Creating Shared Futures: Indigenous-Black Relations Through Theatre
photo credit: Shaunna Dunn
Creating Shared Futures: Indigenous-Black Relations Through Theatre seeks to deepen understanding of systemic racism and discrimination faced by Indigenous Peoples and Black communities in Saskatchewan through a series of theatre workshops and site-specific performances. Through mentorship, collaboration, and creativity, this project will work towards creating a more diverse theatre ecosystem and will equip participants with the skills and knowledge to thrive.
Creating Shared Futures is a multi-phase project and we hope to establish a cohort that can move through multiple parts. We are offering training intensives and professional development opportunities with nationally and internationally recognized experts, so there is a significant time commitment for successful applicants.
A public information session will be offered on December 11th at 4 pm on Zoom. Zoom link is also available here https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88976563528?pwd=76lFrtKTf9mqapwyKZ8PQZmPKcrxXe.1. If you have any questions, you can reach out to Savannah at creatingsharedfutures@gmail.com.
Workshops in the Series
Unci Maka - Mitakuye Owas'íŋ (Mother Earth - We are all Related). Facilitated by Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway and Marnie Badham
This workshop will provide the grounding for the entire project and create the basis for relationship building in a good way. The first day will open with a pipe ceremony and subsequent days will focus on building a shared ethical relational framework through sharing food, stories, etc.
Power Play. Facilitated by David Diamond
This workshop will have participants explore their personal and collective struggles “Getting Beyond Us and Them” in order to create interactive, theatre plays that will be open to the public. Workshop sessions will incorporate group building, Image Theatre, issue exploration, improvisational work, Rainbow of Desire and play creation to explore issues and create community-specific theatre. The workshop will conclude with a private interactive Forum Theatre performance by the participants.
Site Specific Performance and Place-Making Facilitated by Kathleen Irwin and Ibukun Fasunhan
This workshop aims to introduce the basic concepts that form the foundation of site-specific performance. Using lecture/discussion, film and practical exercises, these concepts will be explored. The anticipated result will be individual short scripts or performances using the workshop space as inspiration and presented on the final day.
Playwright and Dramaturgy
Through a partnership with the Saskatchewan Writer's Guild (SWG), participants will attend two half-day playwriting workshops to support the writing and development of original site-specific plays. After the playwriting workshops, participants will work with dramaturgs who will help develop plays further.
Meet Our Facilitators
Curtis Peeteetuce
Curtis is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist from the Beardy's & Okemasis Cree Nation. Since 2001, he has had the honour of working with many talented people in theatre, radio drama, music and film. He is a storyteller, actor, writer, director, dancer, musician and playwright for the popular rez Christmas story series and his published plays include nicimos, kihew and Popcorn Elder (nominated for 2 Saskatchewan arts awards). Curtis has also served as an MC, cultural arts consultant and advocate for mental health and suicide awareness. Today he works within the education system as a student support worker. He dedicates all his accomplishments to his son Mahihkan.
David Diamond
David is the originator of Theatre for Living in Vancouver, merging of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and his own life-long interests in systems Theory. He has directed over 650 community specific theatre projects and trainings throughout Canada and the US, including with many Indigenous Nations. He has worked throughout Europe, as well as in Namibia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India and Palestine. Subjects range from violence in all its forms to addiction, intergenerational conflict, mental health, language reclamation, the legacy of Canadian Native Residential Schools, homelessness, issues of refugees, dying with dignity, gang violence, suicide, climate change, globalization, water privatization and species and habitat protection, and issues of Reconciliation to name just some. He has pioneered the development of live, interactive Forum television and web casting.
Joely BigEagle-Kequatoohway
Joely an interdisciplinary artist whose main source of inspiration is Tatanga aka Buffalo. She is a fashion and textile designer, visual artist, beader, storyteller and co-founder of the Buffalo People Arts Institute. She comes from a long line of Buffalo hunters and is Nakota/Cree/Saulteaux from White Bear First Nations - signatory to Treaty 4. Joely has worked with Common Weal Community Arts on several projects, and she recently completed the Buffalo Futurism Project with us, where she developed the concept and narrated the audio stories.
Kathleen Irwin
Kathleen is a professional scenographer, site-specific producer, and internationally published academic. She has created numerous site-specific theatre productions in Saskatchewan through her former company, Knowhere Productions. One of her most notable projects, Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan, left a lasting impact on Saskatchewan's cultural landscape, drawing site-specific performance artists, directors, visual artists, and scholars from across Canada for its 2006 debut.
Marnie Badham
With 30 years of experience of art and social justice in Canada and Australia, Marnie’s creative and critical research sits at the intersection of socially-engaged artistic practice, participatory methodologies, and the politics of cultural measurement. Through dialogic forms for encounter and exchange with attention to relational ethics and care, Marnie’s community partnerships bring together disparate groups of people (artists, communities, industry, government) in dialogue to examine and affect local issues. Her art and social practice research is co-created with long term collaborators in the context of Indigenous-settler-migrant relations, food-art-politics, affective engagement in relation to climate anxiety, and creative cartographies through durational artist residencies.
Peace Akintade
Peace is 2024 Saskatchewan Poet Laureate. She is an African-Canadian Interdisciplinary Poet, Public Speaker, and Thespian residing in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. Her play "Painted Elephant" was shortlisted for the IBPOC 2021 Persephone Theatre Commission and debuted with the Black Theatre Workshop in Montreal. Her other written works can be found in the History Folklore Society, Kindred Cities, CBCGem, Global News, SaskArts, the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, the Voices of Today Anthology, Birthday Party Anthology, Leaders Post, TOAST, and SaskCulture. Recipient of the 2022 RBC SaskArts Emerging Artist Award and the 2023 Platinum Jubilee Queen's Medal. 2020-2021 Saskatchewan Youth Poet Laureate, 2022 READSaskatoon Poet Laureate, Poet-in-Residence with the Remai Modern Gallery for their Here and Now: Live Arts Initiative, and currently finishing her Artist-in-residency with BamSaskatoon, which includes a 16-hour performance art of continuous writing. Peace has worked with Common Weal on past projects such as Own the Stage.
This project is generously funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Government of Canada. It is supported by Saskatchewan Writers Guild, Buffalo People Arts Institute, and On Cue Performance Hub.
Starting Year
: 2026Workshop Facilitators
: Curtis Peeteetuce
: David Diamond
: Joely BigEagle-Kequatoohway
: Kathleen Irwin
: Marnie Badham
: Peace AkintadePartners
: Buffalo People Arts Institute
: On Cue Performance Hub
: Saskatchewan Writers GuildFunders
: Department of Canadian Heritage
: the Government of Canada
