LIBERATION READING
AUGUST 3, 2022
7PM EST
Artists crack the covers on some critical readings, and share what moves them. Indigenous arts leaders Lori Marchand, Lindsay Lachance, Isidra Cruz, Joelle Peters lend their lens to a look at books from our liberating shelf. Presented with support from Native Earth Performing Arts
Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance
by Jesse Wente
All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward
By Tanya Talaga
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance
by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
My Conversations With Canadians
by Lee Maracle
FEATURING
LORI MARCHAND
Lori Marchand became the first Managing Director of the NAC’s Indigenous Theatre in April 2018. A member of the Syilx First Nation, she has played a key role in the encouragement, development and production of Indigenous work, including during her time as Executive Director of Western Canada Theatre, 1999-2018. Her contributions in BC and nationally also include serving in many capacities for the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres and as a member of BC Arts Council (2010-2017), helping to drive policy change relevant to all theatre practitioners in Canada.
LINDSAY LACHANCE
Lindsay Lachance (Algonquin Anishinaabe) has worked as a dramaturg for over a decade and has a PhD from the department of theatre and film at the University of British Columbia. Lindsay’s dramaturgical practice is influenced by her relationship with birch bark biting and the Gatineau River. She is also the director of the Animikiig Creators Unit at Native Earth Performing Arts, which focuses on the development of new Indigenous works.
ISIDRA CRUZ
Isidra is a Mexican, Cree, African American, and French arts administrator and costume designer. Past work includes Keith Barker’s This Is How We Got Here, Native Earth Performing Arts/Shaw Festival; Two Odysseys: Pimooteewin/ Gállábártnit, Signal Theatre; Zoe Hopkins’ Run Woman Run, (film); Jeff D’Hondt’s Everything I Couldn’t Tell You, Spiderbones Performing Arts. She is a graduate of Ryerson University’s Theatre Production program where she received a BFA with Honours, specializing in theatre administration and costume design/construction. Through her work with imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival she has helped to educate the general Canadian public on issues facing the Indigenous population of Canada. Isidra is currently a program officer for the Canada Council for the Arts in Creating, Knowing and Sharing: The Arts and Cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples.
JOELLE PETERS
Joelle Peters (she/her) is an Anishinaabe award-winning playwright and actor from Walpole Island First Nation. A graduate of Seneca College's Acting for Camera and Voice Program, Joelle has appeared on Shoresy (Crave/Hulu), Web of Lies (Discovery+), and in the film In Her City (Raven West Films Ltd). Selected theatre credits: Dreary and Izzy (Theatre Northwest), The Election (Nightwood/Theatre Direct/Commonboots/Passe Muraille), Only Drunks and Children Tell The Truth (Western Canada Theatre/Thousand Islands Playhouse). She is also the Interim Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. In 2020, Joelle was named the Siminovitch Prize Protegee for Playwriting by Laureate Tara Beagan. Joelle's plays include Frozen River (co-written by Carrie Costello and Michaela Washburn, winner of the 2021 Sharon Enkin Plays for Young People award), Niizh (in development with Native Earth Performing Arts and commissioned by the Blyth Festival), and Do You Remember? (commissioned by Burnt Thicket Theatre, supported by Punctuate/Pemmican Playwrights Unit).