Plays popular at Woodland Cultural Centre

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On March 2, the Woodland Cultural Centre presented An Afternoon of Readings, which featured three, one-act plays by Six Nations playwrights ElizaBeth Hill, Yvonne Beaver and Ken Davis. Tom Hill, director of the Woodland Cultural Centre, served as master of ceremonies. Lorne Cardinal, Cheri Maracle-Cardinal and Tim Hill read several acts each, helped along by three young performers from the Six Nations Community Youth Outreach Drama Troupe: Everett Jacobs, Jason Martin and Jessie Anthony.

Before a play makes it onto the stage, it is rehearsed many times. It may also be "workshopped;" that is, read and performed, discussed among the actors and the director, and rewritten-by the playwright-to create the most effective version Sometimes a play is given a reading before an audience, actors speaking their lines without the benefit of sets, costumes, or even what we would normally think of as acting.

When you experience the words of a playwright without the non-verbal embellishments, you have to conjure up those theatrical elements yourself. Strong playwriting and effective play reading will make that creative activity not only possible, but enjoyable.

The plays ranged from light farcical comedy through social commentary to visionary history. The topics reflected this wide range: psychiatry and mental illness, Native spirituality, war, homosexuality, family dynamics, racism, water management, sexism, Elders, female heroism, sexual stereotyping and culural colonialism.

The afternoon began with ElizaBeth Hill's Wooly's Umbrella, a highly imaginative play with a serious premise and comic overtones. Portraying the clash between the "white" psychiatric establishment and Native spirituality, it raised some very important questions, such as, "Who is the patient and who is the doctor?", "What does it mean to be sane?", "How can one culture dictate to another culture its spiritual values?", and "If the mind is like an umbrella-it functions best when open-how far can it be forced before it breaks?"

It is a truly provocative play by an accomplished artist, writer and performer.

Next came Beaver's play, Crossroads, an historical drama of mythical proportions and mystical themes. The most difficult and poetic of the three plays, it would present an exciting creative challenge to any theatre group staging it. Beaver has said about the central female character, Aginwa, that she prefers "to let her audience decide who she is. She does embody the characteristics of a number of historic and mythical women and can therefore be seen as representative of one of the universal figures of women." Beaver's interest in fantasy fiction, with its sweeping landscapes and larger-than-life heroes and heroines, was evident in Crossroads, her first play. The story of Aginwa, the nurturing female figure, mother to warriors, standing in the crossroad between war and peace, is a fitting play for our time.

The afternoon's entertainment wrapped up with Davis' plaly Too Spirited, a seemingly light comedy about a two-spirited youth, Devon Morningstar, who is not quite sure how to "come out" to his family, including his wise grandma, and what to do with his lover.

Davis, who recently completed a stint as a writer on APTN's Buffalo Tracks, has written a lively piece that plays on stereotypes of sexual orientation, masculinity, femininity and generational dynamics, and has great audience appeal.

Davis is submitting Too Spirited to Native Earth Performing Arts Inc. The 20-year-old company's festival of new works, Weesageechak Begins to Dance, takes place in October 2003. Aptly named after Weesageechak, the shape-shifting trickster (aka the Coyote and the Raven), the festival develops new pieces for Aboriginal theatre and dance.

The actors did a wonderful job of making the playwrights' words come alive, enabling the listeners to envision each play in the spirit in which it was written. The afternoon was very well attended, with the auience following theactors' words with rapt attention. Musical interludes by Chad Henhawk and catering by Janice Henry added to the sensory experience.

The organizers said the Six Nations Writers group have set out to write their own stories in all genres, in their own words, and clear up some of the historic misconceptions that have made their way into public perception through decades of non-Native fictionalizing and falsifying Native life and values.

The Afternoon of Readings' presentations of the three plays Too Spirited, Crossroads and Wooly's Umbrella were an impressive testament to their creative diversity.