Bearing explores history through present day
Multi-art-form show reflects on how residential schools impact Canadian identity
When the curtain goes up on Bearing, the dance-opera premiering at this year’s Luminato Festival in June, it will have been in development for more than three years. But the story that Bearing tells has been playing out for much, much longer than that.
Created by actor and director Michael Greyeyes (Plains Cree) and playwright and director Yvette Nolan (Algonquin), the multi-art-form show examines the dark history of Canada’s residential school system and the painfully long shadows it has cast. Drawing on the experiences of their respective families, both with members who were sent to residential schools, Greyeyes and Nolan explore how those long shadows follow not just indigenous people, but all Canadians, and how the country can take steps toward healing.
“We wanted to mine history. The history is rich, it’s disturbing, it’s complex . . . It comes back to the stories that my mother gave me and my father gave me. In my family, my sister and I are the first generation that didn’t go to residential schools,” Greyeyes says. “This is actually Canada’s history. It’s not ( just) the history of indigenous people . . . We live next to people affected by it. We live and work next to people who were taken. We live and work next to people who did the taking. I really want people to examine how this history sits with each of us.”
Bearing does that, in part, by setting its story in the present. Rather than offer a retelling of the history of the Indian Residential School system, the show examines how its impacts are felt today, experienced differently by indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians, and looking at possible models for moving forward.
“I think the only work that will hopefully satisfy us is a work that’s set in the present. When audiences come to our show, it begins today,” Greyeyes explains. “I think it’s easy for many Canadians to understand that Indian Residential School is a thing of the past, it no longer exists, that we’re moving beyond it. But what we’re dealing with, what I’m dealing with and what Yvette is dealing with, is this idea of how that (trauma) actually manifests.”
The show is a blending of art forms. Modern dance and movement are set to a commissioned score by librettist Spy Denommé-Welch with Catherine Magowan, complemented by other music by Claude Vivier and J.S. Bach, and multimedia projections. The music is performed live by the National Youth Orchestra with leading classical musicians, a choir and mezzo soprano Marion Newman.
Over the course of three acts — each defined by a different piece of music — the show’s nine performers are confronted with items of clothing linked to the Indian Residential School system. These costumes are like “doorways,” Greyeyes explains. “As the performers put on these cos- tumes, they’re actually addressing a piece of information, a moment in history.”
Of the nine performers, only three are indigenous. “I think, in a way, that reflects Canada. Indigenous people are not the majority in our nation,” Greyeyes says. “We see these three indigenous characters make their way through the work, and we see that history affect them in different ways than it affects the other six.”
Bearing was one of the first shows that Luminato’s artistic director Josephine Ridge was introduced to when she came on board last summer. Naomi Campbell, Luminato’s director of artistic development, had compiled a list of in-progress works for Ridge to consider as she set about programming the 2017 festival, her first in her new role. She was immediately interested.
“It’s an opera and dance, and the combining of those two art forms is tremendously exciting. The cast is amazing, and Michael Greyeyes and Yvette Nolan are really exceptional artistic voices,” Ridge says. “I’m working with a multi-art form, multi-platform festival and works like this, which bring together art forms in an integrated way to produce something really fresh, is of great interest to me.”
Moving to Canada from her native Australia for the Luminato role, Ridge had a working knowledge of Indian Residential School history. “While the exact system of residential schools wasn’t replicated in Australia, there are versions of that. For me, it’s something I am very aware of,” Ridge says. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot more and in doing that, to really think about the ways in which the festival can be a part of that discussion. About how we all think about our own histories and how best to move forward with them.”
How to move forward, together, is at the crux of Bearing. Nolan came up with the title, with the idea being that this dark history needs to be acknowledged and discussed by all in order for healing to happen.
“What Bearing actually asks the audience to recognize is that this history can’t be borne by just a few of us. Indian Residential School isn’t something that happened just to generations of Indian people. Residential school happened to all Canadians,” Greyeyes says. “If we’re looking at a way to move forward, to heal ourselves as a nation, other people have to pick up that burden.”
Bearing is a production of Signal Theatre, a Canadian-based theatre company founded by Michael Greyeyes. Bearing runs June 22-24 at the Canadian Opera Company’s Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre as part of Luminato Festival. Tickets are available at luminatofestival.com
“This is actually Canada’s history. It’s not (just) the history of indigenous people.” MICHAEL GREYEYES ACTOR AND DIRECTOR