In Spirit

it's been a long while since i popped by here to dear diary across satellites.

there's a show i've been writing for years. borne of love, it's been a hardship and a joy. the inspiration is a greater tragedy than most of us would dare try to imagine. it used to be called Quilchena. it's newer, fuller, and more appropriate title is In Spirit.

i have the humility to know that this play won't erase the pain that so many profoundly violent and awful abductions have caused. i do have the spirit - naivety? - to hope we can eradicate them in future. our obstinacy has kept us alive. it can definitely unite us in this. our stubborn will to exist can spark a fire that will force us to create community from ashes. surely.

the truth about every missing and murdered woman and girl is that nobody except the girl or woman and the attacker know what happened. this is an injustice that can never be balanced out, no matter who is caught and punished. emotion is a gift. when we share it with anyone, we are laid bare. in the final, premature moments of life, under extreme duress, we must ignite with emotion never previously felt or seen. that broken, wretched human who is killing has the holy privilege of knowing the dying person's emotions at this time. it is so unfair there are no words for it.

only careful breaths and impossibly strained hopes. hopes cloaked in despair.

i have learned lately - in living, not in theory - that another aspect of these tragedies is that the names of these women and girls become known to us BECAUSE they fell to a neglectful and all-too-passive and aggressive world. all of their lives were rich with details and daily deeds long before, and leading up to the moment they were taken from us. we don't know those. unspeakably unfair.

there are cliches in the tellings of the stories of people who die prematurely. "everybody liked him." "she was so quick to laugh." "he was such a good guy." the good along with the tragic dehumanize them, in spite of best intentions.

the play In Spirit was written to do what very little i could to remind every fucking person willing to hear and feel and see that our missing and murdered belong to everyone. we must remember their lives. their complex and extremely real lives.

this play is a fiction, as far as plays can be. i have also come to believe that all stories are true. somewhere, somehow, they have all happened.
this play offers one possible perspective that none of us are privy to. this is told from the perspective of one girl who is taken. i didn't know her. she isn't a "real" person. the impetus for the writing began with the knowledge of the disappearance of one person. the writing moved very far away from that story, as known to me. the blessing of this is that i won't feel so shitty about not inspiring some silent witness to miraculously come forth and proclaim a known but hidden fact that will solve the case.
the sadness is having to admit - truly admit - the same. i wish the telling of a story could save a life. actually, i believe it can.
i guess what i really wish is that the telling of a story could restore a life. -tb (designer Andy Moro hard at work/art.)

Saltbaby Program: titled Lookit!

Nosy neighbours, The White Paper, Stephen Spielberg, The Indian Act, Queen Elizabeth II, your local retailer… these are only some of the people and things that have been trying to exercise the right to identify First Nations, Aboriginal, Inuit and Métis people in this country since contact. Some of my nearest and dearest have been subjected to the seemingly tireless diatribes of the blow-hardy, who feel they are doing a service by proclaiming how one ought to “look” and “act” in order to claim one’s inner Indian.

Why does this happen? Let’s take the oft-debated nomenclature as a jumping off point. There have been no less than five different self-identifying terms employed, in this writing, at this mark. Are we “Indian”, “Native”, “Aboriginal” or what? Why so many terms for a people?

One obvious reason behind the myriad labels is that English was never the language we used to identify ourselves. Languages hold concepts, and concepts get lost in translation. The naming of a nation in a language that is not their own will be a misnomer, regardless of best intentions. Make an effort to create an umbrella term for a multitude of nations with histories as varied and storied as any nation in continents abroad, and you will find it lacking.

Some of the terms that are applied to us are a result of constructs that were forced upon us by dominant society. The band and council system, for example, was not originally ours: it was created to make the seizing of land and the enforcement of the reserve system more efficient and orderly. A nation or tribe is made up of several bands.

“Nation” is employed largely as a reaction to the unsophisticated connotations that come along with the term “tribe”. “Tribe” implies an unformed societal organization, more in-keeping with the animal kingdom, whereas “Nation” is a term that a capitalist world not only understands, but values.

Multiple terms for a diverse range of peoples is a good indicator that we are, as a whole, seeking a way of evolving the lexicon as time progresses. Adhering to one term for an eternity is only possible for an extinct peoples; they do not continue, and so their self-identifying terms need not go through change.

Just as the verbiage adjusts to accommodate change, so must our understanding of who we are, how we move through the world, and what we look like.

The majority of Aboriginals in present-day Canada live an urban life. Expecting every Indian you meet to have a home rez and a status card is not only ignorant, it is laughably naïve. Failing to accept that an Indian can have a fair complexion and curly hair is a mistake that a simple thinker will make. By refusing to see the full spectrum of how a person can identify is to relegate the Indian to the museum. By denying the inherent complexity of the first peoples of the country where you live, you choose to stand on land without history.

History is the stories of what has been, as applicable to the people who inhabit the world today. Our First Nations communities are an inherent part of a larger society – a society that includes you. When that larger society insists on viewing its first peoples under a racist roster of stereotypes, that is larger society telling us that we are a dead culture. Without acknowledgement of – without embracing – our country’s diversity, we are cheating ourselves of our humanity. As our humanity is lessened, we are all in danger of becoming creatures of textbooks and dioramas, rather than living, breathing, ever-evolving peoples who take the streetcar alongside one another every day.

crow heads

Big crow barking-bellow croaking-caw
Taunting this sorrowing wallow I swim.
“Do it” bawks that bastard “Give me your every
thought - I’ll bring him words from you.”
To bleed it out, I open wide
This blackest head slots right inside.
Snug against my teeth, his neck.
His wormy beak now drains my breath.

Eat,
breathe,
suck,
swallow Crow.

He sniffs out every thought I think
Now deep inside my craw he drinks.

He gnaws what is unspoken
He cracks my molars broken.

shards of tooth
and blood to swallow.
one black feather
is sent inside my throat.
no coughing.

His feathered skull withdraws and I am hollow
Full empty in my maw: my heart will follow.
His body trills, a blink, wings spread blocking light
Every scrap of you and me is swallowed up in flight.

girlfriend

“I have a girlfriend” he says.
and, somewhere, Ginsberg coughs up blood.
Artaud shrugs and pisses in his dress.
A playboy bunny remembers her real name and pops a hemorrhoid beneath her
fluffy tail.
Somewhere in the lazy lounge of limbo, Milton Berle picks up a copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, forever forsaking his legend for the sake of Mr. Darcy. Mr. Dowry? Mr. Dooooolittle.

“I have a girlfriend now”.
All at once, just like that, the world is sexless and flaccid, unwired.

I’d sooner splice my clit than see you bored
I’d burn my head to fuel your fire. Not ashes. No ashes. Not you.
Death before doldrums in such a fighting fucking friend.
Not girlfriend! Not stale! Not monogamy slogonamy and habit for to hang your hat your heart-on on.
Gliding numb, floating, unsparked and uninspired, safe and held and grinning, dead-eyed in the mire
of love.
of "love".

“I’m living with my girlfriend”
Couch unstained
Bed unhumped
Shower unsoaked
Shoes unshed by an undarkened door
This bird, this pussy:
unmewed
uncawed
Evermore.

“I have a girlfriend” like an apology.
And it’s me who’s sorry.
“Sorry for your troubles” I grin and get on with it: polite and dry. It’s getting late.
You should get home.
You have a girlfriend, now.

Going it Alone

*This post has been altered out of respect for a friend who does not wish to be identified. 

I am immersed again, thinking on our missing and murdered. The astounding generosity and ingenuity that is personified by the people of Cahoots Theatre Projects has brought me to a retreat to focus on furthering the script [now called] In Spirit. Among other writers and dramaturgs, in this strange little town of "twee", I think of May 6, 1978.

One girl is occupying the largest room in my mind - fueling the busiest muscles of my heart.

It is a lonely thing in so many ways, this play. I have come off of working on big group development - the Fort at York for weeks, with fourteen other actors and various other staffies, creative and non. The Mill for Theatrefront, with a dozen or so artists I admire newly and for ages. Big groups. Here I sit at the Green Room used by the Shaw festival, the only person. Not one other soul in the room, and it's a big one. In Spirit quickly became a three-person play. I worked with Andy and Michaela as soon as I had a draft to hold in my hands. We invited people to respond straightaway - it was us three or more, always. Today I am alone. This seldom means "lonely" for me, but this time, it does.

The other aspect that has me feeling like a tiny single-celled organism is that I am realizing, more and more, that this play is not enough. It is not enough to write a play about a girl who was murdered, and whose killer was never "brought to justice". Justice can hardly be served in this case. Even if the killer were found, proven guilty, and sentenced to jail for all of eternity, never would his mother glance out the kitchen window in hopes that her child was puttering down the lane on his new bike - "Sorry, mom! I got lost." or "Sorry mom, I ran away, but I came home because I realized..." whatever. No. Whoever killed got to grow up. The murdered did not. This girl did not.

She was imagined into adulthood by all of those who loved her, but she did not do the things that she ought to have done. She was cut short by someone who had no right to make that choice for her.

A play will not change that.

What I want is for the man who killed her - and it was almost certainly a man - to suffer. I do. And it goes against all of the faith that I have in our kind. Us humans. What have we done? How have we bred a person who can commit such an act? Why do I have a hunger for vengeance about this, a desire for the man who did this to suffer worse than any murdered child has ever suffered? He was a child once! It's a safe assumption to guess that he suffered in his youth - he must have to become such a creature. In spite of this, I have no sympathy for him. I want him punished.

A play is not enough. And so the play must demand what is.

Does this serve this girl? Does it serve her beautiful mom? Her sisters? All of those people who were effected by her short time with us? That is my hope. That is my aim.

This week, I do it alone. Never have I been so alone as any murdered woman or girl was in her last moments. And this is just a play. I wish it were more.

from Michaela : A Hole in the Sky

*This post was altered out of respect for a friend.

As the actor asked and honored to walk for a brief time in a missing girl's shoes,
I found myself so profoundly affected by her.

I never had the pleasure of meeting her in person,
but I do feel like in some way I was allowed to know her... even if only a little.

The process of this play was beautiful and difficult and excruciating.
It struck me with such a profound sadness at times that I would need to stop and allow the wave to pass... grief for a relation, one of our young.
And now in light of the recent passing of my dearest Mama,
remembering the experience of In Spirit [retitled] is suggesting some strange kind of solace.

My Mom lived a long full life and raised kids and raced cars and was an active member of her community… this girl was robbed of that before she could even reach the age of thirteen. Just a babe really.
Even still, she was a great babysitter, loved her new bike and was loved and respected by her community.

And in the telling of this story I was ever reminded of the need to remain present.
To delight in some things and take heed of others. To always do your best and to know that it’s okay when you don’t.

The strange solace lies too in the reminder that at any time, especially those times when you feel exceptionally alone, those spirits are there. Our ancestors walk with us, carry us and continue to love us from another place. They continue on within us, through our eyes, our expressions, our subtle ways of being… our laughter.

As a friend said to me the other day, “It is like a hole in the sky.”… and that it is.
But somewhere I believe there is a huge reunion where there is only remembering and love and joy.
And maybe the only way to get there,
is through some hole in the sky.

in love like that

There are times I fear celebrating inside happiness because I don't want to chase the joy away. There are better days when I am able to look around, shake my woolly head and revel in how fucking beautiful this life is.

Today I had a reading of a play I conceived of three years ago. Back when I first wrote it, I quite loved it. I shared it with some trusted friends and fellow writers- feedback was encouraging. In spite of this, I let one person's lukewarm reception cool my own feelings about it. I let it slide to the side and pursued other stories. I'm glad for the work I did in that time, but I missed this play like home.

Michaela Washburn, Craig Lauzon, Gail Maurice and Michelle Latimer are helping me bring it to what is should be. By blessed luck, the grant I snagged is being augmented through the generosity of VideoCabaret. Through their own indie contracting, we also get to have Andrew Dollar contributing in a technical advisory capacity. This team is so remarkable I feel like I'm in love. I actually feel swoon-y over this. This is my job. Fuckin... what?

Ever lucky, me.

The play is reading this Friday afternoon at 3:30 in the Cameron House back space. We would love to have people in attendance who are willing to engage in a dialogue afterward. The greatness of workshop comes from exploring what-ifs with many people all in the same room.

It is my aim to work on production in this way. How many shows have you seen that just fuck the dog all the way through? In my experience... most of 'em. Why oh why is there not a feedback process during a run? Is acting so bloody precious that we can't adjust, edit, change and improve once opening night has passed? I call bullshit. I know that we MUST do these things. So many shows with gobs of talent can be saved this way.

Egos have shaped a construct that make theatre garbage. Actors are trained that changes beyond opening are detrimental because directors have too much power. Directors don't want their work altered once it is out of their hands. Directors teach acting at acting schools all over the shit. Of course we learn this- it maintains their dominance. Directors should be more like conductors. Where is the first violin on a theatrical stage? Where's the g.d. oboe tooting out its b flat or whatever? Theatre is weird, man.

Actors, of course are rendered impotent by the system we have in place. Flaccid actors are welcomed into most rehearsal processes. Vacant people who can appear clever or void on command. Also desired are people who choose to shut down their own opinions for the sake of avoiding cubicles. Those ones can be puppetted easy peasy. Misguided egotism. Some actors would rather parade around in shitty writing and directing instead of making rent as barristas or busboys. How? How is donning arsehole in your field better than working in a job that the general public views as subservient? Isn't it insulting to your own field to enable drek? Isn't it nobler to scrape bruschetta from the plate of some restaurant patron than to serve up third rate theatre to a patron who might support work that you are proud to be a part of?

Directors.

Directors have become such dictators that the collaborative methodology is a farce in most rehearsal halls. We fear claiming our own space. How many great actors enable shit work because they have chosen to stifle their own good sense to get hired again? Most of us, I think. The ones who do speak up are all too often written off as selfish, difficult people. Serving the story is seldom priority, and in my life, story is the core. The blood, the guts, the stink, the spit- all of it. It ought to be. We know this. Yes? The thing is the thing, other shit is not the thing.

Why have we castrated ourselves? Theatre is hard, but why pretend at subscribing to some structure of working in an effort to make it less challenging when we know that that sort of imposed structure makes for homogeneous work? One structure cannot be applied to any two plays. Must not. When one person is added or taken from a room the format of working MUST be affected because the energy in the room is affected. Why pretend it doesn't? And doesn't that deny the power of theatre? Live bodies in a room- THAT is the power. We ignore it in rehearsal. So fucked! Forced adherence to a system of working toward a strong piece is suicide. It is safe, it is succumbing to mediocrity.

I don't know how to do it right, but I do know how to do it wrong. There are loads of examples of that.

No surprise that this workshop of Mom's Birthday feels like love- I don't know how to get that right either, but I am surrounded by examples if how to fuck it up. Have done so myself. Many times. On a grand scale and in mini versions. Maybe in both love and theatre, we keep doing it cause nobody's figured it out yet.

I don't know. I'm glad to know that I don't know, really, cause if I knew I wouldn't have anything left to do.

Throughout my life I have periodically listed to myself "Things That I Know". That list doesn't change a lot:
1) I love my Mom
2) I pursue honesty
3) I love sleep
...and a few others that come and go depending on my state of mind.

I wonder at starting a list of "Things to NOT Do With Theatre-Making".
1) Do not censor questions
2) Do not cling to a final draft, allow for improvement
3) Do not be late

What would you put on there? Are axioms problematic either way? Absolute yeses and absolute nos?

I don't know. Ever lucky.