Merewyn Comeau in 1939 / Jani Lauzon – Director / Photos by Dahlia Katz / Joanna Yu – Set Designer / Sim Suzer – Associate Set Designer / Asa Benally – Costume Designer / Barbara Morrone-Sanchez – Associate Costume Designer / Louise Guinand – Lighting Designer / Sruthi Suresan – Associate Lighting Designer.

By Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan

Our focus for writing the work was two-fold. First, we were responding to the question that Murray Sinclair asked of all of us: “What can we do to engage in reconciliation?” And secondly, we were asking ourselves what a story about the incredible resilience of the students at a Residential School would look like. With Yvette Nolan’s permission, we watched an interview with her mother, Helen Thundercloud, as she talked about her experience with a teacher in Residential School who taught her Shakespeare – which helped bring about the layering of Shakespeare into the script.

We are aware that there are many incredible plays written about Residential Schools. A perfect place to start would be Indian Act: Residential School Plays edited by Donna Michelle St. Bernard through Canadian Play Outlet. You can find reference to it here: https://www.canadianplayoutlet.com/products/indian-actresidential-school-plays-by-donna-michelle-st-bernard. We made a choice to use a different lens. We wanted to focus on the strength and wit that the students used to try to endlessly cope and navigate their circumstances.

Kaitlyn and I began our work by researching and reading the TRC Calls to Action and focusing on #83, which calls on “the Canada Council for the Arts to establish, as a funding priority, a strategy for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to undertake collaborative projects and produce works that contribute to the reconciliation process”. Included in the plethora of reading that we did were Canada’s Residential Schools: The Métis Experience Volume 3 and Forgotten, The Métis Residential School Experience by the Legacy of Hope Foundation. Aside from reading books, we knew that we also needed to reach out to Survivors and Knowledge Keepers. Not to validate the experience but to ask for guidance in the process.

We began our conversations with Elder Elizabeth (Liz) Stevens, from Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, who is the Elder in Residence at the Stratford Festival. Liz has a family history with Residential Schools and is an advocate of language reclamation. Liz was present at our first workshop at Stratford, in 2019, and continues to be involved with the process as an advisor. We visited her at her home in her community and have spent many hours discussing the importance of language and were encouraged by Liz to include language in our play, which we were also committed to.

In the summer of 2019, we went up to Algoma University for a research trip at the archives through the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association (CSAA). We met with Shirley Horn, a member of the Missanabie Cree First Nation, (I had met Shirley previously at Soulpepper Theatre Company) who at the time was the Chancellor of the University. Through Shirley, we met with several Survivors, all part of the Alumni Association they had created. In her position as Chancellor, Shirley was now advising the University on how to honour to legacy of the Survivors of the Shingwauk Residential School that had become the main building of Algoma University. Shirley was intrigued by our project and joined our group of cultural advisors. She attended zoom workshops as well as read future drafts so that she could give us feedback.

At the Algoma archives, we did extensive research and continued to build the relationship with the CSAA in various ways. First, Stratford collected $5 from every ticket sold for 1939 to donate to CSAA for the important work they are doing. Next, in the spring of 2024, a bus of Elders and University students came to the production of 1939 in Sudbury. Then, this past June, we brought the cast up to Sault St. Marie to do a staged reading, with the help of YES! Theatre, for the Survivors and their families. Some of us attended the Sunrise Ceremony and the whole cast was present during the feast with the Survivors.

We also reached out to and engaged with Elders Edna Manitowabi, who is Odawa/Ojibway from Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island, and Pauline Shirt, who was a Plains Cree Elder from Saddle Lake, Alberta.  To start with, they read the script and gave us feedback. Edna encouraged us to keep pursuing the humour, citing that it was not only a form of resilience for the students but also medicine for the audience – both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Pauline came to Stratford with her daughter Luanne Harper to lead us in a circle and to give the entire cast, crew and design team teachings around the medicines and the importance of water.

This group of cultural advisors came together for an event held at Stratford in the summer of 2022, called Stories From Our Grandmothers, that invited audiences to come and hear about the work they have done and are doing in their communities to help with healing and rebuilding what colonization attempted to take from them. The Festival also hosted an event with Bev Sellars, whose book about her experience as a Residential School Survivor, They Called Me Number One, was a big influence in the writing of the play.

Our Reflection Space in Toronto, a very important aspect to the experience of the show, has been led in the various locations by a variety of incredible First Nations facilitators. Kelly Fran Davis, a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of the Grand River Territory was in Stratford ON, and was consultant to those who led the process in Sudbury and Toronto. In Sudbury, the facilitators were a group of Elders and Knowledge Keepers brought together by local Indigenous Knowledge and Language Keeper Will Morin. In Toronto, at Canadian Stage, a team of facilitators were led by Trina Moyan, a nehiyaw iskwew from Frog Lake First Nation. Lately, we have been inspired by Mattea Roach’s quote: “When the book ends, the conversation begins”. We have found this to be true in our reflection space. When the play ends, the conversation, for some, begins; for others, it grows.

One last important aspect of consultation was the use of what we call the “Spirit Images”. The vision behind these images, that appear like magic on the chalk boards, was to layer in the concept that the ancestors and children who never made it out of the school were sending messages of hope to the current students. Similar to the sound design, the metaphor for a directorial vision was that the walls held memories and could talk. I reached out to David (Sunny) Obasawine, a Cultural and Spiritual Advisor for the Debajehmujig Storytellers in Wikwemikong. Sunny received the teachings of the Peterborough petroglyphs by his mentor Eddie King. Sunny led the crew, cast, admin, and design teams of both the Sudbury and Canadian Stage / Belfry production through the teachings behind the creation of the petroglyphs and the general meanings of the images that were chosen for the play.

At all stages of the consultation the Elders and Knowledge Keepers were offered tobacco and were well compensated, either through Stratford or through Kaitlyn and I personally.