July 2021: Boca Del Lupo are reprinting Plays2Perform@home ! it’s wonderful to be included with so many talented writers, and the leadership at BDL continues to inspire. order here.
2021/22 will emerge from the ashes, hopefully with many teachings gained from pandemic times. our ARTICLE 11 has secured funding from the Calgary Arts Development OPIP program to create a video adaptation of our triptych response to the TRC, Reckoning. Deer Woman on video, in partnership with sister company Downstage Theatre, will continue cutting her uncompromising swath, with the inimitable Cherish Violet Blood brandishing all swords. We’ll be at the Chan Centre and at PTE.
the 2020/21 theatre “season” has been a testament to our flexibility and drive to create. it’s an honour to be playwright-out-of-residence at Prairie Theatre Exchange, enabled by canada council funding. the work thomas morgan jones commissioned from me in 2019 continues in this residency: Rise, Red River illustrates, as so many land defenders have, the direct link between climate change crisis and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. after the pandemic eases, it is my great hope to spend time with the Drag the Red founders and volunteers to deepen the work-in-progress.
2020 brought some delightful prizes. first, the play Honour Beat, which premiered at Theatre Calgary’s 2018/19 season and is now in print through Scirocco Press, won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award. late 2020, i was chosen as the Siminovitch Prize for Drama laureate, playwriting. the shock continues to resound.
2020 has been small and fortifying works. right out of the gates, as the world shut down, Boca Del Lupo commissioned a handful of writers for their Plays2Perform@home. it was a freeing experience to write a play that would be distributed to people and their bubbles for enjoyment in their own COVID-19 bubbles. New Harlem Productions has helmed the vital and generous project Embodying Power and Place, to accompany the daunting final report from the MMIWG inquiry. each creator has been assigned a chapter of the report. the works will be in public domain for non-professional groups to access. Vertigo in mohkinstsis premieres a “radio” work from me, finally exploring the terrifying urban/rez legend of the Man in Black who haunts the American Hotel in Fort MacLeod. Telly James stars as the protagonist AND his father – he’s brilliant!
it was an honour to be recognized by the jurors of the Alberta Playwrights’ Network 2018 Alberta Playwriting Competition. on the shortlist was inspiring ally and diversity champion Mieko Ouchi, myself (rare to see an Indigenous playwright in the running for awards in Alberta) as well as three writers of the hegemony with whom i have not yet crossed paths. congrats to the duo who took home the big win.
though my play, The Ministry of Grace did not win the cashola at the Bettys that night, i am overjoyed to say that the following day i did meet with a wonderful artist/AD who will be programming the work in the 2019/2010 season. andy and i can hardly wait to see this story in its full bloom. we’ll reveal all as we are permitted to – you know how these season announcements go!
it’s worth celebrating the greatest moment of the Bettys this year – Michelle Thrush, veteran artist and lifelong resident of Calgary, was nominated for her first Betty award – in fact she was up for 3 Bettys (the only Indigenous person nominated this year) and took home the award for acting in her original work, Inner Elder. Michelle was the only person not of the hegemony to take a Betty home this year. here’s hoping next year’s celebration is a bright yet broader and more bountiful!
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here in cowtown, the rodeo is in full swing. loving thanks to the brilliant (now former) managing & artistic producer ann connors. i’ve seen wonderful works with true “diversity*” at the centre of them. (*a complex & shudder inspiring word at times, but when it’s true…) treated to fierce radical love with Hot Brown Honey, great imaginative world wondrousness with Inner Elder by Michelle Thrush at Lunchbox Theatre and a moving portrait of family and legacy in Empire of the Son at ATP. smaller fest next stage also brought amanda cordner and Body So Fluorescent, which really shook us in the best way! (thrush was in attendance, as was bruce mcculloch, which is a trip, to be among legends of cowtown!)
so anyway… i was among a few invited to partake in boca del lupo’s red phone project. my work is about how ALL OF US ARE RACIST. fun, right?
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ever lucky, me! i write this from the Evamy cabin in the Leighton Artists Colony at the Banff Centre. with thanks to the Banff Playwrights Colony and brian quirt for having me here on two weeks’ retreat. back in april for the full ensemble company!
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proud to be a contributor to the Nolan/Knowles anthology Performing Indigeneity.
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very interesting list recently compiled as an endeavour of fu-GEN theatre’s new Walk the Walk festival. it is 49 titles of production-ready plays written by “women of colour.” my adaptation of strindberg’s Miss Julie is among them.
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nice to have ARTICLE 11 premiere featured in Amanda Parris’ cbc column.
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featured over the 2014 Aboriginal Day weekend in sexy online mag, Urban Native Magazine.
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[March 2014]
very excited to be this cold and productive at the prestigious Berton House.
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[from Jan 2014 and earlier]
and here.
and heather at WCT made this.
and jovanni, the AD at gateway did this!
tara beagan 