Listening to the Lake

The authors document the collaboration among Westbank First Nation members, Vancouver’s Turning Point Ensemble, and Astrolabe Musik Theatre in creating The Lake / N-ha-a-itk in the Okanagan region in 2014. As a production including a modernist opera by Barbara Pentland and Dorothy Livesay, Syilx dance, song, drumming, storytelling, and an original composition by Leslie Uyeda, The Lake / N-ha-a-itk reorganizes structures of authority and authorship common in opera into a process akin to some forms of “collective creation” or “devised theatre.” The article archives some of the conversations surrounding the collaboration among its creators and suggests that The Lake / N-ha-a-itk offers an important perspective on the ethics, politics, and aesthetics of opera production in Canada today.