Aboriginal company strong on Alberta’s theatre scene

Old Earth Productions, an Aboriginal dramatic collective, is producing plays about social issues, featuring Aboriginal themes and actors.

“Old Earth Productions utilizes theatre as a tool for creating social change,” said Executive Director Darlene Auger. “We are interested in gathering and telling the stories of local Native people, to create public awareness on pressing issues.”

Auger explains that the need for an Aboriginal theatre company was felt in 2005 when the Walterdale Theatre held auditions for the play The Rez Sisters by Tompson Highway, a First Nations playwright - the first time ever that an Aboriginal play was being placed in the Walterdale’s line up.

“Apparently, there was some concern about whether the play could be cast by Aboriginal actors and if the production could be sold,” she said. “Nearly every show of 10 shows was sold out! The eight actors who were cast for this production realized that Edmonton and Alberta was in need of a Native theatre company that would produce and present the stories of local Native people.”

As a result, Old Earth Productions was born in 2006, when the eight actors created a collective to perform The Rez Sisters for that year’s Fringe Festival. In early 2008, six of the original eight members registered the collective as a society.

The latest production from the company is the original play A Musta-Be: Maskihkiy Maskwa Iskwew, about the intergenerational effects of institutionalization on Native women and their daughters including Indian residential school, jail, Indian hospital, and child welfare.

In 2008-2009, member Christopher Grignard was a doctoral student when Yvonne Johnson was brought into a University of Alberta classroom as a guest speaker. Johnson, an Aboriginal woman serving the last of a life sentence at the Edmonton Institute for Women, was shackled and handcuffed.

“She spoke about her experience in prison and put a call out to the people to do something about the intergenerational incarceration of Aboriginal woman and their daughters,” Auger explained. “Christopher came back to the collective and we decided to take up Yvonne’s call.”

Members began engaging Native women, including others incarcerated at the Edmonton Institution, to share their stories and members also contributed their own personal stories as intergenerational survivors of institutionalization. Johnson became the key informant. 

“We learned that Yvonne’s Cree name is Maskihkiy Maskwa Iskwew and she is a descendant of Chief Big Bear. During our interviews with Yvonne, she often said “it’s a musta be” in relation to things that she believed are meant to happen or must happen,” said Auger.

With the assistance of playwright Jane Heather, A Musta Be: Maskihkiy Maskwa Iskwew was produced in 2010. 

“The name of the play is in reference to the ‘medicine’ of introspection - the gift of personal acceptance and love that all the women in the play touch and eventually hold,” said Auger.

The play has been performed several times over the years at the Timms Centre for the Arts in Edmonton, most recently in June, and just toured throughout Alberta. 

“People that see the play have told us that it is a very powerful play that tells the painful truth of many current issues that are hurting Native people today. People tell us that they can relate to the characters and the stories in the play and that it is so amazing to see these stories unfold on a public stage!” said Auger.

Now, organizations are asking Old Earth Production to write or present plays on other social issues, such as homelessness. Currently, a play about the Sixties Scoop and another production of The Rez Sisters is in the works.