Performing Indigeneity

This volume of newly commissioned essays about Indigenous performance is the first in which all of the contributors are Indigenous artists or academics. Scholars were invited to write essays on some aspect of Indigenous performance and artists were asked to contribute statements on whatever they felt was important to them as theatre creators. As with any good assembly of like-minded members, themes and observations emerged, dovetailing and echoing each other, touching on theatre training, cultural identity, Indigenous theatre history, and claiming space, among others. A companion to the existing two-volume anthology Staging Coyote’s Dream, the authors gathered here—identifying as Cree, Mohawk, Creek, Ntlakapamux, Stó:lo, and many other nations—open a conversation, inviting more voices to join in illuminating the history of Indigenous performance in Canada and blazing a trail forward. Contributors include Tara Beagan, Jill Carter, David Geary, Carol Greyeyes, Michael Greyeyes, Falen Johnson, Michelle La Flamme, Jani Lauzon, Andréa Ledding, Daniel David Moses, Marrie Mumford, Starr Muranko, Yvette Nolan, Michelle Olson, Dylan Robinson, June Scudeler, Jason Woodman Simmonds, and Drew Hayden Taylor.

Yvette Nolan is a playwright, dramaturge, and director. In 1996, she was the Aboriginal Writer-in-Residence at Brandon University, where she wrote the first draft of Annie Mae’s Movement. Her other plays include BLADE, Job’s Wife, Video, the libretto Hilda Blake, and the radio play Owen. She is also the editor of Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour and co-editor of Refractions: Solo and Refractions: Scenes. She was the president of Playwrights Union of Canada from 1998–2001, and of Playwrights Canada Press from 2003–2005. Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father, raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she lived in the Yukon and Nova Scotia before moving to Toronto.

Ric Knowles is a freelance dramaturge and University Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph. He is the award-winning author or editor of twenty books on theatre and performance, including Fundamentals of Directing, Judith Thompson, The Masks of Judith Thompson, "Ethnic," Multicultural, and Intercultural Theatre (with Ingrid Mündel), The Shakespeare’s Mine, Asian Canadian Theatre (with Nina Lee Aquino), Staging Coyote’s Dream (two volumes, with Monique Mojica), and Performing Indigeneity (with Yvette Nolan). He is also founding editor of the series Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English and New Essays on Canadian Theatre.