White Girls in Moccasins

Yolanda Bonnell’s White Girls in Moccasins, presented by manidoons collective and Native Earth Performing Arts opened at the Aki Studio on Friday night.  Co-directed by Bonnell and Carmen Alvis, it’s a play about identity and and recovering roots.  The principal character Miskozi, like the playwright, is Indigenous but I don’t think the play is entirely about Indigenous identity.  The other two roles are Ziibi, played by a Bermudian Trans Woman of African ancestry and Waabishkizi; played by a second generation Settler woman.  So while the focus is on Indigenous identity I think it raises a lot of other questions too.

Continue reading

Some assembly required

So you are a nerdy kid who lives next to a weird family.  So weird in fact that they eat “naked spaghetti” and one day the police show up to find that your contemporary has dismembered his father alive with a hacksaw (a joint Christmas present from their mother/wife) and put the bits in a cardboard box labelled “Some Assembly Required” to a repeated sound track of “Raindrops keep falling on my head”.  That’s how Monster by Daniel Macivor starts and it’s an unforgettable image that recurs as recollection, dream and film scene throughout a 75 minute one actor tour de force by Karl Ang in the Studio at Factory Theatre.

Monster-photobyDahliaKatz-1875

Continue reading