The Artist of the Week is Indigenous stage director Yvette Nolan. She is the director of Against the Grain Theatre‘s Stories Don’t Die: The Artists of Indians on Vacation, which will be presented on May 9th (tickets and info here).
Yvette is a playwright, director, dramaturg and educator who has contributed substantially to First Nations Theatre in Canada. She has directed productions at Tapestry Opera, the Stratford Festival and Western Canada Theatre Company, just to name a few. She has written over a dozen pieces for theatre and currently teaches playwriting at the University of Saskatchewan.
This week, Yvette chats about how she was “lured” into the world of opera, who is inspiring her and her favourite composers. Read on to find out more.
Heels or flats?
Boots. Boots. Preferably cowboy boots.
Favourite place?
The Yukon.
If you weren’t a director, you’d be..?
A props builder.
Top 3 favourite composers?
Ian Cusson, Anna Meredith, Leonard Cohen.
Top 3 favourite operas?
Dialogues of the Carmelites, The Exterminating Angel, La bohème.
Tent or hotel?
Tent.
What are you afraid of?
Being afraid.
Coffee or tea?
One coffee, then tea all day.
What was the first opera you ever saw?
Madama Butterfly. My mother loved opera, and she took me to a production. I always identified with Butterfly’s child Trouble, who was, like me, a half-breed.
What’s your ancestry?
Algonquin and Irish. My mother was Algonquin from Kitigan Zibi in Quebec, my father was an Irish immigrant from Bray. He was her math teacher at residential school. The nuns gave them a wedding.
What’s your favourite movie?
All That Jazz. Everything I needed to know about directing – good and bad – I learned from Joe Gideon.
When did you know you wanted to be an opera director?
Never did. Got lured into opera by Dean Burry and Michael Mori on Shanawdithit, and Michael Greyeyes with his dance-opera Bearing. I was working in theatre, though we did produce Spy Denommé-Welch and Catherine Magowan’s Giiwedin at Native Earth in 2010, when I was the artistic director, which was directed by Maria Lamont.
Do you approach upcoming projects differently today than you did at the beginning of your career?
I am both more and less serious in my approach. I realized early that if someone else – academics, reviewers, audience members – was taking my work seriously, then I had better do so as well. But the longer I hang around, the less controlling I am. I leave more room in work for everyone else, because all our brains together are better and more creative than just mine, and the work has to be joyful, playful, fun.
What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken for a production?
For Shanawdithit at Tapestry, we invited six Indigenous artists to create works that responded to Shanawdithit’s drawings, and incorporated them into the production, which was a wild experience, requiring so much generosity and flexibility from everyone, from the set designer to the singers to the technicians.
Who has been inspiring you lately?
David Byrne. Dude is 73, burning down the house at Coachella. Plus, American Utopia in the height of COVID. Plus, Reasons to be Cheerful.
How old were you when you discovered opera?
Well, it was when we got a television in the 60’s, and I saw Bugs Bunny doing What’s Opera, Doc? and The Rabbit of Seville -“Welcome to my shop, let me cut your mop” – so I was, I dunno, six?
© Dahlia Katz
Bearing at Signal Theatre with Greg Oh, Marion Newman, Brandon Oakes, Ceinwen Gobert and Louis Laberge-Côté
© Dahlia Katz
Shanawdithit at Tapestry Opera
© Cylla von Tiedemann.
The First Stone
Stories Don’t Die: The Artists of Indians on Vacation
Against the Grain Theatre
MEZZO-SOPRANO: Marion Newman
BARITONE: Evan Korbut
BARITONE: Giles Tomkins
SOPRANO: Julie Lumsden
MEZZO-SOPRANO: Keely McPeek
TENOR: Asitha Tennekoon
BARITONE: Dannie Rae Acebuque
DIRECTOR/LIBRETTIST: Yvette Nolan
COMPOSER: Ian Cusson
LIBRETTIST: Royce Vavrek
PIANIST: Spencer Kryzanowski
An intimate encounter with an opera at the crossroads: join us for an afternoon of music and spoken word conceived and led by the artists of Indians on Vacation.
Excerpts from Indians on Vacation are interwoven with personal reflections on belonging, identity and authenticity, shaped by the artists’ experience with the work. Stories Don’t Die will also feature a newly commissioned sung land acknowledgement by Ian Cusson and Yvette Nolan.
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