Time: Thursday, March 23, 2023 at 1PM PST
Canadian cultural policy – how did we get here? how do we move forward?
In this virtual conversation, Sarah Garton Stanley and Yvette Nolan talk about the tall shadow of the Massey Report, the shifting landscape, and how Canadian cultural policy is responding to the shift.
Hosted by Taiwo Afolabi and Deniz Ünsal
Guest Speakers
Sarah Garton Stanley
Director, dramaturg, producer and Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, Sarah Garton Stanley (SGS) is from Montreal, now lives on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Mi’kmaq People in Nova Scotia where she co-stewards Birchdale Lake. She is the Artistic Producer for The National Creation Fund at the NAC, is a mentor for the TMU and Theatre Why Not 2023 Riser series and continues as co-steward of Birchdale, an early 20th century hunting and fishing lodge, beloved in Southwest Nova Scotia. During SGS’s tenure as the Associate AD of English Theatre at the NAC, she led The Cycle(s). She is the founding Artistic Director of SpiderWebShow, and co-founder of FOLDA. Recent directing credits include Everybody just C@lm the F#ck Down (Robert Chafe) and Calpurnia (Audrey Dwyer) and dramaturgy for I Forgive you (Scott Jones and Robert Chafe) and the upcoming adaptation by Brad Fraser and directed by Jill Keiley of Richard II at Stratford. SGS has been working on their 5-part embodied audio essay series Conversations at the End of Theatre. Part 1, Massey and Me was presented at Luminato in June 2022 Part 3, Stumped at Rhubarb! in February 2022 and Part 4 Recycled at the FOOT Festival in Toronto in February of 2023.
Yvette Nolan
Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg. Her works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit, and the short play-for-film Katharsis. She co-created, with Joel Bernbaum and Lancelot Knight, the verbatim play Reasonable Doubt, about relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan. She is the company dramaturg for Sum Theatre. From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts, Canada’s oldest professional Indigenous theatre company. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015, and Performing Indigeneity, co-edited with Ric Knowles, in 2016. She sits on the Saskatoon Police Service Indigenous Women & Two-Spirit+ Advisory Circle, and on the board of Common Weal Community Arts. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.