Theatre for Living reckons with reconciliation

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      The end product, as always, is unknown. In forum theatre, as practised by Vancouver’s Theatre for Living company, there’s a narrative structure—a script, if you will—that draws on the real-life experiences of the actors on-stage. And, as the troupe’s former name, Headlines Theatre, implies, that script generally examines some pressing social or political concern. But the finished product doesn’t manifest until opening night, when audience members are invited on-stage to engage in dialogue with the actors—and it’s different with every performance.

      The shape of the theatrical experience that šxʷʔam'ət (home) offers, then, will be amorphous for a few days yet. But asked what to expect, David Diamond, Theatre for Living’s artistic and managing director, has a clear idea of his ensemble’s intent.

      “What are we making? Well, we’re making a play that asks questions about what reconciliation means, and how we navigate it—in the nonindigenous community, in the indigenous community, and in between communities,” he says of šxʷʔam'ət (home), which takes its name from a Musqueam term that encompasses an expansive sense of place and belonging. “There are a lot of layers to this conversation that need to happen, and my hope is that a play like this asks all of us important and uncomfortable questions.”

      Helping Diamond frame those questions is associate director Renae Morriseau, who recently helmed God and the Indian for the Firehall Arts Centre, and a cast that includes a residential-school survivor, a Unitarian pastor, and a first-generation Canadian of Filipino descent. Their stories all factor into the script, developed collaboratively with dramaturgical input from the two directors.

      “There are a number of threads,” Diamond explains. “One is a family—a white family, in fact—who adopted an indigenous child almost from birth, and he has grown up not knowing anything about his culture, about his birth family. And that weaves together with a story of an indigenous father and daughter. The two men know each other through work, construction work, and they’re actually friends. The daughter encounters the son, who she vaguely knows, and through a conversation launches him onto a path of really wanting to know where he’s from. He is also really involved with stuff around Kinder Morgan, and her father doesn’t want her involved with that. As a result of residential school, he has left activism and his own culture. He’s kind of put that away.

      “I think what’s important to us is that they’re just normal people,” he adds. “They are us.”

      Theatre for Living's David Diamond.
      Wolfgang Rappel

      For Morriseau, the show—a collaboration with the Journeys Around the Circle Society—offers its viewers and participants a chance to move beyond tolerance to a deeper understanding of difference.

      “If I’m tolerant, that means I can keep my biases but I’ll give you space,” she says. “But what do we do if we move beyond tolerance? As David says, we don’t want to give you the answers, but it’s important to interact with these attitudinal realities that we find ourselves in as Canadians, as First Nations.

      “Personally, I’ve worked a lot in First Nations communities about reconciliation,” Morriseau continues. “And First Nations people have been reconciling from the time they left residential school, or from the time that they’ve had to deal with dislocation to land because of being forced to leave their communities through legislation and the policies of the Indian Act. So we’ve been dealing with it a lot longer than the general Canadian, and I think that what’s so unique about this work is that we’ve brought in diverse communities that are all pushing up against those realities.”

      For the Cree and Salteaux theatre artist and singer, as for her codirector, the important part of forum theatre is that it’s empowering. By giving voice to their hopes for reconciliation—and perhaps to their fears of “the other”—audience members will return to their daily existences more prepared to work for justice.

      “Art inspires people to make change,” Morriseau says. “Sometimes change isn’t such an overt reality, but it’s something that permeates and bubbles underneath one’s moral code.…And for any country to grow and to evolve and to look towards a good future, we need to have that good energy.”

      Theatre for Living presents šxʷʔam'ət (home) at the Firehall Arts Centre from Friday (March 3) to March 11.

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