by Deanna Dement Myers
Kamloopa – Written by Kim Senklip Harvey. Directed by ESTEFANÍA FADUL, Lighting Design by EMMA DEANE, Sound Design by CAROLINE ENG, Dramaturgy by TATIANA GODFREY, Costume Design by LUX HAAC, Scenic Design by CALYPSO MICHELET, Props by JULIANA VON HAUBRICH, Production Stage Manager AMANDA NITA LUKE, Assistant Stage Manager KATHLEEN SOLTAN. Presented in collaboration with artists from various Indigenous Nations. Performance live on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican Tribe at The Elayne P. Bernstein Theater in Lenox, MA by WAM Theater October 7-24, 202. Streaming digitally November 1-7, 2021.
Remember our story; there is more out there than we have been told.
Kamloopa, by Kim Senklip Harvey, is WAM’s first live production since the Before Times and my first time back in a theater as well. The evening opens in a way true to the mission of WAM (Where Arts and Activism Meet) with a moving land acknowledgement by Shawn Stevens, a member of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe. The Elayne P. Bernstein Theater is an intimate black-box space on the campus of Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA and is the perfect setting to explore what it means to be an indigenous person in this moment. Indeed, the play opens with a voice not speaking English, and not translated in any way, alerting the audience that if they don’t understand the language, then they are, if only for the length of the performance, the Other.
Kamloopa asks us to come along for the ride with two sisters Kilawna (Sarah B. Denison) and Mikaya (Ria Nez) as they wrestle with the realities of being indigenous women who work and go to school in a city in Western Canada. The daily navigation through microaggressions and feeling the scorch of the white gaze weighs them down, even as they feel uneasy about not being Indian “enough”. It’s a detailed examination of identity and perception, as they discuss the difficulty of having to represent your race as an individual, while also feeling caught out for the reparations the Canadian government has allocated to its indigenous citizens.
Mikaya, the younger sister, chooses not to deal with these expectations and instead spends her days on the couch streaming the Disney film Pocahontas and avoiding her schoolwork. Kilawna tries her best to be a “model minority” in her workplace. This all changes after a wild night of partying and bar-hopping when they wake up the next morning to find a strange woman in their apartment, “Indian Friend #1” (Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed).
Injecting a breath of fresh air, IF#1 guides the sisters through a “vision quest” to explore their Indian ancestry. Mikaya embraces these lessons in How to Be a Real Indian, though the research she does is mostly internet searches and gathering pamphlets at the Indian Friendship Center and bingo hall.
Kilawna maintains her skeptical and conformist older sister air until the second act, when the other two women convince her to go on a road trip to the biggest powwow west of the Rockies, Kamloops, a real event held on the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation lands. Interspersed between typical road trip activities—singing a Canadian version of “This Land is My Land” and Tom Petty, are deep conversations about generational trauma and decolonization.
Each woman in the play represents a different native mythic character, the safe protective Bear, the unpredictable, and fun-loving Coyote, and the mystical and transformative Raven. While set in the Now, the playwright incorporates traditional themes into the dialog and personalities of the sisters and their new friend. Each character portrays a complexity showing their vulnerabilities and power, as they gain agency as contemporary indigenous women.
In the first scenes of the play, the women speak in declarative, almost bullet-pointed statements, disguised as dialog. This goes against the context of what they are attempting to convey: that they really, really hate being the spokesperson for the indigenous experience. The sisters are revealing their innermost feelings about alienation, yet their words demonstrate that the playwright realizes that the audiences who see this play will mostly be white. The second act gets better as the characters become more in tune with each other, and there is real growth and transformation in the characters by the end of play.
After 20 months of BingeFlixing, I forgot that there is a certain cadence live actors speak in, a rhythm designed to carry their voices and leave space to react to the audience. I forgot too, the simple beauty of imagination, where a blanket can transform into a tent, or an overturned table can become a campfire.
The impact of colonization, the horrors of the Canadian residential school programs, and the true meaning of sisterhood meld together and invite us to bear witness to the struggle and joy of these very real women. Join them as they connect with their homeland and themselves, and reclaim their own origin story. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.wamtheatre.com/
