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.

AUTHOR

Yvette Nolan

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.

AUTHOR

Ric Knowles

Ingrid Mündel is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She has articles published in Theatre Research in Canada, Canadian Literature, and Postcolonial Text, and she co-edited a special issue of The Review of Pedagogy, Education, and Cultural Studies.