Backstage

A New Realm: Unikkaaqtuat at the National Arts Centre

Unikkaaqtuat is a multimedia performance that follows the story of an Inuit boy who was medevacked to a southern hospital and displaced from his community. It was created by Taqqut Productions, an Inuit-owned film production company, Les 7 Doigts (The 7 Fingers), a Montréal-based contemporary circus company, and Artcirq, an Igloolik, Nunavut-based circus performance collective.

The idea was inspired from illustrations by the Inuk artist Germaine Arnaktauyok, and elements of circus and theatre arts were incorporated. The final product is something that all three companies are proud of, but it didn’t come without a heavy dose of compromise.

Neil Christopher (Taqqut Productions) is one of the co-directors. His team had the idea to base the story on Inuit creation myths and to use Arnaktauyok’s illustrations. Along with Arnaktauyok, the team is in charge of the story. “It’s been interesting because each storytelling style has its expectations,” he explains. “It took some time, but it’s getting easier and our conversations are getting more productive.”

Co-director Patrick Léonard (Les 7 Doigts) describes his role as an outside eye. He mentions the importance of keeping the common goal in mind and understanding how each artist would tell the story differently. “We were all meeting in a new realm, in something that didn’t exist before. So that was interesting and challenging at the same time.”

For Artcirq, Unikkaaqtuat is the collective’s most ambitious collaboration since it was founded in 1998. Guillaume Ittuksarjuat Saladin, another co-director of the show, agrees that the collaboration took time to sort out, but the result is a thoughtful story. “We are keeping alive old stories that are being forgotten,” he says. “One day, our kids will see this and be very proud.”