Native theatre blooms in urban sprawl

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Floyd Favel is a hard man to find.

Between his two jobs, artistic director at Native EArth Performing Arts and director of Toronto's Native Theatre School, he's a busy man with little time to sit and chat.

But now the showcase of playwrights that Native Earth presented at the end of last year is over, he can sit down and reflect on what he's trying to achieve, and what's in the future for native theatre.

Favel wans to wake up everyone to the value of native theatre. He wants it to be regarded as a high art along with ballet and opera, but in its own right.

Different Traditions

"Native theatre comes from a different performance tradition. Occidental traditions come from Roman Catholic traditions and Greek myth," he said. "We are from the other side of the world, we are completely different, so our performance traditions are rooted in our own myths, our own deaths and music traditions."

Favel took over the position of artistic director at Native Earth last June. Before that the job was held by Tomson Highway who now sits on the theatre company's board of directors.

Native Earth was founded in 1982, and was originally run out of Toronto's Native Canadian Centre. Now they have their own offices and put on two full productions a year and one playwright showcase where four to eight new scripts are presented.

"Theatre the way we do it is new," Jennifer Preston, Native Earths' general manager said in an interview. "The old tradition is something that goes way back in native culture, Basically over the last 20 years people have been producing contemporary theatre based on the traditional culture."

New concept

Favel agrees, "Many people say that native threatre is centuries and centuries old. There's no word for theatre in my language - they have to be more precise. What they mean is we have a long oral tradition but in regards to contemporary theatre, which is the stage, the drama, the rhythm, the two hours, the intermission, native theatre is very new."

Native Earth is the only native theatre company in Toronto. Preston, who is not native but grew up on a Cree reserve, said they are funded by government grants, contributions, fund-raising and box office receipts. All the actors hired for the productions are native, but Preston points out that native theatre is for everyone.

"The theatre that we do is informative to the non-native audience about native culture and at the same time it also encompasses traditional beliefs within a contemporary lifestyle.

The 18-year-old Native Theatre School is run by the Association for Native Development in the Visual and Performing Arts. All the students are native, and only ten people are enroled per year.

Native traditions

According to Favel, the mandate of the school is to "train performers for the performance are, rooted in native traditions."

"We teach basic western things," he said. "The performer, the improvisation, beginning, middle and end, action, impulse, training disciplines, all in the context and framework of developing and looking for training rooted in aboriginal cultural use of body and voice."

The scripts of the theatre school are produced by the students. At Native Earth, Favel said they look for scripts that are relevant to native culture. According to both Preston and Favel, some plays deal with the stereotyping of native people, but some don't - it depends on the playwright.

"We look for common motifs like children, women, slavery, destruction of a city, search, fire - those are relevant to my culture, something that can resonate in our souls," Favel said.

In the spring, Native earth will be presenting a play written by Favel. It's called Lady of Silence, and centers on a murder.

"A white girl is murdered by four Indians, and the detective has to find out why," Favel said. "It's based on desire and shame and love because the prime suspect desired her, but before he can love her he has to confront his own feelings and realize his desire andlove is shame and humiliation."