Cree culture meets the Bard in a new variation for a new world
EDMONTON — Theatre lovers get a sneak peek Friday at a new, Stratfordbound production as Pawâkan Macbeth goes online, part of #CanadaPerforms, a National Arts Centre program in support of professional Canadian artists following COVID-19.
The play, written and directed by University of Alberta fine arts grad, Reneltta Arluk, takes Shakespeare’s Scottish play and gives it a uniquely Canadian and Indigenous spin that explores the same timeless themes as the Bard, including “What makes us human?”
“It’s not so much a response, but a takeover (of Macbeth),” said Arluk in a phone interview from Banff, where for the past three years she has been the director of Indigenous arts at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. “It’s taking all the bones of Shakespeare, breaking them off and putting them back together from a Cree perspective.”
Pawâkan Macbeth began its life as an idea expressed by Indigenous students studying Shakespeare at Frog Lake First Nation. Arluk, the founder of Akpik Theatre , the Northwest Territories’ only professional Indigenous theatre company, had been brought in to work with the students on The Tempest, as seen from an aboriginal perspective.
But the students weren’t interested in that play; they wanted to tackle Macbeth, because they saw a connection between the ambitious, murderous nobleman and the indigenous cannibal spirit, Wihtiko, a key component of Cree culture. Arluk says working with the students was inspiring.
“Seeing youth working with elders, sharing stories about the cannibal spirit … these dark energies brought together a lot of positive energy and inspiration,” said Arluk, 43, who is of Inuvialuit, Dene and Cree heritage. “I walked away wondering if we could do that on a professional scale.”
Arluk has set Pawâkan Macbeth, a Plains Cree tale, in 1870s Alberta before the Treaties were signed. As the play opens, the Canadian government, under Sir John A. MacDonald, is making its way west. Meanwhile, Plains Cree and Stoney Nakoda are at war with Blackfoot over territory, trade and food.
The stakes are high as a Plains Cree warrior, consumed with greed and powerhungry, decides to assassinate the chief.
“From a playwright’s perspective, I asked, ‘What is the vulnerability of humans and what makes that human susceptible to dark?’ ” said Arluk. “That creates the complexities that Shakespeare is really good at and recreates it from an Indigenous perspective.”
All of the major characters in Macbeth have a Cree equivalent in Pawâkan (rhymes with toboggan) Macbeth. Commissioned by the world-famous Stratford Festival , the play will run 2 1/2 hours when it premieres in 2021 or 2022.
As she works up the fullscale production, Arluk has been touring a 50-minute variation seen in Treaty Six territory in January (the same version was scheduled to tour the Northwest Territories in March, but was cancelled due to COVID-19). A 90-minute, one-act iteration appeared at the Chinook Festival in Edmonton in February.
Friday evening’s version, to be seen on Akpik Theatre’s Facebook page via Zoom at 6 p.m. MT, is a live, staged reading of the work that runs about 50 minutes. Don’t expect to see the whole arc of the story, said Arluk. Rather, the six Indigenous characters will introduce themselves and share their thoughts on the concept, and “their relationship with the cannibal spirits.”
Arluk is pleased her group was asked to perform during #CanadaPerforms. Akpik Theatre will match funds donated by the National Arts Centre to the effort so actors can be paid for their performance.
“It’s hard times, and I think about the actors, and how many jobs were lost so quickly … I am grateful.”