Being There: Experiencing Residential School through Plays by Indigenous Writers
Free Webinar
Tuesday, April 1st, 2025 | 10:00am PDT
(1 hr. presentation & 30 min. Q&A)
The discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of Residential schools has brought awareness to the experience of multiple generations of Indigenous children. Indigenous playwrights have written to illuminate the complex experiences of children in these institutions so that we can begin to understand the impacts in First Nations communities.
Noted Theatre Arts teacher Annie Smith will facilitate a course in which students read aloud from these plays. The webinar features a recording of the process. Annie will explain the dynamics of learning together as well as answer questions. Students share their experiences of embodiment, compassion, and self-knowledge.
If you cannot make the live webinar, register to receive the recording!
This webinar is a preview of the course, Being There: Experiencing Residential School through Plays by Indigenous Writers that will be offered in Spring of 2025 with Annie Smith.
Course Description
Over the last two years, in particular, and since the TRC revelations in 2015, the experience of too many generations of Indigenous children has become, finally, a part of Canadian consciousness. Families devastated and children isolated and abused, these are stories that are hard to face, but face we must. Indigenous playwrights have written to illuminate the complex experiences of children in these institutions so that we can begin to understand the residential school system and its ongoing impacts in First Nations communities. That is the goal of this course – through reading six plays by Indigenous writers from across Canada, we will discover the enclosed worlds Indigenous children entered when they were taken away from their communities and how some survived and some succumbed.