Theatre North West's next production, Where the Blood Mixes, is a moving play about a family trying to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the residential school experience.
Where the Blood Mixes, written by award-winning playwright Kevin Loring, will be presented at Theatre North West from Feb. 13 to March 5.
As a child of residential school survivors, Christine is removed from her home at a young age. When she finds her way back, she discovers a family and community in need of healing.
Lisa C. Ravensbergen of Vancouver plays June, who is in a long term relationship with Mooch, played by Gordon Patrick White.
"I think this play is telling a story that is many people's story," said Ravensbergen. "I imagine up here there were residential schools and to me this play gives a voice to voices that have been silenced for generations in some cases and illuminating what some might see as the underbelly of what our history is as Canadians."
And for some it's not the underbelly but their everyday existence, she added.
The subject can cause tension, not only within the audience but the cast presenting the play.
"I feel the tension within my own body and spirit, my own self, understanding that the play has dropped inside those tensions and those characters are living their everyday life," said Ravensbergen. "The characters don't really address those issues, they don't face them. In fact, they do the opposite, they deny, they literally drown those memories - that reality and it manifests in various ways of violence and self negation. And that's very real - that's my family, that's a lot of families that I know in the First Nations community."
The actions the characters take in the play is the opportunity for everyone to face what they are in denial about, said Ravensbergen, whether it's about residential schools or their own traumas.
The character of June is complex, a woman who has begun her journey of recovery.
"It's important for me to engage with June as a real person," said Ravensbergen. "As someone who is not a victim, as someone who is not a cliche. And it's challenging because she has a simmering rage that's very explosive, especially at the beginning of the play. So I'm still struggling with how to make her real in those moments that can be very easily read as a cliche of the angry Native woman, an angry Indian."
A Governor General's Award winner for drama, Where the Blood Mixes, has also earned playwright Loring honours including the Jessie Richardson Award and the Sydney Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script. Where the Blood Mixes was first produced at Toronto's Luminato Festival, and was featured in the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.
Theatre North West has a strong team for the play, calling on the talents of actors Craig Lauzon of Royal Canadian Air Farce, Gordon Patrick White from the National Arts Centre's production of King Lear, and Ravensbergen of The Ecstacy of Rita Joe for Western Canada Theatre and the National Arts Centre. Herbie Barnes is the director, who has also directed such plays as The Rememberer and Tales of an Urban Indian.
Tickets are available at Books & Company or by phone at 250-614-0039.
