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Mar. 14 - Mar. 21, 2004 |
Real Art on Stage
In this live show the performers are the artwork
By Sarah B. Hood
Originally Published: 2004-02-22
There are many plays about the lives of artists. For example, Sally Clark's Life Without Instruction delves into the violent imagination of Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi, while Don Druik's popular Through the Eyes, which is being remounted this year at Factory Theatre, is about the creation of Bernini's famous bust of King Louis XIV of France. But in most plays, we see only the artist on stage; few attempt to bring the artwork itself to life.
But that's exactly what Native Earth Performing Arts is trying to do with their upcoming production The Artshow. Written by Alanis King, it attempts not only to pay tribute to the renowned Odawa artist Daphne Odjig, but actually to bring the world of her imagination to dramatic life.
"It's been in development for a couple of years at Native Earth, and Alanis is actually related by marriage to Daphne Odjig, and of course they both come from Wiky [Wikwemikong Unceded Reserve on Manitoulin Island]," say Native Earth artistic director Yvette Nolan, who adds: "It's important to Alanis, as to many of us, to honour our heroes and our artists."
Odjig, now in her 80s, is one of the most renowned Native artists in North America. She holds the Order of Canada, and her work is represented in many major collections, including those of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery in Ottawa and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. She is also the author of a massive mural that some consider to be her masterwork, "The Indian in Transition", housed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
"She doesn't travel much anymore; Jani [Lauzon, who plays Odjig] and Bonnie [Devine, the set and costume designer] went to visit her in Penticton the weekend before rehearsal started, so there's this connection between the real-life artist and the fiction we're creating," Nolan says.
Designer Bonnie Devine is herself a visual artist, Nolan points out. "She's been painting for months, essentially recreating the Daphne pieces as set pieces," she says. But Odjig's work is not merely being represented visually. "It's not even the life of the painter; it's kind of staging the process of the painter," Nolan explains, "so the actors are all cast as pigment."
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