MATERIAL CONVERSATION

WOODLAND CULTURAL PLAY WALK

June 2017

On a cozy June evening, 5 Indigenous artists came together to the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford Ontario to read their plays for various rotating audiences. These plays varied in theme and content, but all shared an Indigenous ground.

Supported by the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, and hosted by the Woodland Cultural Centre, the Woodland Play Walk was a refreshing and well thought out experience.

The event started with each guest choosing a guide. Each guide would take participants to 3 of the five readings that were occurring at the event. Audiences were also allowed to come and go as they pleased, as long as they were respectful of the performances happening around the grounds. Unfortunately I was only able to see two of the readings on my designated route, due to unforeseen circumstances, but all the same, the two playwrights that I saw boasted an excellent caliber. The playwrights reading that evening were Joshua Bainbridge, Keith Barker, Alanis King, Frances Koncan, and Clayton Windatt.

Of those, I had the pleasure of seeing the first two, Bainbridge and Barker.

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Joshua Bainbridge I Live With Him Every Day: The Tragedy of David and Dave

From Proscenium Club Theatre Company, Bainbridge delivered an absurd, dark, and erudite depiction of depression and functioning anxiety.

In his play, two characters, David and Dave, are two halves of the same person, only they are meant to be played by two separate actors. Each character takes turns talking to the audience, and then reinserting themselves into the play world. One character, David, is the one character trying to keep things under control; he is the face of the operations of day to day life. Dave, on the other hand, is the honest, foul-mouthed and rather hilarious counter-part. Dave represents the thoughts we repress, but every once and a while, let slip when the veneer wears thin.

Bainbridge’s play took the audience through the day-to-day life of Dave and David, with appearances by David’s sister, Sarah, and their roommate Ginny. Both Sarah and Ginny express concern when they discuss David/Dave’s worrying habit of staying inside for days at a time. They then devise a blind-date (Alex) in order to shake Dave/David from his hermitic ways.

Bainbridge wields humour well, giving the piece breath. As David/Dave speak with Alex, they share a bond through stories of bad retail experiences. With equal candour, they theorize about how a customer could have gotten away with defecating in the aisle of David/Dave’s warehouse store. They bat theories between them, thinking that maybe it was a child, or perhaps the customer brought it in with a plastic bag. The scatological humour is delivered in an undeniably human way, and the audience couldn’t help but laugh at the sincerity of the investigation.

And yet, Bainbridge’s play cannot escape the darker subject matter. When Alex asks about a piece of missing ceiling, David and Sarah say that the apartment is merely old and probably going to cave in on them anytime. However Dave is not satisfied, and insists on telling the audience that the hole is because the duo (Dave/David) tried to hang themselves, and the ceiling gave way. There is a moment of gallows humour when David says, “like I said, I just couldn’t do anything right,” however these moments continue to remind the audience that David/Dave is not well. It is moments like this that emphasize why Bainbridge’s play is important. He is reminding us that what people present to the world is not the whole picture, and mental illness is a much deeper inner dialogue.

The play also has some potently beautiful moments. Returning to Alex, as her and David/Dave are bonding, she describes her own workplace, and how when it is slow she likes to go and sit in the blanket display. Alex describes it as a “Weeping Willow of Blankets” and captures the humble beauty of small moments.

I Live With Him Everyday, is a fascinating play with sincerity, wit, and a conversation to be had around mental health.

Keith Barker This is How We Got Here

Following four characters in a small Canadian town, Barker’s play captures small-town living with humour and grit.

Barker showcased his play with a carefully curated selection of episodes from the play. Each meant to showcase just enough of the character arches and problems without giving away too much.

In a particular moment, Barker showcases a discussion between Jim and Paul. Paul has recently lost his son, and Jim arrives to check in on him. A hilarious awkward energy starts the scene and lets the audience breathe, as Jim tries to subtly ask for a beer, however Paul seemingly unaware, cuts him off at every pass, offering him juice, water, and pop, telling him to make himself at home, and Jim concedes.

The humour quickly dissipates as the pair’s conversation takes a darker turn. Barker seems to confront notions of homophobia, as the two toss around the term ‘fruit’. Jim, inadvertently accusing Paul of being one, and Paul simultaneously denying the label and questioning why it is so bad to be one.

And then the important line drops; “Because the bible says it’s a sin”.

This provokes Paul to question whether it is a sin for Paul’s son to commit suicide, and was it right for the local parishioner to deny Paul’s son a space in the cemetery where the rest of his family is buried.

The question is not resolved, in the reading that we received, and it asks an important question - Is Barker trying to subvert homophobia as well as thoughts around suicide with this dialogue? Or is this just an attempt at awareness? Is this meant to have audiences question their own beliefs about the topics? Are suicide and homosexuality seen as comparable in this play?

It is tough to say without hearing the entirety of the play and whether or not this topic is revisited and/or resolved. However what is hard to deny is the crackling dialogue that carries these topics. Barker writes with a natural, conversational tone, not only nailing dialogue, but also placing audiences exactly where he wants them, simply through the tone of the characters.

After the readings, participants and authors were invited to a small fire near the longhouse on the Cultural Centre’s grounds. Audience and authors became a talkative mix, candidly discussing the work shared, as well as getting to know each other.

The entire event was an opportunity for Indigenous authors to have their work heard, and in the first weekend of National Aboriginal History Month, it was an excellent way to begin.

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WHAT IS MATERIALIST FEMINISM?

Intersectionality & Socialist Feminism

Materialist feminism fights for equality while focusing on intersectionality. Materialist feminism fights for the rights of women at the same time as the rights for all races, genders, sexualities, classes, ethnicities, abilities, and socioeconomic statuses. Materialist feminism is inclusive and inviting.

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Materialist feminism emerged in the late 1970s. Materialist Feminism looks at “the ways in which differently positioned women are advantaged and disadvantaged by classed, gendered, sexual, and racial inequalities as other important and intersectional social divisions” (Taylor).

What is now commonly labeled as materialist feminism was once labelled as Socialist or Marxist feminism. “Socialist and Marxist feminists sought to insert and apply the ‘women question’ to traditional Marxist theory, rethinking class relations and consciousness with regard to gender”. Historically, accusations against feminism “were issued about the prioritization of white middle-class women’s voices”, and this can still apply to some feminisms of today. The category of woman, which was “seemingly necessary to articulate a feminist voice and politics, was challenged and deconstructed in the attentions to the ways women differently occupied and challenged it”, and the ‘universal class’ of ‘woman’ was rethought. Materialist feminisms’ focus on social change, while “including and rethinking ‘difference’” (Taylor). 

In the 1990s, queer theory emerged, with which many feminists joined in the interrogation of binary-gender and sexual divisions, and to this day, materialist feminism and queer theory help inform and challenge one another (Taylor). 

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To further understand the history of feminism, we will focus on the

“Second-wave feminism [which] brought three main branches of thought: liberal feminism, which sought economic, political, and social reforms within the existing system; radical feminism, which focused on sexuality and men’s ability to control this as a main basis of women’s oppression; and socialist feminism, which theorized the interaction between capitalism and patriarchy” (Taylor). 

Materialist Feminism (socialist feminism) focuses on the “the intersection between class and gender in terms of ‘dual systems’ of oppression and exploitation as created and sustained by capitalism and patriarchy”. The ‘patriarchy’ is “understood as a system of exploitation that produced gender inequality interacting with the mode of production (capitalism) to create women’s oppression”. “The global nature of patriarchy and capitalism sustains a ‘political economy of sex’; sexual identity formations, and commodifications are explained in relation to the global structures of late capitalism” (Taylor).

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Works Cited

Taylor, Yvette. Materialist Feminism. Ed. O’Brien, Jodi. Encyclopedia of Gender and Society. 2009. Print.

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