Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
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by Jani Lauzon, directed by Marjorie Chan
Paper Canoe Projects & Cahoots Theatre with Native Earth Performing Arts, Daniels Spectrum, Toronto
September 13-30, 2018
Tsianina: “We can’t change the past but we can change the future”
Jani Lauzon’s I Call myself Princess (with an intentionally lowercase “m”) is a play consisting of a fictional story set in 2018 filled with excerpts from a real opera from 1918. The main advantage of the work is that it is highly educational. We learn about the Creek/Cherokee mezzo-soprano Tsianina Redfeather (1882-1985), about the “Indianist” movement in American classical music and about an Indian-themed opera that played at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and was so popular it was brought back for a second run before going on tour.
The main disadvantage of Lauzon’s play is that it is more interesting educationally than dramatically. We never become emotionally engaged with any of the five main characters. Their discussions are more important in how they enlighten us on the issue of cultural appropriation than in moving the two rudimentary parallel stories forward.
Lauzon’s fictional story finds the gay Métis student William Morin (Aaron M. Wells) moving from Winnipeg to Toronto because he has received a music scholarship at Royal Conservatory in Native American music studies. He has left his boyfriend Alex (Howard Davis) behind, who is busy with university, menial jobs and caring for his relatives.
William’s studies lead him to discover the score of the 1918 opera Shanewis, or The Robin Woman by American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946) to a libretto by Nelle Eberhart (1871-1944). The opera was unusual for many reasons. It was the first produced opera based on Native American musical themes. It was the first opera based on the life of a real Native woman, namely Redfeather, with direct input from its subject. It was the first opera performed at the Met with a libretto by a female librettist. And it was the first American opera to be produced at the Met in more than one season.
After a not well motivated break-up with Alex, William goes on a drinking binge at a gay disco and collapses in his apartment at which point Redfeather herself appears to him. Either this is William’s dream or Redfeather has come to him as a sort of spirit guide from the Unseen world. From Act 2 onwards, William observes directly how the opera was created and how Cadman’s initially patronizing view of Redfeather becomes one of profound admiration. Simultaneously, Cadman’s plans for the opera change from a romanticized fictional Indian plot to one that reflects the real life of Redfeather herself. Throughout Act 2, William questions what he observes and Redfeather supplies the answers so that William comes to understand the good intentions of Cadman and Eberhart in the context of their time.
The main problem with the play is that the characters do not feel like independent creations but rather the playwright’s puppets manipulated to act out a didactic storyline. While the issues Lauzon examines may be complex, the characters are not.
The performance of Marion Newman, a mezzo-soprano of Kwagiulth and Stó:lo First Nations heritage, is the primary reason to see I Call myself Princess. Not only is she a fine actor, successfully showing Redfeather age from a shy teenager to a confident and assertive young woman, but she has a luminous, amber-toned voice. She performs seven of the nine excerpts from Shanewis and makes the best possible case for them as more than mere curiosities from 1918. She also performs various other songs written by Cadman “idealized” from Native American melodies such as “From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water” (1909) that became her signature song.
Newman is wonderfully otherworldly as William’s spirit guide. The main constraint Newman must work with is that as such a guide she is always right. No matter what answer William asks of her, whatever she replies is the answer that he has to accept.
Aaron M. Wells of Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Tsimpsian Nations of BC is also a fine actor and singer. He well illustrates William’s growing frustration on discovering how much Indigenous music was “idealized” for White consumption. His biggest acting challenge is to show William in a completely non-characteristic state of being drunk and disorderly. Musically, he has a firm tenor voice and frequently doubles Newman in her songs by Cadman. He also meets the challenge of singing one of Schubert’s Lieder on his own.
Though William refers to Charles Wakefield Cadman as a gay composer, something that was certainly unknown and well hidden during Cadman’s lifetime, Richard Greenblatt creates a fine impression of a man who is over-careful not to let any gesture give him away. He presents Cadman as both enthusiastic and pleasantly pedantic and a man willing to let go of his prejudices when he actually gets to know an Indigenous person like Redfeather well. Greenblatt’s most remarkable feat is his ability to play the piano, a gift he has luckily retained since 2 Pianos 4 Hands (1995). Not only does he favour us with Preludes by J.S. Bach and Chopin, but serves as a lively accompanist for 15 of the musical numbers.
Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster’s main role is that of Nelle Eberhart, who acts as the more rational and pragmatic of the Cadman/Eberhart team. Lancaster also effectively plays a male composer friend of Cadman’s and a wounded soldier in World War I, who is sung to by an empathetic Redfeather in Europe as head of an all-Native group of performers who entertained the American troops.
The least-developed character is Howard Davis’s Alex Park, who functions primarily as William’s confidant. Alex is said to be a Black Canadian whose skin happens to be so light that he can pass for White. This is mentioned in passing but could easily be the subject of an entire play in itself.
In dealing with the question of cultural appropriation, Lauzon is even-handed and in showing William’s change from outrage to grudging appreciation demonstrates that we have to accept the good intentions of people like Cadman in their historical context. Lauzon does not mention that the Romantic movement in classical music led composers all over Europe and elsewhere to try to preserve their nations’ folksongs for fear that the rural way of life was dying out due to increased industrialization. Ethnologists are still at work collecting stories and songs and making dictionaries of languages before they vanish. While the notion of the “dying Indian race” of Cadman’s time has luckily turned out to be a myth, Cadman, Eberhart and Redfeather were not foolish to fear it. It is certainly no myth now that scientists estimate nearly half of the world’s 7000 languages, and with them their living cultural heritage, are expected to become extinct by the end of the 21st century.
Even if I Call myself Princess is far more effective as educational tool than as drama, we all must be grateful to Jani Lauzon for bringing the story of the remarkable Tsianina Redfeather to our attention. The play teaches much that needs to be known and remembered. Besides this, the play is likely the only means that people will have to experience the sensation that Cadman’s Shanewis made back in 1918. It is undeniably a work of is time, unlikely ever to be revived in its entirely. But Lauzon makes a strong case for not allowing its example to slip into obscurity again. Casual playgoers eager to be swept up in drama and emotion will not find that in Lauzon’s play. Those, however, eager to examine an ideal test case for debate about cultural appropriation will find that in I Call myself Princess and in beautifully performed excerpts from Shanewis.
©Christopher Hoile
*On September 19, I learned from Carrie Sager that the book actually does exist though it is very hard to find. It is called Where the Trails Have Led Me, self-published in 1968 and again in 1970. The University of Toronto Library does not even have a copy. Redfeather is so important that one would hope that the book might be reprinted.
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Marion Newman as Tsianina Redfeather, ©2018 Dahlia Katz; Tsianina Redfeather, ©1933 Los Angeles Public Library; Richard Greenblatt, Howard Davis, Marion Newman, Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster and Aaron M. Wells. ©2018 Dahlia Katz.
For tickets, visit www.nativeearth.ca/boxoffice
2018-09-14
I Call myself Princess