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‘Shine on us, Grandmother Moon’: Coding in Canadian First Nations Drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Reid Gilbert
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Extract

Current productions written, directed, and/or performed by First Nations Canadians are often characterized by a complex layering of myth and iconography operating simultaneously in more than one cultural system. The effect is richly visual and auditory theatre, but, more important, such performances highlight the essentially indexical and iconographic nature of theatre itself by writing text at the intersection of discourses with quite different political and historical markers and, in the process, bringing those discourses together to form a new typology of signs. What is problematic is the effect of such signs.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1996 , pp. 24 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1996

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References

Notes

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34. Ibid.

35. Age of Iron, Stage direction 2.

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38. Ibid., p. 3.

39. Ibid., p. 5.

40. Stage direction 7.

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43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., p. 9.

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49. The Firehall Theatre in Vancouver, Canada is in an impoverished section of town, where Native Canadians and the homeless are often seen living on the streets.

50. Lapsley, and Westlake, , Film Theory, p. 90, quoting Stephen Heath.Google Scholar

51. Godard, , ‘The Politics of Representation…’, p. 222.Google Scholar