Arts and Humanities Colloquium Series: "A Tale of Two Playwrights: Writing Across Culture and Gender."

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Friday, March 23rd, 2018
10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

As a teenager in a Fraser Valley mill town, playwright Nelson Gray had a traumatic experience that continued to haunt him as an adult. In the mid-1990s he began to develop a play that reflected on this incident and now, some twenty years later, the VIU professor from the English Department is about to have this work published. What makes the publication even more interesting and exciting is that the volume also contains another play that reflects on the same incident but from a different perspective.

Gray’s play is entitled "Talker’s Town" and the companion play by well-known Métis writer Marie Clements is called "The Girl Who Swam Forever." Gray's play explores how the lives of two non-Indigenous boys were changed forever after their encounters with a girl from the Katzie reserve who has run away from residential school. Clements' play is a response, portraying the same sequence of events, but from the perspective of the Indigenous girl. The result is an innovative publication designed to highlight a unique cross-cultural collaboration.

The presentation will include readings from both plays. Gray will read from Talker’s Town, and there will be a reading of excerpts from The Girl Who Swam Forever too. In addition to reading from the plays, Gray’s talk will consider a number of questions. How did this cross-cultural collaboration come about? What were the results of this creative endeavour? And why, some twenty years later, has the publisher, Talonbooks, decided to publish these plays in this way?

Nelson Gray earned a B.A. from Simon Fraser University, an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Theatre History from the University of Victoria. His writing for the stage includes interdisciplinary performances, plays, and dance operas that have been produced in Canada, the U.S., and Germany. His scholarly articles have appeared in a number of journals, including the Canadian Theatre Review, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Studies in Canadian Literature, and Theatre Research in Canada, and in two anthologies: Readings in Performance and Ecology and Greening the Maple: Canadian Ecocriticism in Context.

This summer, with the assistance of a Canada Council Grant and a SHHRC award, he will be completing the script and libretto for "Here Oceans Roar", a contemporary opera based on his experiences as a salmon troller that incorporates oceanographic research from Oceans Networks Canada at the University of Victoria. Says Gray, “The talk and the readings on March 23rd are expected to open the door to some lively cross-cultural dialogue regarding current concerns such as cultural appropriation and Indigenous rights in this country.”

All members of the VIU community--students, faculty, and staff--as well as the general public, are welcome to attend this event. Coffee and cookies will be available in the lobby beforehand.

https://www2.viu.ca/artsandhumanities/Arts_Humanities_Colloquium.asp