“The Whole Thing You’re Doing Is White Man’s Ways”: fareWel’ s Northern Tour

• Published in: Canadian Theatre Review
• Main Author: Lenze, Christine
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2001
• Subjects: Visual Arts and Performing Arts; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.108.009; https://ctr.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/ctr.108.009

The emergence of Native performance on Canadian stages in the late twentieth century is determined by some to be a “logical extension” of the practice of First Nations storytelling (Taylor 140). First Nations performances have certainly incorporated culturally specific aspects, and some tribes, like the Kwakiutl of British Columbia, have performed ritual dramas for hundreds of years. In an interview with Hartmut Lutz, however, playwright Daniel David Moses remains hesitant about linking structural categories like “drama” to First Nations performance. As Moses explains, I’m not sure whether it’s ... a natural resistance to codifying something that seems to be in the process of developing. You don’t want to give something a wrong name before it’s really been born.... I think [First Nations writers] have an opportunity here with the influence of an oral aesthetic, to develop things that go beyond those genres, which are categories that are very much a result of a book culture.(163)