Editorial

When I first read Jordan Tannahill’s book Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama, I found myself nodding along with many of his observations about the current state of Canadian theatre, particularly his descriptions of being left wanting more after a performance ends, but also energized by his hopes for vital, transformative, and community-engaged theatre. It is an enormous pleasure to join CTR as Views and Reviews co-editor and to be reminded, through the compelling opinions presented in this section, that the theatre Tannahill argues for is being realized across Canada today.

In the opening piece, Kimberley McLeod reviews Tannahill’s book, noting his contribution to critical discourse on the purposes and practices of contemporary performance, particularly through his passionate discussion of the potential power of the theatre of failure. Tannahill’s critique of mainstream theatre’s tendency to leave him unimpressed lays the groundwork, McLeod claims, for an urgent call to arms, “encouraging theatremakers to think deeply about what the ongoing value of theatre is.”

The three views on performance that follow respond to this call to arms, providing examples of theatre that queries community identity, disrupts historical complacency, and foregrounds creative processes. The Gay Heritage Project, created by Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn, and Andrew Kushnir, was motivated by its co-creators’ search “for belonging” through “unearthing a history that could offer a deeper understanding of the self, and the community from which the self emerges” (Low 450). In his interview with the show’s creators, Stephen Low asks what it means to present “gay heritage” today; this wide-ranging conversation situates the play in relation to social, political, and theatrical histories of gay heritage and articulates the importance of actor-creators situating their personal experiences at the forefront of their creative practice.

In a rehearsal journal, Ric Knowles reflects on working with Monique Mojica and other established Indigenous artists on Declaration, an installation project curated by ARTICLE 11. Knowles explains his and Mojica’s quest to make Mojica invisible as part of their ongoing investigation of the simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility of Indigenous bodies, and describes the moving performances that emerged at the National Arts Centre when a “powerful group of senior Indigenous artists working collaboratively across their different Indigenous cultures and artistic disciplines” “colonized” the National Arts Centre’s Salon. Knowles argues that Declaration “modelled a way of working … outside of the industrial, architectural, capitalist, and neo-colonial boxes that regularly confine, contain, and constrain Indigenous work,” thus allowing the artists to become “visible on their own terms.”

Finally, Susan Bennett charts the performance history of Making Treaty 7, a multimedia project developed to increase public understanding of the 1877 agreement between the British Crown and the Blackfoot, Kainai Piikani Siksika, Stoney-Nakoda, Bearspaw Chiniki Wesley, and Tsuu T’ina First Nations. Bennett describes the quiet yet joyous mood of audiences following a September 2014 performance in a Chautauqua tent in Calgary’s Heritage Park, then reflects on the devastating loss of two key participants in a February 2015 car accident and how this loss led collaborators to honour the memory of their colleagues with a new iteration of Making Treaty 7, performed in September 2015. Particularly in the context of the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Bennett argues, the performance is remarkable for its “determination to educate, to address omissions in the teaching of Canadian history, and to share traditional stories” and presents “a way of moving toward truth, and perhaps eventual reconciliation.” All three performances address Tannahill’s pleas for a vital theatre and demonstrate how theatre can reflect and shape communities, both in its understandings of the past and in its abilities to imagine better futures.