want to see do cool things. I love murder mystery and have since I was a kid, I’m all about Agatha Christie. I think a theatre that focuses on one genre is hard and amazing and I want to see them go forward and do well.

Haylee: Someone I’ve been finding inspiring and encouraging is Montsy Videla [graduated from WCHS in 2016, currently studying theatre at SFU]. She is the best young actor I know and she has found her way at University even though she may have setbacks. She is a great example of that idea of going after what you love, but being open to change. I take a lot of inspiration from that.

Ms. G: What kind of work excites you? What do you want to make?

Jane: I saw a show a little while ago called Mess. I was like, “thank you, thank you.” I am familiar with the subject matter. I reminded that I want to make theatre to heal. There was this gorgeous clown element to it. I just walked out feeling good and yet it was so dark in its own way. I think it just got to the heart of it so well.

Haylee: Good theatre about mental health in general. Things like depression and eating disorders have been romanticized, especially on TV. It’s ugly, it’s not easy. I like to see the ugly, the realness.

Ava: The High Performance Rodeo All’s Well that Ends Well. That show got me going. It is important to see Queer representation in the show. There was a Queer relationship that was not completely defined but lived in the show in really great way. I love to see elements of Shakespeare’s real life bleed into the work.

Jane: I want to make art that is for the audience. Not for myself. I saw a show recently and walked out thinking this is a show that was all about “look at how smart I am, look at me.” With Shakespeare it feels so easy to walk out and feel stupid – I think that is a real danger. I walked out of All’s Well That Ends Well and felt really good, I got it.

Ms. G: Cool, thanks everyone. It is good to hear from you.

Tune in next edition as the Western Canada High School Theatre Class takeover continues on CdnTimes.

Building the World We Want To See

By Lisa Evans and SK Kerastas

February 28, 2017

A panel of 6 speakers sits in front of a lit stage. An audience watches them attentively in the darkness. — #BreakingTheBinary panel dialogue, January 2017 in Oakland CA. Photo by Leonardo Claudio leographicphotography.com

Dear Canadian Colleagues:

Hello.

It is a Thursday morning in Oakland. It’s California and it’s raining, which means no one knows how to drive or take buses or in generally get anywhere, which means we are meeting up late at a shared co-working space downtown. After struggling with outlets, bathrooms, and checking in about life, artists, cultural workers, and big ole queermos Lisa Evans and SK Kerastas sit down to reflect on the morbidly hilarious state of the union.

Lisa: There is a particular type of comedy to the political moment we’re living in. Watching the ridiculous (and frightening) antics coming from the White House feels akin to watching a poorly scripted dramatic sitcom: it’s completely nonsensical but hilarious because you know someone was completely serious.

However, under the laughter is a legitimate fear. As much as the U.S. has a reputation as a blusterous, gun-toting, violent country, it is important to name that we have not had a president like Donald Trump in our recent political history.

SK: Yeah. In the prompt for this letter, you all mentioned that you were riveted, reacting, and reeling watching us. And let me tell you, we are riveted, reacting, and reeling watching this administration. For many, it feels like a day-to-day escalation of danger and risk.

For folks who’ve been doing movement-building work for years, there’s this sentiment of, like, continuing that work, building the movements, and keeping steady. However, there are millions of people in this country who are JUST NOW becoming activated and tuning into the systemic and daily threats and struggle of historically marginalized and oppressed folks. These are the folks I don’t quite know what to do with. There are a lot of well-intentioned, reactionary impulses.

L: Right though! I feel like this moment is touching people in a very specific way. For folks who haven’t been engaged there is a burgeoning awareness that the system has not been helping a lot of people. There is the realization that the whole “not talking politics” thing has actually just created an environment for bigotry to thrive.

For folks who have already been targeted, it feels like folks are figuring out how to try to survive, both physically and spiritually. Figuring out how not to lose hope.

Which brings up the question of what is the purpose of our art now. We are no longer in a moment that allows for navel gazing. We need art that depicts the world we live in. That bolsters our spirits and encourages action. I think we have to start reconsidering what are we are pushing to the forefront.

SK speaks into a microphone on stage, holding papers. — SK Kerastas. Photo by Leonardo Claudio leographicphotography.com

S: YES. I mean, Lisa and I were joking cause we were originally asked to comment on Lady Gaga’s performance at the Super Bowl and, in my opinion, the statement she made was that this right wing current has suddenly reframed our more basic politics to be radical and making a statement. As artists, I think this is THE WORST thing we can do right now. Let this current take us with it. It is imperative at this moment that we actually fight for and create the radical world we want to see. Theatre is a perfect platform for this.

In a lot of on-the-ground social justice movements, there is a strong push to envision. What does a world without prisons look like? What does a world without cops look like? It is this imagination and world-building that we as artists — specifically theatre artists– have the capacity to put on stage and expand our cultural visioning.

To keep performing the same stories (of dominant culture) that we’ve been performing for years, and assume some how they’ve been radicalized because of the current political climate– now THAT is a missed opportunity.

L: I also feel like it’s an opportunity to make space for voices who have not been centered previously. What would it mean to fund and support work for emerging artists whose identities have either been co-opted or used as a metaphor for more privileged communities to understand loss? What would it mean to center undocumented people, trans people of color, folks with physical and/or cognitive disabilities in creating and presenting theater? I think it would not only meaning changing what stories we tell but how we tell them.

I think there is also a crucial need to take our art outside of what we have determined to be “arts” spaces.

S: *SNAPS*

Yeah, we have been doing a lot of work with larger arts organizations in the US who are feeling this panic of needing to change. They’re like, help us! And it’s a great impulse. AND a lot of what we are working through with these institutions is how to restructure them, how to create pathways and accessibility for folks who’ve been strategically kept out. This means really changing our system of values — which is such a sensitive subject when it comes to art. Who gets to decide what is meaningful, what is good? Where it takes place?

It’s about space, it’s about structure, it’s about the folks who’ve historically been in power and benefitted from these systems stepping back. Supporting from behind.

I mean, that’s such a powerful move to make — stepping back. That’s what alliance building is about.

I’ve had some experience living, studying in Canada — I went to McGill and worked a bit in Montreal and Vancouver, have done some exchanges with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto. In my opinion, I think U.S. artists could learn a lot more about cultivating spaces of difference from Canadians. I also think that Canadian artists — specifically white Canadian artists — can learn from us about the ways U.S. artists are interrogating white supremacy right now.

Lisa pauses during her speech, standing on a lit stage. — Lisa Evans. Photo by Leonardo Claudio leographicphotography.com

L: Yeah, I think interrogating power and privilege in the arts is still something folks are tip-toeing around a lot. Like, something I feel like we’ve been talking about with #BreakingtheBinary has been the need to have folks from systemically marginalized communities in positions of power, the subtext of which is that it means folks with more privilege moving out of those positions. And I think that this parallels with what’s happening in our country right now.

You have people (primarily white folks if we’re going to consider voter data as well as, you know, sense) who feel like they have either been left out of American “social progress” or who feel like they’re being asked to give up something in order for other people to have their basic needs. I feel like this is an affront to the belief of meritocracy that is so rampant in our culture.

S: Yup. So true.

So, #BreakingtheBinary is this programming that Lisa and I are working on, and being reached out to a ton about right now. Large organizations are reaching out to us because they want to do trans work or they’re producing a play with trans characters in it, but have no structural support for this kind of content and/or to make work for audiences who share these identities.

Our strategy has been, when large companies with large resources reach out to us, to leverage that interest and power. To really ask ourselves how we can make this situation actually really benefit trans people — particularly the most marginalized trans folks: trans women and femmes of color. So, often what we’ll do is say, yes, we’ll do training and some workshops, but we also want you to produce work by local transPOC artists to accompany this show and we’ll support you in doing this so we can model what ethical partnering looks like and also build some pathways for folks to get paid and to get their work seen!

L: Exactly! I think the thing we are asking folks to reflect on is not just how to produce work that speaks to the moment we’re in, but also to proactively interrogate what the purpose of the art is. It can no longer be just simply putting challenging narratives on our stages: we have to develop practices that help both our organizations and us as individuals to challenge systemic oppression and build to the equity we want to see in the world.

A discussion on how to end the article trails into a conversation about other community and artistic projects in the works. Lisa (who is, as always, behind on at least 7 different projects) immediately scrambles to throw all their stuff in a bag and run to pick up posters for an event before the printer closes. SK strategizes which location in the co-working space they are going to hole up in to finish invoices for some upcoming #BreakingtheBinary work. This marks the end of a moment for reflection and a transition back into action. They are, after all, cultural workers in Oakland, and the fight for change doesn’t pause for an article.

“Building the World We Want” is the third article in CdnTimes Volume 8, Edition 6: Letters to Canadians. Other works in this edition are “New York Dispatch” by Tanya Marquardt, and “Irresistible Revolutions” by MJ Kaufman. Visit HowlRound.ca for its companion, Letters to Americans.

Irresistible Revolutions

By MJ Kaufman

February 21, 2017

New Sanctuary Movement training session.

“Think about what kind of ICE agent you want to be. Are you the kind who is totally behind Trump or are you uncomfortable with the changes?” I look at my feet. I take a deep breath. I summon strength and authority. I have been cast in the role of an ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) Agent. I have been cast as a person who rips parents from children, who pounds on doors in the early hours of the morning, who takes people whether or not they are supposed to, who keeps them locked in detention centers, who assaults, tortures, intimidates and rapes, who chases hungry, dehydrated human beings to their death in the desert. And Trump just authorized hiring 10,000 more of them.

This may sound like a play or theater class, but it is not. I am playing this role at a training session for New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia. I am being trained to be part of a rapid response team who will rush to the site of any ICE raids at homes or businesses in Philadelphia and pray, sing, and sit-in to prevent deportation. In order to practice this, we are role-playing the scenario. And we are rotating so that everyone gets to play protestor, family, and ICE Agent. It is my turn as ICE.

I am stationed outside a huddle of chairs and people that we have assigned the “house,” or location of the immigration raid. My job is to block the entrance from the oncoming protestors. If any of them gets close to me I am supposed to let them know they are risking arrest.

As the role-play starts, I watch a daisy chain of arm-linked protestors approach me. Their eyes are determined and their voices raised in song. I notice myself thinking their prayer is beautiful and then I silence that thought. My job is to stand guard until I receive orders.

As the role-play goes on I have to arrest a member of the household. As I take her arm and carry her out of the house actors scream after me, “where are you taking her?” Protestors rush to surround me singing at the top of their lungs. I push through them and they move to surround us again. I raise my voice and push through. Again they block me with their bodies and their songs and again, I push through. Every time I feel nervous or discouraged I scan the room looking for a higher-up. Someone will tell me what to do. My job is simply to take orders.

While part of the ICE Agent role tears me up inside, a part of it feels frighteningly familiar. How many times have I shut off my empathy, my sense of truth or justice because of some kind of higher-up? How many times have I thought, if I do that I’ll lose my job, if I write that it’ll never get produced, if we do that no one will come to see it, if I say that others will be uncomfortable. While the job of an ICE Agent and a playwright seem nothing alike, the feeling inside was familiar. How many times have we in the theater forgone revolutionary programming, accessible ticket prices, transferring power to marginalized artists because of excuses that echoed my ICE Agent character: I’m following orders, my hands are tied, not my decision to make, I have a family to feed, I’m just trying to finish the workday and get home safe.

Production still from Kaufman’s play “Sagittarius Ponderosa” at National Asian American Theater Company with actors Bex Kwan and Daniel K. Isaac.

I can’t express the wave of release I felt when the trainer blew his whistle and I was allowed to drop character. As we debriefed we discussed the protesters’ tactics- how did they divide the ICE agents without escalating? How did they make it difficult for them to communicate through singing and chanting? Had any of this shaken our commitment to our jobs? Would it shake the commitment of a real ICE Agent?

When I trace the chain of command an ICE Agent follows to the top it ends with President Trump. When I trace the line of command I am following as a theater artist where does it lead? I certainly hope to a different place. We in the theater are as complicit as everyone else in this country. We have enabled the racism and misogyny that led us to this moment. We have participated in it and we have remained silent. Who have we been serving?

I thought about some of my ancestors who refused to follow orders in life or death situations. I thought about the ones who jumped from the train taking them to the concentration camp. I thought about the one who wrote protest papers against the czar and, according to family legend, had his fingers cut off and bled to death. I want to choose a line of command that honors them. I think of the lines from Toni Cade Bambara:

The task of the artist is determined always by the status and process and agenda of the community that it already serves. If you’re an artist who identifies with, who springs from, who is serviced by or drafted by a bourgeois capitalist class then that’s the kind of writing you do. Then your job is to maintain status quo, to celebrate exploitation or to guise it in some lovely, romantic way… As a cultural worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.

I am taking orders from the ones who are filling the streets and the airports and the train station, from the ones staying up all night to write statements and songs, and to paint banners. I am taking orders from the hundreds of glittering queers dancing outside the republican meeting, from the Yemeni shop-owners on strike, from the teachers, students, and parents chanting outside the Senator’s home on the weekend.

I am taking orders from the ones like me, the ones living between genders every single day – in the streets, on the bus, in front of classrooms, behind podiums and behind bars; those of us who bend language to make space for ourselves, the ones who make a home in the invisible and in-between places. We always knew this system would never work for us. And our revolution is already irresistible.

“Irresistible Revolutions” is the second article in CdnTimes Volume 8, Edition 6: Letters to Canadians. Click HERE to read “New York Dispatch” by Tanya Marquardt, and check back on February 28, 2017 to read the final installment by SK Kerastas and Lisa Evans. Visit HowlRound.ca for its companion, Letters to Americans.

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