Kiana Josette and Trina James in Unicorn. Photo by Keandre Johnson.
Eastern Front Theatre’s Stages Festival is well underway in and around Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth/ Punamu’kwati’jk and runs there until June 9th.
Eastern Front Theatre’s Artistic Director Kat McCormack has programmed six Main Stage events, three family-friendly shows, an array of special events, and Richie Wilcox and Dustin Harvey have put together an Industry Series that has events throughout the weekend that are meant to “unite theatre makers, ignite artistic development, empower the future of theatre, and facilitate collaboration and partnerships” and this year these events include a good old fashioned field trip, which looks like it’s going to be a really excellent adventure. For more information about the Industry Series, please visit this website.
My day started with Blackout, one of the Special Events, from Erasure Art Collective. We sat on the banks of the harbour, on what was once Indigenous land, and then Black-owned land, before the white settlers pushed both the Mi’kmaq and the African Nova Scotians to more and more undesirable land further and further away from what became the heart of the white settlement here, in front of a poster-sized copy of a notice that was printed in one of Halifax’s early newspapers in the 1700s, demanding the return of a Black man who had run away from the white person who enslaved him. We are all given time to read the notice and to think about it in terms of being part of the history of the place where we sit, where we live, and for many of us, the place that we are from. In some cases Halifax in the 1700s is a time and place where our own ancestors lived as well, and thus this history belongs to us and our families too, and we are invited to think about how we and our ancestors fit into this story.
Shauntay Grant and Tyshan Wright consider the notice as well, holding a palette of black paint, and together they decide which words they want to cover over with the paint, and in some cases, the ways in which they want to cover the words. They do this with absolute care and generosity towards one another, not allowing the audience of onlookers to rush their process, which includes hushed conversations we cannot hear and moments of stillness where they stand back to consider their next steps. Together they black out the words to create a new meaning, a poem, with words left highlighted. So, from something very ugly, the point of view and the agency over the words changes, and as Grant said during her introduction, the spotlight becomes the bravery of the resistance and the rebellion against the institution of slavery exhibited by the person who dared to try to escape it. It was a very moving and thought-provoking experience, and it has changed the way I think about those who were labelled “runaways;” to see them not as the vulnerable fleeing the powerful, but someone taking their lives into their own hands, and having the courage to defy what has been imposed cruelly upon them, and hopefully to be free forever afterwards, for themselves and their families.
I then went inside Alderney Landing Theatre to catch Kay MacDonald’s play Unicorn, produced by the Bus Stop Theatre Writers’ Circle. The short play follows the relationship between Sea and Sky, two Black women played by Kiana Josette and Trina James, who are trying to come together into a cohesive romantic relationship, but both the outside world, and their inner thoughts, and generations-worth of their own histories keep getting in their way. The play is told largely through poetry, words that are repeated but often with different intonations that change the meaning, and movement by I’thandi Munro. The lighting design and projections by MacDonald and Matt Downey, and Jackson Fairfax-Perry’s upbeat score bring the tug-of-war tension between these two characters to vivid and creative life- as both vie for power, to be heard, and for comfort. The metaphor of the unicorn seemed to me a commentary on how rare and magical it is when two people actually find a way of fitting all their lives and all their minds together in some kind of harmony, and I found that really beautiful.
We are welcoming six producers to Dartmouth for Stages from all across Canada and beyond: Michael Caldwell, Rhyna Thompson, Guðrún Þórsdóttir, Kevin Matthew Wong, and Jacob Zimmer, who will be at the Industry Series chatting with artists based in Halifax about the changing role of the producer in the Canadian Theatre landscape. Halifax, historically at least, seems to be a city where folks are more producers by necessity- it is a hat people wear often under multiple other hats- we don’t really have a culture of having rogue folks for whom producing is their entire vocation who work outside of an established theatre company in a collaborative capacity, so it is interesting for the Industry Series to be shining a light on this aspect of the art form.
Richie mentioned that he hoped that the Industry Series might be a chance for us to share our dreams for the future with one another, and I thought I might write a few of mine down here for folks to read.
1. This one I know I share with likely most others in the community, but I dream of Halifax having far more physical theatre venues, and venues that are more immediately recognizable to the public. I dream of living in a city where you could tell your sister in law’s roommate’s dad that you were off to 2b and that he would know where and what that was.
2. I dream of Halifax being a place where new work is nurtured and churned out, and where Nova Scotian plays don’t just get one five show or ten show run, only to be retired to a shelf somewhere forever and eventually, likely forgotten altogether. But, I also dream of not having to go to Toronto to see a professional production of a Tennessee Williams play, or a Lorraine Hansberry, or an Ibsen, or a Caryl Churchill play. How can we be inspired by the canon of plays, debate the canon of plays, reject the canon of plays, suggest a different canon of plays, if we aren’t even able to consistently see professional productions of the plays that are considered to be the best throughout history in the world?
3. I dream of us collectively realizing April Hubbard’s accessibility dreams and goals for this community- all the potential they have seen in the community realized, all their hopes and dreams for us come true.
4. I dream of us finding a way to all work together to really mine all the untapped potential for theatre audiences and theatregoers that live in this city and this province. I think there are so many people who would go to the theatre if they knew it was here, who would be excited about the work that folks are making here, if they saw it. As a theatre critic in theory I am the conduit between the theatre community and the general public, but it’s impossible for me to reach that broader audience entirely by myself, especially not with the current abhorrent state of the social media landscape and their punishing algorithms. I need help, and I dream of a time where I really feel like I’m reaching the average Haligonian and that they have a way to check in to see what’s going on in the theatre scene this week in this city and, ideally, the province.
I am hoping to have some interesting conversations with folks this weekend, and beyond this weekend. I really feel like our superpower in Halifax is that we are small enough that we really can all work together to achieve our common goals- we have proven how powerful we can be in that capacity in the past. The Stages Industry Series is really an opportunity to further utilize this power in ways that will have positive reverberations well into the future.
Eastern Front Theatre’s Stages Festival continues tonight and runs all day tomorrow, June 9th, 2024, at Alderney Landing Theatre. For more information and to buy tickets please visit this website.
