Theatre

Set in contemporary times, a young Mi'kmaw drum singer and a Euro-Nova Scotian biologist meet at dusk each day to count a population of endangered Chimney Swifts (kaktukopnji'jk). They quickly struggle with their differing views of the world. Through humour and story, the characters must come to terms with their own gifts and challenges as they dedicate efforts to the birds. Each "count night" reveals a deeper complexity of connection to land and history on a personal level.

Inspired by real-life species at risk work, shalan joudry originally wrote this story for an outdoor performance.

Elapultiek calls on all of us to take a step back from our routine lives and question how we may get to understand our past and work better together. The ideal of weaving between Indigenous and non-Indigenous worlds involves taking turns to speak and to listen, even through the most painful of stories, in order for us all to heal. We are in a time when sharing cultural, ecological, and personal stories is vital in working towards a peaceful shared territory, co-existing between peoples and nature.

"It's a crucial time to have these conversations," offers joudry. "The power of story can engage audience and readers in ways that moves them to ask more questions about the past and future."

Additional Information
96 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Two grown sisters face off over their mother's deathbed. Together they confront one another, their own identities, and what will remain when their mom leaves this world. A contemporary look at the significance of faith and family, Honour Beat evokes both laughter and tears as three women grapple with one of life's most difficult inevitabilities.

Reviews
"Honour Beat is an important work of art...It celebrates -- honours --women as the givers and sustainers of life...The ending is extraordinary." -Globe & Mail

"The final uplifting, spiritual moments of Honour Beat will linger with you long after you've left the theatre...the beautiful sentiments at the heart of the play." -Calgary Herald

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 10 to 12 for English Language Arts, Acting, Drama, and Social Studies.

Includes mature subject matter with references to trauma, rape, and sexual and physical abuse.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

TIME: All.
SPACE: The Multiverse.
Come along for the ride to Kamloopa, the largest Powwow on the West Coast. This high-energy Indigenous matriarchal story follows two urban Indigenous sisters and a lawless Trickster who face our postcolonial world head-on as they come to terms with what it means to honour who they are and where they come from. But how to go about discovering yourself when Christopher Columbus allegedly already did that? Bear witness to the courage of these women as they turn to their Ancestors for help in reclaiming their power in this ultimate transformation story.

In developing matriarchal relationships and shared Indigenous values, Kamloopa explores the fearless love and passion of two Indigenous women reconnecting with their homelands, Ancestors, and stories. Kim Senklip Harvey’s play is a boundary-blurring adventure that will remind you to always dance like the Ancestors are watching.

Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story is the work of Kim Senklip Harvey, a proud Indigenous woman from the Syilx, Tsilhqot’in, Ktunaxa, and Dakelh First Nations, listed for the Gina Wilkinson Prize for her work as an emerging director and widely considered to be one of this land’s most original voices among the next generation of Indigenous artists.

Awards

• 2020 Governor General's Award for English-language drama

Reviews
"A thoughtful, funny, and compelling exploration of the complexities of Indigenous community making and knowledge reclamation."—BC Studies

“Kamloopa is a hilarious and courageous transformation story. Kim Senklip Harvey makes a generous invitation for all of us to bear witness to the joy, resilience, and brilliance of Indigenous women.”—Christine Quintana

“This story about three women who are actively trying to decolonize themselves (whether they realize it or not) resonated deeply … Uplifting the voices of Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, and non-binary folks is incredibly important to our resistance and our communities. Kamloopa is one of those stories providing that platform.”—Yolanda Bonnell

“Kamloopa brought me an empowerment of self and a reclaiming of knowledge. It brought me sisterhood and ties that have shaped the way I create and approach life. As an Indigenous woman I felt seen, heard, and valid, something we should all experience. Miigwech.”—Samantha Brown

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021 resource list for grades 8 to 12 for Acting, Drama, Theatre, and English Language Arts.

The Syilx language, Nsyilxcǝn, is used throughout this play.  Also included is the resource "Fire Zine! A Kamloopa Study Buddy" by Kimi Clark.  It discusses Indigenous artistic ceremony Protocol, Indigenous Theatre terms, and guides users in facilitating a Talking Circle.

Additional Information

This is the story of a Metis soldier fighting for Canada on the Western Front of Europe during World War I. Vancouver 1914: a young Indigenous man named Jonathon Woodrow, desperate to prove himself as a warrior, enlists to fight in the Canadian army. Relying on his experience in hunting and wilderness survival, Private Woodrow quickly becomes one of the most feared trench raiders in the 1st Canadian Division. But as the war stretches on, with no end to the fighting in sight, Woodrow begins to realize that he will never go home again.

A 2017 finalist for the Playwright Guild of Canada’s prestigious Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights, Redpatch focuses on how First Nations soldiers and communities contributed to Canada’s involvement in the First World War.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 10 to 12 for Drama, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

Contains some use of strong language.

This work is a play including an eight-page graphic novel written by Sean Harris Oliver.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

"Do not eat too much of the earth. Save some."

When you take something from the earth you must always give something back.

From the Kwantlen First Nation village of Squa’lets comes the tale of Th’owxiya, an old and powerful spirit that inhabits a feast dish of tempting, beautiful foods from around the world. But even surrounded by this delicious food, Th’owxiya herself craves only the taste of children. When she catches a hungry mouse named Kw’atel stealing a piece of cheese from her dish, she threatens to devour Kw’atel’s whole family, unless she can bring Th’owxiya two child spirits. Ignorant but desperate, Kw’atel sets out on an epic journey to fulfill the spirit’s demands. With the help of a sqeweqs, two spa:th, and a sasq’ets, Kw’atel endeavours to find gifts that would appease Th’owxiya and save her family.

Similar to “Hansel and Gretel” and the northwest First Nations story “The Wild Woman of the Woods,” Th’owxiya—which integrates masks, song, and dance—is a tale of understanding boundaries, being responsible for one’s actions, forgiving mistakes, and finding the courage to stand up for what’s right.

Reviews
“What makes Th’owxiya: The Hungry Feast Dish truly unforgettable is in its engaging story steeped in tradition.” —Mark Robins, Vancouver Presents

"This play about Th’owxiya, the basket ogress, allows students to engage with storytelling from his own Kwantlen perspective. This story includes several animal characters, including Kw’at’el (a mouse character) who must bring her some hungry children or his family will be eaten. With themes centering on Kwantlen language, culture, and relationships to the land, this play can engage a wide range of learners. This book also includes a Kwantlen terminology guide, links to pronunciation and language resources, and a teacher's resource guide which gives specific information on Dandurand’s own Kwantlen perspectives on storytelling." -Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021

Educator Information
Recommended theatre/play for young audiences ages 5 to 15 (96 pages, in a play/novel format).

For Kwantlen people, Th'owxiya is a mythological being used to teach children to listen and not to venture off alone lest she take them and eat them. Joseph began writing this play over twenty-five years ago, when he was an intern in a pilot program to study museology at the Canadian Museum of History.

Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2020/2021 resource list for Grades K to 6 in the areas of Drama, English Language Arts, and Music.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.12" x 7.62"

Indian Act is a tribute and thank you to those who survived the Indian Residential School system so that future generations could be free to pursue their lives unhindered by educationally enforced lowered expectations and institutionalized abuse. Plays by contemporary First Nations and Métis playwrights cover the broad scope of residential school experiences, all kinds of characters, and no stereotypes, giving voice to those who could not be heard.

Includes the plays:
Bunk #7 by Larry Guno
God and the Indian by Drew Hayden Taylor
They Know Not What They Do by Tara Began
A Very Polite Genocide or The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Melanie J. Murray
Kihew by Curtis Peeteetuce
Dear Mr. Buchwald by Yvette Nolan

Educator Information
Recommended resource for Grades 10-12 English Language Arts, Drama, and Acting.  

Caution: Some plays contain mature subject matters and cover themes of substance abuse, sexual and physical violence, etc.  Some plays are not appropriate for high school use and may be better suited for college-level courses. 

Additional Information
392 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Darren, newly on parole from prison, has been ordered by the court to live with his father on the rez. Wally and Darren have always had a contentious relationship: Wally is a problem drinker, and Darren's got a short fuse. But Wally tells his son that he's changed, has stopped drinking and started going to ceremony, and he urges Darren to do the same. As old family secrets start to be revealed, the father and son grapple with complex issues.

Popcorn Elder examines the problem of "plastic shamans" who offer spirituality at a price. It looks at a community working to face its demons and heal past trauma. And at the heart of the play is the story of a father and son, filled with anger, guilt, and pain, seeking connection and reconciliation.

Through flashbacks, a combination of Cree and English, and an unforgettable cast of characters, Popcorn Elder tells the story of one family's journey toward hope.

Educator Information
Contains sexual abuse references and explicit language.

Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 10 to 12 for Acting, Drama, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

Additional Information
72 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

An uproariously funny and sharply inquisitive play from one of Canada’s leading Indigenous playwrights, Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion explores the possibility of reconciliation between Peoples and urgently questions past and contemporary forms of Canadian colonialism. Taylor’s twenty-seventh play, Sir John A’s characters include Canada’s infamous first Prime Minister, red-nosed and pompous, full of patriarchal contempt for those “strange and perplexing Indians,” and his contemporary accusers: two Ojibway men and a soul-searching white woman. 

Bobby Rabbit, Sir John A’s irked, Anishinaabe main character, in a fit of anger and revenge, convinces his friend Hugh to accompany him on a “sojourn of justice”: to dig up Sir John A. Macdonald’s bones and hold them for ransom. Decades before, a medicine pouch belonging to Bobby’s grandfather was taken away by the staff of the residential school where he was detained. The precious object was sent to a British Museum exhibition room for conservation – and now Bobby wants it repatriated. Along the way the pair pick up Anya, a young, bright, and opinionated woman fleeing a bad breakup, with conflicting ideas about Sir John A’s place in Canadian history. Not to be left out of the argument, Canada’s first Prime Minister, broadcasting live from nineteenth-century Ottawa, shows up with opinions of his own. 

Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion is a powerful satire, a creative debate about the past violences of colonial racism and the as yet untested potentiality of restoring harmony between Peoples in Canada. A contemporary classic by Taylor!

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 10 to 12 for Drama and English Language Arts.

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

The two one-act plays in Talker’s Town and The Girl Who Swam Forever are set in a small northern B.C. mill town in the 1960s. They portray identical characters and action from entirely different gender and cultural perspectives. In many ways, the two separate works are inter-related coming-of-age stories, with transformation as a key theme.

The central action in both plays involves an Aboriginal girl, Roberta Bob, who escapes from a residential school and hides out by the river. In Nelson Gray’s Talker’s Town, the story is conveyed by a teenage non-Indigenous boy whose friend has had a relationship with the girl and whose attempts to hush up the affair lead to disastrous consequences.

In Marie Clements’s The Girl Who Swam Forever, the action unfolds from the perspective of the girl, who – to claim her past and secure her future – must undergo a shape-shifting transformation and meet her grandmother’s ancestral spirit in the form of a hundred-year-old sturgeon.

Employing a single setting and working with the same set of characters, the playwrights have created two radically different fictional worlds, one Aboriginal and one non-Aboriginal. Published together, the plays form a fascinating diptych that reveals rifts between Indigenous and colonial/settler histories and provides a vehicle for cultural exchange. As a starting point for trans-cultural dialogue, this set of plays will be of interest to educators, theatre directors, and the general reader interested in the current discourse arising from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Idle No More, and the Indigenous Rights Movement happening throughout North America. Read as a set, these two plays also invite conversations about negotiating creative boundaries, particularly with respect to eco-centric politics and cultural appropriation.

Talker’s Town: cast of 5 men and 1 woman.

The Girl Who Swam Forever: cast of 2 women and 2 men.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 11 and 12 for Drama and English Language Arts.

Additional Information
160 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Kevin Loring is one of Canada's most promising young Indigenous playwrights.

Nan's family is home for Thanksgiving, but some unsolicited truths are about to be dropped at the dinner table. Old wounds and new realities collide, and sibling rivalry is stoked, but the enduring spirit that guides this family charges on, ever fierce. Thanks for Giving offers plenty to chew on. This intimate and restorative new play from Governor General's Literary Award winner Kevin Loring, the first ever Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada, is about legacy - the legacy of our personal and collective histories, and a family's legacy as it moves into an age where the assumptions of the old ways surrender to new possibilities. But if the play's main course is legacy, the dessert is pumpkin pie. Tuck in!

Reviews
"Loring has a lot to say - about colonialism, reconciliation, residential schools, intergenerational trauma and its contemporary effects, but also about the rich, matriarchal First Nations culture, Indigenous respect for the land, the need for new perspectives on history." - Globe and Mail

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 10 to 12 for English Language Arts.  Suitable for mature readers.

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

In Care is about a mother's quest to get her children out of foster care. Janice Fisher has not had an easy life. She worked the streets as a teenager, was addicted to cocaine, and had her first daughter taken from her when she was just 15. But she's since turned her life around, and is a good mother to three happy girls -- until a false accusation gets them apprehended by foster care. Now, Janice is trapped in the system like a butterfly in a spider's web: the more she struggles to get out, the more stuck she gets. In Care is both an indictment of the racism that's inherent in our system and a tribute to the strength people as disadvantaged as Janice must have in order to survive.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 10 to 12 for these subjects: Acting, Drama, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

This work includes mature subject matter with references to drug use and prostitution.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Twelve-year-old Molly was riding her new bicycle on a deserted road when a man in a truck pulled up next to her, saying he was lost. He asked if she could get in and help him back to the highway, and said he could bring her back to her bike after. Molly declined, out of interest for her own safety. The next things Molly remembers are dirt, branches, trees, pain, and darkness.

Molly is now a spirit.

Mustering up some courage, she pieces together her short life for herself and her family while she reassembles her bicycle—the same one that was found thrown into the trees on the side of the road. Juxtaposed with flashes of news, sounds, and videos, Molly’s chilling tale becomes more and more vivid, challenging humanity not to forget her presence and importance.

Reviews
“Tara Beagan's In Spirit distills the tragic disappearance of hundreds of native women along BC's Highway of Tears into a powerful theatrical experience.” —Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine 

“In Spirit is a very touching piece, not only for the content, but also because of how we were transported into this little girl’s world… It is a refreshing change to see a play tackle a societal defect without hate and guilt. Through love and empathy, it reminds us of the missing women and the horrors that are still taking place in our county.” —Emma Letki, Mooney on Theatre

Educator Information
This play is listed in the 2018-2019 Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools list as a resource for Grades 11-12 for these subjects: Acting, Drama, English Language Arts.

Caution: discussion of violence and death.

Additional Information
64 pages | 5.13" x 7.65"

A heartwarming comedy about two middle-aged First Nations seniors, Evie and Cecil, on their very first trip out of the country. Evie and Cecil reminisce and bicker as they review a lifetime together.

CECIL
So, what exactly are we going to do now that we’re here in Mexico?

EVIE
I’m so glad you asked. Supposedly there are some ancient Mayan ruins somewhere in the interior, not far from here. I thought that might be interesting.

CECIL
If you want to look at an ancient, broken-down, Indian ruin, we can go visit your cousin.

Evie and Cecil are celebrating their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. As a gift, their grown children send them on a second honeymoon – to a fabulous resort on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. The only problem is that neither have ever been out of the country, let alone off their Cree reservation. Each reacts to their new experiences differently, and something ominous seems to be bothering Cecil. Despite the sun, sand, and sea sparkling right outside the resort window, all Cecil seems to want to do is sit alone in his hotel room, idly flipping through TV channels, the curtains pulled tight. What is he worried about? Maybe there is more behind this trip than he has been told. The past, present, and future all pay the couple a visit as they acclimatize to the pleasures of Mexico –and spicy food. Mixed up in all the fun is their hotel housekeeper, Manuela. As they form a bond with this courteous young local, they help her navigate some of the troublesome situations in which she finds herself.

Cast of 1 man and 2 women.

Review
"The play is packed with wit and humour, but also packs an emotional punch. At the heart of Crees in the Caribbean is a commentary on the universality of human experiences from culture to culture; it shows that people from all parts of the world can share similar stories and experiences." — The Argus

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Reckoning is a triptych of three short plays: Witness is a dance-movement piece featuring a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner who unravels as he confronts the brutal testimony of residential school survivors; in Daughter, the daughter of a teacher who was accused of rape seduces her father's accuser; and Survivor is a solo piece about a man preparing to commit suicide as a protest against the insufficiencies of the reconciliation process.

Agonizing, poignant, theatrical, hilarious, and true, Reckoning illuminates the difficulties of trying to come to terms with our country's painful past.

Educator Information
Recommended for grade 11 and 12 students for courses in performance arts, language arts, and English.  Also useful for college and university courses in these areas.

Caution: explicit language and discussion of sexual and physical abuse.

Additional Information
66 pages | 5.00" x 8.00"

Cerulean Blue is a comedic play about a struggling blues band invited to participate in a benefit concert for a First Nation community in conflict with governmental authorities. Upon arriving, the band discovers the entire lineup of musical acts has cancelled and they’re left trapped behind barricades. Complicating the matter, there is conflict within the band and the sudden appearance of an old girlfriend makes the event even more perilous.

This play is an homage to fast-moving farces while also addressing Aboriginal issues. Cerulean Blue deals with relationships, perceptions, politics, and what to do when you discover you’ve been dating your first cousin. Add a few spoonfuls of original blues music, and you’ve got a fun-filled evening.

The play was written for a large ensemble cast, which makes it ideal for musical theatre departments in high schools and colleges – every student can play apart.

Cast of ten women and ten men.

Additional Information
144 pages | 7.88" x 8.47" | Paperback