Friday November 23


THEATRE | DANCE | MULTIDISCIPLINARY


You used to call me Marie
by Tai Grauman

You used to call me Marie follows two souls in five different Indigenous love stories at five different distinct periods in history. Moving through five different lives, the souls begin their journey in the pre-colonial time within the plains Cree community, and spend their final life as two young Métis people where the man marries a non-Indigenous woman, disrupting the bloodline.

Through alternate forms of theatrical structure, the piece explores ancestor’s history and the ways in which a young woman inherits trauma from the matriarchs in the family.

Dramaturg: Lindsay Lachance
Ensemble: Yolanda Bonnell, Binaeshee-Quae Couchie-Nabigon, and James Dallas Smith

Tai Grauman is Métis, Cree and Haudenosaunee from Ardrossan, AB. She has a BFA in Acting from UBC with a minor in First Nations Studies. Tai received this year’s Jessie Richardson award for Most Promising Newcomer. She was also Vancouver’s Mayor’s Emerging Theatre Artist of 2015, nominated by Margo Kane. Tai is currently Savage Society’s Artist-in-Residence, and is working with Nightswimming on a commission of a new play called Her name is Marie, a companion piece to You used to call me Marie which centres the history of the creation of Treaty 6 through the perspective of Marie Callihoo.


ūtszan
by Yvonne Wallace

A story about mending family through first language homecoming. ūtszan is a language reclamation.

Dramaturg: Penny Couchie
Projections: Jefferson Guzman

Yvonne Wallace (Ucwalmicw) from the Lil’wat Nation is a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Liberal Arts program at Capilano University. Her enthusiasm for playwriting began while she worked at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. Later, she graduated with honours from Humber College Theatre Acting program. She has written three plays, including Smothered Sweetly and The Last Dance, and is currently writing 7 Misconceptions of a Half-Breed Mother, a tragicomedy about the public school system.


El buen vestir, Tlakentli
by Ondinnok

El buen vestir, Tlakentli is a timeless and intimate journey to the life story of two Indigenous immigrants and their experience with epical metamorphosis. Embarking on what is hidden beneath the “second skins” we wear, they uncover their heritage and its language, culture, and traditions. As they lift the veil, they remove the Western colonial uniform, naming the wounds and repercussions of oppression, and recovering ancestral values that were buried.

Combining fantasy, memories, and intimate moments, this multidisciplinary theatre-dance piece reflects on the exchanges and meetings between Indigenous peoples in South and North America.

Creators/Choreographers/Dancers: Leticia Vera & Carlos Rivera
Musician: Hugo Monroy
Stage Director: Yves Sioui Durand 

Photo by Myriam Baril-Tessier

Ondinnok is a Huron word meaning: ‘a theatrical healing ritual that reveals the secret desire of the soul’. Founded in 1985, Ondinnok is the first francophone Aboriginal theatre company in Canada, and aspires to recapture the imagination, the land of dreams, to repatriate memory and liberate the future. www.ondinnok.org


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