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Indigenous Performing Arts Practices: Artistic Processes – What we Carry (With Us) | Facilitated by Lindsay Lachance
10:00am-12:30pm | SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, World Arts Centre
Many Indigenous artists create and collaborate from places that are specific to who we are and where we come from. Languages, our territories, stories, values and lived experiences influence artistic process, and this session will explore how artists, educators, and designers infuse themselves into their practices. Our panelists will discuss how their family/nation/community- specific teachings, protocol, and knowledges are being transformed into their theatrical works.
*In person and available for live-stream, and on-demand as of February 4
Speakers | Indigenous Performing Arts Practices
Lindsay Lachance
Facilitator
Dr. Lindsay Lachance is from an Algonquin Anishinaabe family and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at UBC. Lindsay has played a leading role in the creating and direction of the Indigenous Theatre department at the National Arts Centre as the first Artistic Associate. She earned a PhD in Theatre from the University of British Columbia and, in January 2018, successfully defended her dissertation titled “The Embodied Politics of Relational Indigenous Dramaturgies.” Lindsay’s academic work exists at the intersections of Indigenous Theatre and Critical Indigenous Studies, where she celebrates and supports Indigenous theatre theory and dramaturgical structures.
Santee Smith
Panelist
Santee Smith/Tekaronhiáhkhwa is from the Kahnyen’kehàka Nation, Turtle Clan from Ohswé:ken / Six Nations of the Grand River. Santee is a multidisciplinary artist, who dances forward from an ancestral path of creatives and activists. Santee trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and completed Physical Education and Psychology degrees from McMaster University and a M.A. in Dance from York University. Santee premiered her debut work Kaha:wi – a family creation story in 2004 and one year later founded Kaha:wi Dance Theatre which has grown into an internationally renowned company. Through embodied storytelling and conceptual design her work speaks about identity, Indigenous narratives and continuance. Santee is a sought-after creative collaborator, teacher and speaker on the performing arts and Indigenous performance and culture. Smith is the 19th Chancellor of McMaster University.
Tammy Hailiopua Baker
Panelist
Playwright/Director Tammy Haili‘ōpua Baker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her work centers on the development of an indigenous Hawaiian theatre aesthetic and form, language revitalization, and the empowerment of cultural identity through stage performance. Baker is the artistic director of Ka Hālau Hanakeaka, a Hawaiian medium theatre troupe based on O‘ahu. Originally from Kapa‘a, Kaua‘i she now resides in Kahalu‘u, Ko‘olaupoko, O‘ahu with her ‘ohana.
Tara Beagan
Panelist
Tara Beagan is a proud Ntlaka’pamux and Irish “Canadian” halfbreed. She is cofounder/director of ARTICLE 11 with Andy Moro, based in Mohkinstsis. Beagan served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts from February 2011 to December 2013. She’s been writer-in-rez at Cahoots Theatre (Toronto), NEPA (Toronto), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), Berton House (Dawson City, Yukon). And during pandemic times at Prairie Theatre Exchange (Winnipeg). Seven of her 32 plays are published. One won a Dora Award. In 2020, Honour Beat won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. Recent premieres include Deer Woman in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Honour Beat opening the 2018/19 season at Theatre Calgary, The Ministry of Grace at Belfry Theatre in Victoria, and Super in Plays2Perform@Home with Boca Del Lupo (Vancouver). Beagan was the 2020 laureate of the Siminovitch Prize for theatre, playwriting. In 2022 she will direct the premiere of the Kenneth T. Williams work The Herd at Citadel/Tarragon/NACIT.
Deneh’Cho Thompson
Witness
Deneh’Cho Thompson (he/they) is a director, actor and playwright and displaced and dispossessed member of the Pehdzeh ki Nation. His artistic practice focuses on new plays and new play development. As Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan Deneh’Cho oversees the wîcêhtowin Theatre Program, one of few Indigenous theatre programs at a Canadian university. Deneh’Cho’s research focuses on the development, naming, and centring of Indigenous pedagogies; new play development (in various roles) and Indigenous collaborations – centering the values of reciprocity, respect and reflexivity.
What to Expect | Indigenous Performing Arts Practices
This year Talking Stick @ PuSh Industry Series will be a hybrid model with both in-person and virtual attendance. So what does that look like?
The roundtable discussions include artists and performers from across Turtle Island and around the globe, thus all of the roundtable speakers will be joining these conversations virtually from their homes.
Delegates who have signed up for virtual attendance will be able to watch this conversation from their homes via Zoom video conferencing.
Delegates who have signed up for in-person attendance at the Industry Series will be able to watch this conversation on a big screen in the World Art Centre at SFUW. At the World Art Centre each session will begin with an individual smudge led by Yvonne Chartrand of Compaigni V’ni Dansi.
Following the smudge, the sessions will begin with facilitators introducing their panelists and generating a dynamic conversation based on one of the selected topics.
The roundtable discussions will be between 75-90 minutes in length. The two afternoon sessions will include opportunities for audience questions and answers. To close the roundtable sessions, an invited witness will reflect and share on what was heard/learned during the session.
Pivoting to Digital: Theatre Edition | Facilitated by Martha Rans
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM | Webinar
Theatre and performing artists brought the stage to our screens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ushering in a new era of collaboration, the transition to digital has brought up questions around ownership and agency when artists collaborate. What legal challenges have emerged in this process?
Join Joanna Garfinkel (Playwrights Theatre Centre), Stephanie Wong (re:Naissance opera), and Derek Chan (Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre) with PLEO’s Legal Director, Martha Rans to discuss these new creative challenges and solutions.
This session is a joint presentation with our friends at the GVPTA and Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society (PLEO)
Speakers | Pivoting to Digital
Joanna Garfinkel
Joanna Garfinkel lives and works on the the unceded and traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlil̓wətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation). She is grateful, as granddaughter of refugees, to have the opportunity to work in the community, on this land. She is the co-founder of collectively and socially-driven play development company Universal Limited and the co-creator, with Yoshié Bancroft, of JAPANESE PROBLEM, a site-responsive piece about the Japanese Canadian Incarceration, which has been performed in Vancouver, at Soulpepper in Toronto, and elsewhere.
Stephanie Wong
Stephanie Wong is a Chinese Canadian multidisciplinary artist, working as a director, creator, dramaturg, designer, and performer in live and digital mediums. A graduate of Studio 58’s Acting Program, she is the Artistic Associate and Director of Productions at re:Naissance Opera. By bringing her theatre practice to the digital landscape, she infuses theatre magic into various technical mediums. Her stop-motion film bàba (written, directed, and designed by Wong) has featured in film festivals in Vancouver, New York, LA, London, and Berlin. By honouring the intersections of her professional and personal experiences, her art amplifies stories of culture, connection, and coexistence.
Derek Chan
Derek Chan (陳嘉昊) grew up in colonial Hong Kong and currently lives and works on the stolen and ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, colonially known as Vancouver. An award-winning multilingual playwright, director, translator, and performer, he is the incoming Managing Artistic Director of Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre. Derek was an artist in residence at the National Arts Centre English Theatre Department in the 2019/20 season, developing yellow objects, an installation-exhibition in support of the ongoing pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
Indigenous Performing Arts Presenting: Touring from an Indigenous Perspective | Facilitated by Dolina Wehipeihana
2:15pm-4:15pm | SFU Woodward’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, World Arts Centre
To view Delegate-only content, enter the email you used to register for the Industry Series.
This roundtable sparks a complex conversation that centres around touring and examines the current transactional relationship between presenters and artists.
How do we move towards a more relational model that aligns with Indigenous ways of working? How do we build a stronger eco-system where Indigenous artists are not only programmed – but welcomed, held and supported by presenters and connected with local lndigenous communities?
Indigenous presenters, artists and companies have been leading the rise of the international presentation of Indigenous work, traversing between non-Indigenous led organizations and sovereign spaces.
This roundtable discussion brings together Indigenous presenters and artists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to share what has worked for them, interrogate the current models, and explore ways forward for working together in sustainable and relational ways.
*In person and available for live-stream, and on-demand as of February 4
Speakers | Indigenous Performing Arts Presenting
Dolina Wehipeihana
Facilitator
Dolina Wehipeihana (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Raukawa) is a producer, arts manager, choreographer and performer. Dolina is currently Kaiārahi Māori at PANNZ (Performing Arts Network New Zealand), General Manager of Kia Mau Festival, and Chair of Atamira Dance Collective Charitable Trust. She is also a co-director and producer for Betsy & Mana Productions, and an advocate for contemporary Indigenous theatre and dance. As a producer she has toured New Zealand work to Australia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and Edinburgh.
A founding member of Atamira Dance Company, her creative background also includes dancing with New Zealand companies such as Black Grace and Touch Compass and independent choreographers and projects such as the Limbs Retrospective and Maui One Man Against the Gods. Dolina is currently a choreographic practitioner in the collectively created work Te Wheke by Atamira Dance Company, which premiered in June 2021.
Margo Kane
Panelist
Cree-Saulteaux Metis performing artist, Margo Kane is the Founder and Artistic Managing Director of Full Circle: First Nations Performance. For over 40 years she has been active as an actor, performing artist and community cultural worker. Her desire to share artistic performance that has meaning for her people is the catalyst for her extensive work, travels and consultation within Indigenous communities across Canada and abroad. Moonlodge, her acclaimed one-woman show, an Indigenous Canadian classic, toured for over 10 years nationally and internationally. The Sydney Press (AU) during TheFestival of the Dreaming praised it as being ‘in the top echelon of solo performance.’
She has received numerous awards and honors including an International Citation of Merit from ISPA – International Society for the Performing Arts, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the Fraser Valley, the Order of Canada from the Governor-General and most recently an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from SFU – Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC.
ShoShona Kish
Panelist
ShoShona Kish is an Anishinaabekwe community organizer, producer, activist, songwriter and JUNO award-winning touring artist. In 2018 ShoShona was recognized for her work internationally with the prestigious “ Professional Excellence Award ” from the WOMEX organization “for her role in the ongoing revolution, using the medium of music as an agent of change, to awaken our humanity and help us connect”.
ShoShona leads the multi-award-winning band Digging Roots, with her husband, Raven Kanatakta. Their music breaches categorization, blending global and Indigenous sounds with roots, blues, and trip-hop. They openly explore topical issues, treating music as a call to action. ShoShona is the Chair and founder of the International Indigenous Music Summit, the Indigenous Music Alliance and the Indigenous Music Advisory Circle. She also sits on the Music Canada’s Advisory Council. She will be releasing a new album with Digging Roots in the spring of 2022 on Ishkōdé Records, a label she recently founded with Amanda Rhéaume.
Jacob Boehme
Panelist
Jacob Boehme is a director, writer and choreographer of theatre, dance and festivals from the Narangga and Kaurna Nations, South Australia. An Australia Council for the Arts Fellow and Alumni of the Victorian College of the Arts Jacob is the Artistic Director of The Wild Dog Project – a multi-generational project reconnecting dingo songlines, and communities across Australia and Asia. Jacob is also Artistic Director of The Elders Lounge – a documentary and archival series collating and celebrating the stories of Indigenous cultural and arts Elders across Australia, Canada and the USA. Jacob is the founding Creative Director of Yirramboi Festival and sits on the Board of Directors for Dance House, Polyglot Theatre and the Ministry of Culture Taiwan South East Asia Advisory Panel. Jacob is currently the inaugural Director First Nations Programs for Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest multi-arts centres located in Sydney.
Merindah Donnelly
Panelist
Merindah Donnelly is a descendant of Wiradjuri people, a proud Koori living in Meanjin, Queensland and is currently co-CEO and Executive Producer of BlakDance. Merindah has worked in Market Development at the Australia Council for the Arts and as a producer and curator nationally and internationally. In 2015 Merindah was a global International Society of Performing Arts fellow (ISPA) and worked with Margo Kane at the Talking Stick festival in Vancouver. In 2018 Merindah was awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and in 2020 she completed her Masters in Cultural Leadership MFA at NIDA. Merindah is currently an Australia Council International Society of Performing Arts Fellow.
Hone Kouka
Panelist
Hone Kouka (Ngati Porou, Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Kahungunu, Kai Tahu) M.N.Z.M. Hone is an acclaimed Maori director, producer and writer, youngest winner of the Bruce Mason Playwrights Award and multiple award winner, he has had plays produced in South Africa, Britain, Hawaii, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Caledonia, as well as throughout New Zealand, with three plays being translated into French, Japanese and Russian. Kouka, along with Miria George founded theatre and film production house Tawata Productions, producing the works of Maori and Pacific artists and in 2015 he became Artistic Director of Kia Mau Festival – a Maori, Pasifika and International Indigenous multi arts platform based in Wellington. He became a member of the New Zealand order of Merit for his services to Contemporary Maori Theatre in June 2009 and was awarded the New Zealand Writers Guild – Mentors Award 2013. He had two films screened at the 2016 Berlin Film festival – Born to Dance (screenwriter) and Mahana (Executive Producer) and in 2017 he was awarded the Arts Category for Wellingtonian of the Year.
Denise Bolduc
Witness
Denise Bolduc is an established creator, creative director and producer who programs to transform perspectives and activate change. Her career of three decades represents countless contributions and connections with numerous celebrated artists, creative thinkers and leading cultural institutions with an emphasis on elevating Indigenous voices. She has recently accepted the appointment as the inaugural Director, Indigenous Arts at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. Denise is Ojibwe-Anishinaabe (Lake Superior) and French, born and raised in the Robinson Huron Treaty Territory, and is a member of the Batchewana First Nation with familial ties in Garden River First Nation.
What to Expect | Indigenous Performing Arts Presenting
This year Talking Stick @ PuSh Industry Series will be a hybrid model with both in-person and virtual attendance. So what does that look like?
The roundtable discussions include artists and performers from across Turtle Island and around the globe, thus all of the roundtable speakers will be joining these conversations virtually from their homes.
Delegates who have signed up for virtual attendance will be able to watch this conversation from their homes via Zoom video conferencing.
Delegates who have signed up for in-person attendance at the Industry Series will be able to watch this conversation on a big screen in the World Art Centre at SFUW. At the World Art Centre each session will begin with an individual smudge led by Yvonne Chartrand of Compaigni V’ni Dansi.
Following the smudge, the sessions will begin with facilitators introducing their panelists and generating a dynamic conversation based on one of the selected topics.
The roundtable discussions will be between 75-90 minutes in length. The two afternoon sessions will include opportunities for audience questions and answers. To close the roundtable sessions, an invited witness will reflect and share on what was heard/learned during the session.
ITS BACK. This year our Fluevog Fundraiser is better than ever with more ways to support the Festival! You can shop in person and online from Feb 2nd to Feb 4th, with 50% of the proceeds going directly to PuSh and supporting the arts! Stop in at the Water Street location to find your size and style anytime in advance of the event, and just give the code LIVEPUSH when you pay.
On Feb 3rd at 7:00 PM, you will be invited to take a virtual tour and use the promo code ‘LIVEPUSH‘ on regular priced items. Featuring a rare appearance from the one and only John Fluevog (!!), in conversation with PuSh Director of Programming, Gabrielle Martin.
Join the mailing list for early announcements and more
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