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by Evalyn Parry & Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, directed by Erin Brubacher

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre & Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto

October 26-November 5, 2017

“From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters”

The Arctic is one of the key elements that defines Canada as a nation, yet few Canadians have directly experienced it. Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools, an absorbing multimedia performance piece by Evalyn Parry and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, exposes that lack of knowledge while offering a glimpse of the Arctic’s otherness that will awaken an urgent desire to learn more.

Parry and Williamson Bathory met while travelling on a research ship from Iqaluit to Greenland. Parry, a Toronto folk singer and theatre-maker, revelled in her new experience while Williamson Bathory, an Inuit storyteller with relatives in both Canada and Greenland, was traversing her ancestral lands. Against Elysha Poirier’s gorgeous video projections of the Arctic, the two women combine their very different perspectives to create a performance using their arsenal of artistic tools – folk songs, throat-singing, storytelling, miscellaneous historical and autobiographical material and uajeerneq (Greenlandic mask dancing) – to convey the complexity of the North and its past.

Parry laments how she learned so late of the Canadian government’s High Arctic Resettlement Experiment (1950s to 1990s) in which Inuit were forcibly removed to the upper reaches of the Arctic so Canada could assert its sovereignty there. Williamson Bathory describes the paradox of living in a wooden house in the North, where there are no trees, while using energy and heat from imported fuel.

Alternating between acoustic and electric guitars and aided by Cris Derksen on cello, Parry performs songs that memorably blend wit and melancholy. Meanwhile, Williamson Bathory’s uajeerneq performance transforms her from the mild-mannered person we first meet into an unbridled spirit of individual, social and sexual freedom. The moment is astonishing and almost frightening in its transgressive power. 

 

After watching Kiinalik, it will be hard to hear the lyrics from the Canadian version of Woodie Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land – the last song Parry sings in the show – without thinking of colonialism, industrialism, global warming and how we are unmaking the very land the song celebrates.

My review of Kiinalik: These Sharp Tools has appeared in NOW Magazine at:

https://nowtoronto.com/stage/theatre/kiinalik-these-sharp-tools-transgressive-power/

       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review appeared in NOW Magazine on October 31, 2017.

Photo: Evalyn Parry and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory.  ©2017 Jeremy Mimnagh.

For tickets, visit http://buddiesinbadtimes.com.