Storytelling to Stage: The Growth of Native Theatre in Canada

Abstract

Native theatre is alive and well and living in Canada. I say this because, as I'm sure you are aware, Native theatre is amazingly strong, quite popular, and practically everywhere in the Canadian theatrical community. What once was barren is now bountiful. In 1986 there was perhaps one working Native playwright in all of Canada. Today I can list at least two dozen produced playwrights of aboriginal decent in Canada, and if that rate of increase continues, by the year 2040 it's conceivable that everybody in Canada will be a Native playwright! I have a humble theory as to why theatre seems to be the medium of choice for Native Canadians. We have novelists, we have short-story writers, we have musicians, we have actors, etc., but in terms of, I guess, per capita art form, it seems that theatre, for one reason or another, has become the predominant expressive vehicle for Canada's Native people. I believe the reason is that theatre is just a logical extension of storytelling. To look back at the roots and origins of traditional storytelling-not just Native storytelling but storytelling in general-it's about taking your audience on a journey through the use of your voice, your body, and the spoken word. And going from that onto the stage is just the next logical progression. Native people, who have an oral culture, really gravitate towards that, more so than, say, the written arts, where you have to have perfect English or grammatically correct writing. The sometimes spotty education that has been granted Native people by the government and various religious institutions has not been that great. That's one of the reasons I became a playwright: I write the way people talk, and the way people talk is not always grammatically correct, therefore I can get away with it. So in terms of the storytelling technique, if you look at its origins, it was, at its most basic, a way of relating the history of the community; it was a way of explaining human nature; it had metaphorical, philosophical, psychological implications-all within the story. Unfortunately, in today's society the Native legends of history have been relegated to quaint children's stories. But legends and stories were never meant to be strictly for children. They were always told for adults-as well as for children-because as you get older, you can tap into a whole new understanding of the story. It's like an onion: you can always peel away more and more to get to the core of the story.