Margo Kane carries a big Talking Stick
Actress founded the festival that celebrates aboriginal performing arts — and even stars in one of this year’s productions
Margo Kane even answers the simple questions like a born storyteller.
When she picks up the phone at her Vancouver office and I ask how she’s doing, she replies: “I’m very good, just running like a wild horse — my hair is flowing behind me, thundering hoofs as I go.”
Kane had just received the programs for her 13th annual Talking Stick Festival celebrating Aboriginal performing arts and she was just getting ready to send them all over the city. “It’s exciting to have everything in full colour and print in front of us.”
And it’s an exciting lineup, including Kane as the leading lady in a production of Michel Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again ( at the York Theatre Feb. 20- 28).
Quebec’s most famous playwright wrote the comic script as an homage to his mother.
Kane stars as mom with Kevin Loring as the narrator in a production directed by former Playhouse artistic director Glynis Leyshon that launched in Kamloops at Western Canada Theatre Company.
“It’s sort of a love letter to his mother, so it crosses a lot of cultural barriers,” says Kane.
“She’s kind of like all mothers. She nags him, she berates him, she teases him and tells him stories. She fills his head with fantasy about this, that and the other thing. And before she passes away, she really encourages him and gives him a good kick to remind him he has to pursue his dream. She’s maddening and she’s funny and she’s very dramatic.”
Thirteen years ago Kane was best known to theatre audiences for her beloved one- woman show Moonlodge — an autobiographical multimedia event that toured everywhere for a decade. In 2001, Kane was looking for new ways to share the stage with other Aboriginal artists and launched Talking Stick. That first festival consisted of a cabaret where acts performed for a maximum of eight minutes.
“It’s grown from there to this twoweek extravaganza,” says the proud parent. “Now it’s a multidisciplinary festival because it was a way for us to encourage the development of aboriginal artistic practice across disciplines. And because our folks didn’t have regular showcases or a stage or a theatre or anywhere else to perform and we wanted to offer that to the community because there’s so much talent out there.”
It’s hard to list Kane’s accomplishments without feeling like the list should be capped with the announcement of yet another award or honour for her ever- growing collection.
She launched onto the national scene as the first First Nations woman ( her heritage is CreeSaulteaux) to play the title role in George Ryga’s theatrical phenomenon The Ecstasy of Rita Joe.
Offstage, Kane was starting or running theatre companies and creating cultural programs that were changing lives. In 1992, she founded Vancouver’s Full Circle: First Nations Performance theatre company to “create opportunities for Aboriginal artists, writers and performers to express the reality of First Nations experiences and to work in harmony with traditions while engaging modern, interdisciplinary theatrical techniques.”
Kane’s excited about the Celebration of Powwow Culture ( Feb. 23 at the Roundhouse).
“Contemporary aboriginal dance has become a very strong component of the festival,” says Kane.
She’s also looking forward to the return of the Talking Stick Poetry Slam on Feb. 21 at Café Deux Soleils ( pay what you can).
Other theatre events include The Hours that Remain — a new drama presented by Yukon’s Gwaandak Theatre in association with New Harlem Productions ( Feb. 22- 25 at The Roundhouse). And Vancouver’s Axis Theatre Company presents Louise Moon’s acclaimed children’s show Raven Meets the Monkey King, which blends Chinese and First Nations mythologies ( Feb. 19- 28 at the Vancity Culture Lab).
Crystal Shawanda — who picked up a Juno last year for Aboriginal Album of the Year for Dawn of a New Day — will be at the York on March 1 with special
guest Wayne Lavallee.
And there’s a three- night festival of films from Capilano University’s Indigenous Independent Digital Filmmaking ( Feb. 19- 21 at the Vancity Culture Lab). Admission to the films by donation.