Sunday November 29


DRAMATURG CIRCLE
Sit in our dramaturgical session with Jacob Boehme, Yvette Nolan, and Kenneth T. Williams, moderated by Native Earth’s Artistic Director Keith Barker. Our exceptional group of panellists will review and provide feedback on the dance, interdisciplinary, theatre, and Animikiig work-in-development throughout the festival. 


Jacob Boehme is a Melbourne born and raised artist of the Narangga and Kaurna Nations, South Australia.

Alumni of the Victorian College of the Arts, (MA in Arts – Playwriting, MA in Arts – Puppetry), Jacob is a multi-disciplinary theatre maker and choreographer, creating work for stage, screen, large-scale public events and festivals. Jacob has led the artistic direction of Tanderrum (Melbourne Festival), Boon Wurrung Ngargee (Yalukit Willam Festival), Thuwathu (Cairns Indigenous Arts Fair), Geelong After Dark and is the founding Creative Director of Yirramboi Festival, recipient of the 2018 Green Room Award for Curatorial Contribution to Contemporary and Experimental Arts. As a choreographer, Jacob engages forms across visual theatre creating multidisciplinary puppetry and dance works like Idja and Lu’arn, based on traditional knowledge and story. He has created work for the opening ceremonies of FINA World Swimming Championships, Dreaming Festival, Dreamtime at the G and the Cricket World Cup. Jacob is the writer and performer of the critically acclaimed solo work Blood on the Dance Floor, recipient of the 2017 Green Room Award Best Independent Production. Jacob sits on the Board of Directors for Dance House and Polyglot Theatre and is a member of the Ministry of Culture Taiwan South East Asia Advisory Panel. Jacob is currently the Artistic Director of The Wild Dog Project, reconnecting the dingo songlines between South Australia, Northern Territory and Far North Queensland and is an Australia Council for the Arts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fellow.


Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg. Her works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit, and the short play-for-film Katharsis. She co-created, with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight, the verbatim play Reasonable Doubt, about relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan.  Recent dramaturgy includes The Election by Natasha Greenblatt and Yolanda Bonnell, Sedna by Corey Payette, Reneltta Arluk and Marshall McMahen, bug by Yolanda Bonnell, Many Fires by Charlie Peters, Oceans of Evergreens by Jena McLean and Icebreaker Games by Liam Browne. She is currently working on Tapwewin with Maria Campbell, on Namwayut with Marion Newman, on Sophia with Tim Brady, and on You Can’t Get There From Here for Factory Theatre.  2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015. She is an Artistic Associate with Signal Theatre. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.


Kenneth T. Williams is a Cree playwright from the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, and is the first Indigenous person to earn an M.F.A. in playwriting from the University of Alberta. 

His plays In Care, Café Daughter, Gordon Winter, Thunderstick, Bannock Republic, Suicide Notes and Three Little Birds have been produced across Canada. COVID-19 has delayed two productions of new plays, Paris SK (Gordon Tootoosis Nikaniwin Theatre) and The Herd (Tarragon Theatre, Persephone Theatre, the National Arts Centre). He created a short play, Miranda, for Tarragon Theatre that looked at what theatre could be like after the pandemic. He teaches playwriting at the Drama Department at the University of Alberta. 

He is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. He tweets about drama, Indigenous peoples and climate change under his handle, @feralplaywright. He lives in Edmonton with his partner, Melissa, and their cats, Augustus and Drusilla.


Keith Barker is a Métis artist from Northwestern Ontario and a proud member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. Keith is the Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. He is a graduate of the George Brown Theatre School and worked as a Theatre Program Officer at the Canada Council for the Arts. He is a recipient of a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, The Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Carol Bolt Award, the SATAward for Excellence in Playwriting, and the Yukon Arts Audience Award for Best Art for Social Change. His play This is How We Got Here was a 2018 Finalist for the Governor General Award for Drama. Keith is the Co-General Manager of his Arts League Hockey team, The Friendly Giants, and is a below-average player.



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