NAC appoints first Indigenous artistic director
Playwright Kevin Loring will debut full program of works for centre’s 2019/2020 season
The National Arts Centre is breaking new ground with the appointment of its first artistic director of Indigenous theatre.
Kevin Loring, an actor and Governor General’s Award-winning playwright, will take up his duties at the Ottawa performing arts venue in October and will debut a full program of works for the centre’s 2019/2020 season.
While Indigenous theatre companies and programs are beginning to flourish across Canada, the centre’s decision to appoint a full-time artistic director dedicated to Indigenous performance is a bold step.
“Oh my God, it’s as exciting as it is terrifying,” said Loring, 42, a Lytton, B.C. native and member of the Nlaka’pamux nation.
“Our stories from coast to coast to coast are the original songs of this land. Now, through the Indigenous theatre department, our stories will have a permanent home, a place to grow and thrive,” Loring said.
“We are thrilled to welcome Kevin Loring to the NAC in this very historic role as our first ever artistic director of Indigenous theatre,” said NAC president and CEO Peter Herrndorf. “He is a groundbreaking artist and we know he will succeed in building our new Indigenous theatre department.”
Loring has a long-standing relationship with the performing arts centre. His play Where the Blood Mixes — which won the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Englishlanguage drama — was performed at the centre in 2010, when Loring served as artist in residence.
Loring performed as Edmund in an all-Indigenous version of King Lear during the 2011/2012 season and is currently performing in the centre’s production of Corey Payette’s Children of God. The NAC has given a warm embrace to Indigenous theatre since the tenure of former artistic director Pe- ter Hinton between 2005 and 2012, who programmed an Indigenous work every year.
Loring grew up in the shadow of St. George’s, one of the notorious residential schools where Indigenous children were abused and deprived of their culture over many generations, in his hometown of Lytton.
Many of Loring’s aunts and uncles attended the school and his awardwinning play deals with the residential school experience.
“Throughout my childhood, I grew up in the aftermath (of residential schools). We had suicide clusters and the intergenerational trauma was really playing itself out in my community growing up,” Loring recalled.
As a teenager, Loring had a chance to explore and embrace his culture through participation in sweat lodges and other traditions.
‘“I did my own personal work as well spiritually in connecting to my culture. I was very fortunate to have that and to feel proud about it, and have people guide me through that process.”
Loring has had numerous roles in the Indigenous theatre community, including as co-curator of Vancouver’s Talking Stick Festival, project leader and director of the Songs of the Land project, and artistic director of the B.C.-based Savage Production Society since 2003.
The first challenge at the NAC, Loring said: “How do we represent all these disparate First Nations from coast to coast to coast?
“We’ll go back to our community theatre organizations across the country and consult with them. I hope to guide that process, but I also want to listen to what the greater Indigenous arts community has to say.”