‘If you connect to the work onstage, you feel it in your being’: Four Indigenous artists discuss truth, trauma and art

“My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.” — Attributed to Louis Riel
Theatre, at its best, does more than merely entertain. It can also inspire, provoke and force us to confront some of the thorniest of issues collectively.
Ahead of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Toronto Star’s culture reporter, Joshua Chong, moderated a roundtable discussion about the state of Indigenous theatre and the role it can play in promoting the ideals of truth and reconciliation. 
Four Indigenous theatremakers took part in the hour-long conversation:
Joshua Chong: To kick things off, I have a two-part question. How can theatre be used as a medium to explore contemporary issues, including truth and reconciliation? And is Canadian theatre fulfilling that responsibility? 
Yvette Nolan: When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) report came out, like a lot of Indigenous folks, I was left wondering how we can have reconciliation if we don’t even face the truth. But the more time I spent with the 94 calls to action, the more I saw that we could actually use them as tools to work together toward reconciliation. In particular, I’m thinking about call number 83, which directed the government to give the Canada Council for the Arts more funding that could be committed to collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous folks. That opened a door in my head. Because I’ve always believed that theatre can make a change in the world. And that particular call to action was a tool to make the theatre that I believe in more visible to all Canadians.
Kevin Loring: Theatre is the most powerful vehicle for social change. If you connect to the work onstage, you feel it in your being and that’s what changes hearts. That empathy has the power to challenge preconceptions and emplaced histories. In terms of it being all of our responsibility to explore these issues, my observation is that Indigenous artists have always felt that responsibility and it was an enormous part of the work that we brought to the stage before the TRC. The TRC just opened that door up for the rest of the country to recognize that they also have to be part of it.
Nolan: Yes! Once the predominantly white institutions are encouraged to include our voices, then suddenly we have a greater forum. I’m looking at “1939” and Frances’s “Women of the Fur Trade,” which both premiered at Stratford. If more voices are allowed on these stages we can tell more stories and they can be more diverse stories. Like, “Women of the Fur Trade” is funny and that was such a surprise for so many audiences who didn’t think that we were funny.
Brefny Caribou: I often consider that so many folks aren’t reading the calls to action, nor the wonderful fiction and non-fiction books by Indigenous creators. So, in a way, the theatre can be used as a tool to engage them. When you can bring people into the theatre, all of a sudden they’re listening with their whole body in a way that is so active and not as passive as, say, listening to an audiobook. No shade to audiobooks — I love them — but there’s something so immediate about the theatre. I’ve also been thinking about how we can extend our audience circles even further to those who aren’t already coming to the theatre … bringing in those who need to have those channels opened up the most. 
Chong: I want to revisit the topic of the kind of stories being told on our stages. First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples have such rich histories of storytelling, but it often seems that, at least in the past, there were limitations on what Indigenous stories could be presented. As you alluded to earlier, Yvette, there was the sense that Indigenous stories need to be, like, all tragic and sad. Are you, however, sensing perhaps a shift in terms of the Indigenous stories that are now being told? And do you think that part of it is because more Indigenous artists, like Kevin, are now in leadership positions and can program these works, and it’s not up to non-Indigenous folks to judge what Indigenous stories can be told? 
Frances Koncan: I’m curious about what Yvette and Kevin have to say because they’ve been doing this longer than Brefny and me. But I feel that the Indigenous theatre I saw growing up versus what I see today is remarkably different. When you have certain people in power making decisions based on what they think is Indigenous history and Indigenous stories, then you see that the work rising to the top is what they think is important, which might not be what the rest of us think it should be. So when you have more Indigenous people in decision-making roles you get a lot more things bubbling to the surface. Different writers can tell stories in their unique ways because we don’t all tell stories in the same way. That, for me, is what’s so exciting. 
Nolan: It’s about curation. When I was at Native Earth Performing Arts about 20 years ago, we didn’t have our own venue and our productions would be programmed into other theatre spaces. At the time, I couldn’t even rent a space without passing my script to the artistic director, who then decided if it was Indigenous enough or if it spoke to his audience. At the time, there were very few places that were run by Indigenous folks or anybody of colour. But now, there are more artists from more communities who are ascending into these positions and they have a wider vision than where we were 20 years ago.
Loring: Yvette is right on the money. It’s about curation and having the resources to do the work. The TRC’s call to action number 83 opened the door for the Canada Council for the Arts to have its own stream of funding for Indigenous artists. It’s not perfect, but it was revolutionary in that we’re not competing in the same pool as the rest of the sector. Having the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre is also so important because it has more resources than most companies do, especially Indigenous companies. It still needs more though, and what we need is a constellation of Indigenous spaces across the country feeding back into their communities. 
Chong: We’ve been talking a lot about diversity and representation onstage but how about audience accessibility and outreach? What work needs to be done to ensure everyone, including Indigenous audiences, can access the theatre?
Koncan: As someone who has been seeing theatre since I was 16, and old enough to buy my own tickets, this is the most expensive hobby I could possibly have. I’ve spent more on theatre than any other thing in my life and it’s a huge privilege that most people, regardless of their race, don’t get to do. I also often can’t see shows because tickets are so expensive, so I don’t know how you expect to grow your audience and make it more diverse when prices are like this. But at the same time, thinking from the perspective of a producer, you have to also consider how to make money for your show. I don’t have an answer, but I think there’s such a gap between making theatre more accessible for audiences and also how expensive it is to produce the art. 
Loring: At the NAC, we started doing $15 All My Relations tickets for Indigenous patrons, which then spawned $30 tickets for those under 30. Both those programs have been very successful … and most of our shows sold out last season. So we’ve done a lot of work to reach out to new audiences from other disciplines and those for whom the NAC hasn’t been a part of their lives. However, while there’s a demographic of folks who are interested in Indigenous stories, there’s also a demographic who just don’t want anything to do with it. Anecdotally, I’ve heard that at some theatres across the country, some donors don’t want to see Indigenous work and are threatening to pull their donations. 
Nolan: You nailed it, Kevin. We’re in the backlash already. I’ve heard artistic directors say they can’t program Indigenous work because they’ll lose their subscribers. So the model is screwed. If we’re not working within our means and we think that we need 20,000 people to see a show to make it, then everything is screwed up. The theatre that matters to us, that can transform the world and change people, is a different kind of theatre than the “we have to fill the house with bums” kind of theatre that many companies are going back to now. It was like there was this BIPOC moment that we had after the pandemic and now that window has closed. Now we can only really do popular Indigenous works, if we can even say “Indigenous” at all. 
Loring: The theatre system has made one audience its primary base of funds. And that one audience is now being challenged by the work that BIPOC and Indigenous artists are putting on the stage. And some of that audience, whom the entire system is geared toward serving, is now kind of rebelling.
Chong: For those of you who perform regularly, what is it like performing in front of an Indigenous audience compared to a predominantly non-Indigenous audience. Does it change the dynamic?
Loring: It does entirely. 
Caribou: Most of the Indigenous plays I’ve done have primarily been presented to non-Indigenous audiences. It’s remarkably different (when performing for an Indigenous audience) and I wish I could articulate it better. I’ve often found myself, depending on the show I’m doing, having a moment of conflict or confrontation within myself about performing darker aspects of the truth for non-Indigenous audiences. When I played Zhaboonigan (from Tomson Highway’s “The Rez Sisters”) at Stratford, who has this very tragic monologue, I remember having a moment of panic in rehearsal as I felt stuck. I wasn’t sure how to play it because I realized that if I went in a particularly emotionally raw direction, was it simply an invitation for me to perform a level of trauma to elicit sympathy for the benefit of a predominantly white audience? So there’s that tension I’ve often felt, which is constantly tricky. 
Chong: I want to return to the TRC calls to action. Some people think of them as items off a checklist: fulfil them and they’re done and dusted. But there’s more to the calls to action than that. It’s meeting them, then upholding them moving forward. With that in mind, are you concerned that we may be regressing, that we’ve met some of those calls to action but aren’t sustaining them?
Nolan: I’ve got my little TRC book here. I wish they would just print millions of them and hand them out on the street. So I do think there is a danger of just checking boxes. I did a show with Opera Kelowna called “Wreckonciliation” with Indigenous opera singers Marion Newman and Melody Courage. We wanted to do it in such a way that people would come, so it was kind of a variety show and it was fun. But one of the things we talked about was the fact that, at that point, 11 of the 94 calls to action had been met. The artists spoke about ways in which we could all be addressing the calls. And I think that if we believe theatre is integral to the culture, then we can use theatre to address all of the calls, from education to justice, not just call number 83 concerning the Canada Council for the Arts. 
Loring: A lot of our colleagues in the theatre want to be responsive to the calls to action. But there are also other folks who want it to be over and want to go back to the way things were. I also have that same little booklet that I pack around with me all the time and, for many of us, it’s super vital and important. I think there’s this feeling that because the calls to action are supported by a government open to supporting them — to a degree — as soon as we have a change in government that no longer prioritizes the Indigenous-settler relationship, we will be in a different era and it will be a very familiar era for a lot of us, I think. That’s what I’m bracing myself for. 
Koncan: It’s also just interesting, too, that when I step out of my artsy bubble, I realize that people know even less about Indigenous issues than what we may be working with in theatre, dance and music. That’s a little scary. 
Chong: Finally, before we close this roundtable, I want to give you all an opportunity to share one Indigenous artist you’d like to shout out. Perhaps it’s someone you admire or are inspired by. 
Nolan: There are many, but I’d like to shout out Kent Monkman, who’s done so much for opening Indigenous art up to everybody. I also want to keep remembering everybody who came before, like Spiderwoman Theater and the Turtle Gals Performance Ensemble. 
Koncan: One thing that I saw recently that I really enjoyed was “The Thanksgiving Play” by Larissa FastHorse. She was the first Indigenous woman playwright on Broadway. And to get there, it was clear she had to do a lot of tricking, right? We have to trick a lot of people to get our shows into these very commercial spaces. So, as someone who enjoys doing that, I just felt a huge kinship with her, and I hope that I can continue to trick based on her inspiring trickery.
Caribou: I’m going to say Kevin Loring. I don’t think I’ve told you this story before, but my first time seeing a piece of Indigenous theatre was when your play “Where the Blood Mixes” came to a theatre in Montreal. I was 21 or 22 and it blew my mind open. And to give you a timeline on that, this was in 2013. So, that’s just a little something I wanted to share because it was super impactful to me and made me think that maybe I could do theatre myself. 
Loring: Thank you. Margo Kane was also enormous in my trajectory and another I’d say is Marie Clements. But for me, I was bitten by the Tomson Highway theatre bug at university. It was the first time I encountered Indigenous theatre and, like you, Brefny, I had the same sort of response, wondering: where was this all my life? So, in university, I had to memorize a Big Joey monologue from Tomson Highway’s “Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing.” I dropped into character for two minutes and, at the end, my audience of classmates applauded and I was hooked. 
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.