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Michelle Thrush’s childhood was anything but a charmed one, but her award-winning play, Inner Elder, wouldn’t exist if things had been different. The 58-year-old Cree actor, who calls Calgary home, recalls an upbringing marked by raging alcoholism and violence that created the kind of scars which can all too often be permanent.

“All of my aunts and uncles were drinking when I was growing up,” Thrush says. “All of my family passed away in horrific ways—murders, suicides, overdoses, and cirrhosis. It was just a really tragic time. And, I often say this, which is true for so many of us, but we didn’t even know about truth and reconciliation. So everyone was like, ‘Why are our parents so screwed up?’ And it was, ‘Because they’re traumatized, and it’s this whole generational thing.’ I mean, the amount of shame my mom carried, the amount of shame my grandmother carried, that flows through me, is so intense.”

Thrush is best known as a TV and film actor—her career took off on the CBC’s groundbreaking ’90s hit North of 60, leading to appearances in works ranging from Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man to last year’s The Birds Who Fear Death. With Inner Elder, she turned the lens on herself, leading to accolades like the August Schellenberg Award of Excellence and the Betty Mitchell Award for outstanding actress. Today she happily reports that she’s busier than ever, with this year seeing the release of three films—#VanLife, Birth of a Family, and Do Us Part.

“I just wanted to mention my other career,” Thrush says with a laugh. “I started as a film actor—I’m like 65 percent film, and the rest theatre. Last August right through to December I worked nonstop on those three films back-to-back, playing the lead in each one, which is frickin’ rare for a 50-something indigenous woman. And I’ve never ever gotten on a number one on a call sheet until last year.”

As thrilled as she is about those projects, she’s also excited about bringing Inner Elder to audiences. The one-woman play, which debuted in 2018, has been hailed as an uplifting testament to survival and resilience—the message being you are only a victim if you let yourself be.

At the centre of Inner Elder is the guidance Thrush has gotten from the strong women—including the flawed ones—she’s met along the way.

“The character, Kookum Martha, that I eventually become in Inner Elder is a character that I’ve been doing for 30 years,” she relates. “She’s an old Indian woman—my grandmother, my mother, my aunts, and women I’ve met. I call her my inner elder, and she’s hilarious.”

Thrush’s powers as a storyteller are driven home in her interview with the Straight. Unflinchingly, she recounts parts of the journey that led to the creation of Inner Elder, framing them in a way that makes them relatable to those with stories different than her own.

Some of us, she notes, for example, will be lucky to have memories of making bread or cookies with our mothers or grandmothers. For Thrush, the baking of bannock at home was a sign that the party was over and it was time for everyone to start sobering up.

Such memories, drawn upon for Inner Elder, don’t stop there.

“I can remember going to see my grandma and grandpa, who were also alcoholics,” she recalls. “I would beg my father, ‘Let’s not go see them’, because I knew that it would turn into a three- or four-day bender. And maybe there would be not a lot of food, so me and a couple of my cousins would be scrounging and maybe stealing from stores to eat. It was a really tough time.

“As a kid, you always think it’s about you,” Thrush continues. “Like, ‘I must be a bad person because they drink so hard, and they yell and they fight.’ There would be fights happening in the living room at 3 a.m. I remember being too tired for school because I’d be up all night while my dad raged, or fought with his friends and broke tables. It was hard, to where I was often questioning, ‘Why did they have me?’ ”

Add the racism encountered while being an Indigenous kid on the streets of Calgary and you have a complex framework for Inner Elder. Evolving out of a late-aughts work Thrush started doing under the title Find Your Own Inner Elder, the play doesn’t shy away from the more difficult chapters in her story. But despite the dark moments, Thrush notes that it is, more than anything, an empowering comedy.

Asked if she wishes her childhood had been different, the actor somewhat surprises with her answer.

“I look back, and it was hell,” Thrush says bluntly. “It was a specific hell that, to go through that as a child, can be crazy making—when adults say things that don’t make any sense, when they are waking you up at 3 a.m. raging. But I also think about the fact that I’m a firm believer that we choose our parents, that we choose our situations, and that we choose our souls.

Elaborating, she continues with: “I believe we are spirits having a human experience here, and that, before I came to this Earth, I sat down with my mom and dad and said ‘We’re going to do this.’ And my parents were like ‘We’re going to mess you over so bad. But your soul is going to expand into places that you need.’ So that’s how I look at it. And it’s really given me a good perspective on forgiveness and on kindness—and I believe that comes across in the show.”

One of the big messages in Inner Elder is that humour can be a way to make sense of darkness and chaos.

“You cannot walk into an Indigenous home, no matter what the history is of the family, and not have laughter and teasing,” Thrush offers. “That’s all part of it. So Inner Elder is about flipping the script. Taking what happened and, turning it into, for me, alchemy. ”

Inner Elder plays the Firehall Arts Centre from May 22-31.