Highlighting Indigenous voices
Stratford Festival hands over its social media.
The Stratford Festival is again in the spotlight as Canadian theatre contends with systemic racism in the wake of ongoing Black Lives Matter protests around the world.
Stratford will hand over its social media channels to Indigenous artists Friday and Saturday in advance of National Indigenous Peoples Day on Sunday.
The initiative follows a similar move the weekend of June 6 when the festival turned its platforms over to Black actors and artists — sparking a wave of testimony and activism that has already led to policy and leadership changes in national theatre.
Over the next two days, past and present Stratford Festival artists and theatre workers with Indigenous heritage will run the company’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook feeds using the hashtag #DecolonizingTheStage.
On Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 1p.m., a YouTube panel will take place, titled “Ndo-Mshkogaabwim i — We Are Standing Strong: Stories of endurance, resilience and resistance from members of the Indigenous circle at Stratford.” It will include artists Jani Lauzon, Quelemia Sparrow, Lisa Nasson and Jessica Carmichael from this season’s postponed production of Tomson Highway’s “The Rez Sisters”; actor Gordon Patrick White; director Cole Alvis; and former Stratford associate artistic director Dean Gabourie. They will be joined by elder Liz Stevens from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.
“This is a group of artists that have these particular points of view and these particular experiences,” said Lauzon, who has taken the lead on organizing the takeover and will moderate the “Ndo-Mshkogaabwimi” panel. “But we do not speak for the entire community because it’s so vast and different in the way that we work, who we work with and how we intersect with theatre.”
Lauzon said each social media feed will have its own purpose: Twitter and Instagram will amplify more activist-driven arguments and experiences, Stratford’s Facebook page will be devoted to individuals who worked with the festival in the past, and the YouTube panel will provide room for in-depth, complicated discussions of Indigeneity and colonial systems in Canadian arts and culture.
“We’re here to repeat the things that we have been saying, knowing that there is a deeper listening going on, which is the exciting part, as well as maybe disclosing things that we felt unsafe saying before,” she said.
Reneltta Arluk — the first Inuit person and the first Indigenous woman to direct a Stratford production with “The Breathing Hole” in 2017 — is among the artists participating in the social media takeover. Director of Indigenous arts at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Arluk was encouraged by the festival’s anti-Black racism venture, which resulted in an end to its “as cast” policy, which allows directors to cast actors in small roles without their consent.
“The way that Indigenous people have been treated for over 150 years by the Canadian government — they have been reminded that they need to assimilate, they need to move out of their home territories, their language is not recognized as official. Treaties and agreements are broken. These are the histories we carry in our bones and our veins,” said Arluk. “When we come to the table … we’re coming from that historical place of distrust.”
Lauzon echoed Arluk’s caution about Canada’s history of Indigenous oppression. The recent deaths of Chantel Moore and Rodney Levi during interactions with police in New Brunswick, and a video showing the violent arrest of chief Allan Adam in Alberta have renewed calls for change.
In Lauzon’s view, Canadians want to believe that “Canada is better somehow or that we’re not quite as bad as the circumstances are in the States. We’ve been very good at hiding things; we’ve been very good at not educating our youth,” she said. “It is an unfortunate residue of colonial thinking, which is an assumption of superiority.”
Stratford Festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino said the company has commissioned new works by Indigenous writers and began including more Indigenous voices in its programming over the past few years.
“I feel strongly that, for the remainder of my tenure, I would like a play by an Indigenous writer in each season.
“I feel that we have a special responsibility to Indigenous people in Canada and that means we would really like to build a stronger relationship with this community of artists.”
But there has been greater learning for Cimolino in the way Indigenous theatre artists work. And it’s led to structural changes at Stratford, such as welcoming smudge ceremonies at the beginning of rehearsals, the inclusion of land acknowledgments before performances and modifying the pace of some creative processes.
“Usually in rehearsals, you’re rushing into a room, it’s last minute and you get right to it. There isn’t a sense of breath, of acknowledgment of who we are, where we are,” he said.
Observing the rehearsal process of “Pawâkan Macbeth” at the Banff Centre of Arts and Creativity in February was revelatory for Cimolino. It’s a Stratford-commissione d, Plains Cree retelling of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” written by Arluk and directed by Michael Greyeyes.
“For our Indigenous colleagues, the greeting at the top of rehearsal takes 20 minutes, half an hour. We don’t normally invest that much time to start the day,” Cimolino said.
“The payoff though was beautiful and I felt there was a sense of trust … This is part of a learning process for us that isn’t only about supporting our Indigenous colleagues, it’s also a learning process that I hope will make us a better place and our work better.”