On Turtle Island, I learned to be as alive as possible

In her lyrical essay On Turtle Island, I learned to be as alive as possible, writer and scholar Yasmine Espert ruminates on what it means to bring abolitionist praxis into creative work, reflecting on her time being both a part of, and working alongside, the Stages of Transformation Creative Cohort.

“It was still summer nonetheless and there was still the greenery, which was so lush and overwhelming it was something of an argument for optimism…the beauty in things that quietly endured despite their unbeautiful contexts. If I admired my own abundances, my own little rebellions against subjugation, I reasoned, I could learn to be as alive as possible.¹”

What you just witnessed is an excerpt from A Minor Chorus, by Billy-Ray Belcourt, a Vancouver-based writer of the Driftpile Cree Nation. His words are a holding space for the values of abolition – a space in which we fall, creatively speaking, into the productive struggle toward liberation. One in which we dance, rage, and question in collective action. Our efforts are held together by trust — in each other, and in a future in which our body-minds know the taste of freedom, and the cost of not having it.

This is also the ethos of Stages of Transformation – a project that asks: what can the performing arts in so-called Canada learn from the abolitionist movement? The result is a research-informed project that maintains an intentionally slow, iterative, and community-driven spirit. At every turn of this multi-year collaboration, BIPOC artists created transformative work by sharing their dreams and works-in-progress, slowly: iteration, after iteration. The Stages of Transformation Curator and Producer, Nikki Shaffeeullah, along with the Associate Curator Mpoe Mogale, welcomed me to an ongoing conversation about theatre and performance art that is guided by the tenets of abolition and transformative justice. My entry to the project came after a digital gathering in 2021 called “Workshopping Intervention”. Facilitated by Shaffeeullah and co-curated by Sarah Garton Stanley, this virtual convening centered fourteen BIPOC theatre artists and their vision for a performing arts project that explicitly intersected with abolition.  A year later, their vision became Stages of Transformation. Between 2021 and 2022, the project commissioned writing, conversations, and art. It facilitated partnerships, residencies and initiated more convenings that could further test, and manifest, the feedback of their change-making peers. This convening and its afterlives are evidence of research-creation – “little rebellions” (to use the words of Billy Ray Belcourt) in the service of creative abundance, and liberation.

Building on the ideas percolated in “Workshopping Intervention,” Mogale and Shaffeeullah, the National Arts Centre – English Theatre, partnering theatre companies, and our company manager Senjuti Sarker would be instrumental in making this project reflect our goals. For the retreat, they envisioned an atmosphere that could foster organic connections, reflection, and rest. Cabins in the woods. Activities by the lake. Local, and homemade provisions. There would be workshops about the “craft of theatre/art-making, and what abolition can mean in artistic content, form, and process.”  They imagined sessions where artists could share samples of their finished, and unfinished work. Participants could facilitate portions of the retreat. And, there would be low stakes opportunities to ideate creative futures for our group. The fruits of this labor would be presented, in some fashion, at Rumble Theatre’s Tremors Festival in Vancouver the following year. They delivered.

Two-spirit, trans, non-binary, and queer BIPOC artists are at the core of this project. Many of the participating artists have personal experience with migration to, and through, so-called Canada. Our trajectories evidenced a persistence toward a future without borders. There were five resident artists among us: Raven John, Keira Ash, Sobia Shaheen Shaikh, Kris Vanessa Teo Xin-En (张欣恩), and Ravyn Wngz. Each artist was nominated by a theatre company: Rumble Theatre, Gwaandak Theatre, TODOS Productions, Chromatic Theatre, and lemonTree creations, respectively. Undercurrent Creations, led by Nikki Shaffeeullah, also played a role in curating partnerships between the resident artists and their nominating bodies.

Through careful conversation, social dreaming, and movement grounded in somatic abolition, we committed to our own little rebellions across Turtle Island. Cognizant of where we are, how we are, why we are. Consider this essay a reflection on our research-creation process; one that demonstrates thoughtful planning and experimentation, while navigating and fighting the pressures of racial capitalism. I witnessed Stages of Transformation grow from the ideas circulated in “Workshopping Intervention” and develop into a prototype of abolitionist design. The structure of this project showed me “how research could feed, or be, actual performance making.”⁴  Herein lies the evidence of us making beautiful things amid unbeautiful contexts.

This piece documents my observations of working with these artists and activists, some of the spaces in which we convened, as well as the communities that welcomed us during our months of creative communion. First, I’ll describe my approach to embedded writing – a method that allowed me to witness, and be part of, the artists’ creative process, while engaging in my own. I’ll describe it as a productive entanglement, and a free fall into abolition work. Second, I’ll share how we set some creative goals, and what it was like to move toward them collectively. Lastly, I’ll describe our commitment to sharing work-in-progress at Rumble Theatre, in Vancouver during the spring of 2023.

Mogale and Shaffeeullah invited me under the premise of being an “embedded critic,” drawing inspiration from Karen Fricker’s journal article “Going Inside: The New-Old Practice of Embedded Criticism.” (2016) In Fricker’s peer-reviewed article from 2016, she asks us to see embedded writing as “a form of rehearsal studies.” From this behind-the-scenes, and embedded place, we can assess “what roles are played by discussion, improvisation, research, happenstance, and intellectual process.”⁵  Although there’s much to recover from observation, I wasn’t completely convinced by Fricker’s “fly on the wall” approach. I am not a neutral observer. The co-curators and I also agreed that objective documentation is a myth. A tool of colonialism, if you will. Despite our reservations about the embedded critic as “fly on the wall,” we remained curious about the professional theatre sector’s increasingly popular practice of embedding writers. Mpoe, Nikki and I also agreed that “critic” was too heavy, and much too layered of a term. As such, I could shape my own role in the group; I could take creative liberties with the process and make it my own. Having been “embedded” with Stages of Transformation, I do agree with this statement by Fricker; she opines:

“If nothing else, engaging in embedded practices has enabled revivifying conversations about the definition of criticism, its limitations, and its place in the creative ecosystem.”⁶

For me, embedding writing could serve as practice in witnessing. Being present. And, being vulnerable enough to share my own transformations in the creative process. I entered this creative cohort as a Black artist and art historian relatively new to the terrain of performing arts in Canada. Many of the colleagues in the cohort were also new to each other. I wanted to commit to a free fall, trusting that our shared commitment to abolition could summon courage and break boundaries. As people invested in the power of imagination and experimentation, we showed up to prototype. To create the worlds in which we want to live.

Stages of Transformation also needed to adapt to us. In our many months of working together, the co-curators and participants (myself included) talked about the intergenerational, and interdisciplinary nature of the group. The range of tribes and territories that we hail from. What language(s) we’d like to use. The range in our abilities; and what roles we play in our communities. We grounded ourselves in the tools of disability justice, healing justice and a Black feminist praxis.  And, throughout, we talked through our growing relationship with abolition and transformative justice (some of us had decades in the movement, while others were newer to exploring these words for collective liberation). We spoke about our needs, desires, and concerns. We collectively determined our guiding principles. The ethics that could serve as our compass. And how we’d like to move through conflict when it emerged.

Early in our time together we expressed the need to center disability justice. This meant that we focused on process (rather than product) as much as possible. The nature of our project was always in-progress. Our pace was as slow as our collective wanted it to be; we kept our schedules and workshop modalities flexible; and we asked each other questions, often. We tried not to make assumptions. There was chronic pain among us. Neurodivergence. Respiratory stuff. Family arrangements that still needed tending to while we were in session. And then there was Covid. We tried to treat every day like the precious thing that it was. We valued each other, presently. And that’s something I’m grateful for.

What’s your vibe today, and what do you need? What can we anticipate for later? Can we adjust the format and length of the next workshop? Do you want help walking down the hill? Do you want to borrow my heating pad and some Tiger Balm? Are you ok? How can we still make you feel like part of the retreat while you’re in quarantine?

This is a reminder that the pandemic is still among us. Draining. Fatiguing. Making our process ever malleable.

During one of check-ins at the Ontario retreat, the artists acknowledged how affirming it was to center disability justice. Some of us had been lucky and strategic enough to work in curated spaces where this mode of collective care is the bare minimum. Intimate zones of abolitionist labour, where it’s ok to acknowledge the semblance of an ableist marathon and find ways to create more ease and relief. Where healing justice and Black feminisms anchor our conversations, dreams, planning, production, and the reflective “post-mortem” stage of it all. Where it's ok to keep asking questions: what’s working, and what isn’t? How can we move through the joy, and the discomfort? What did we learn from this, and what do we want more of? What goals and next steps, if anything, can become of this?

Over several months of this project, Mpoe Mogale led us in somatic abolition practices. It was an incredibly vulnerable and life affirming thing to make space for, amidst our other work – from artist interviews and open studio time, to tech rehearsals and public performances. Mpoe offered optional sessions in which we could ground ourselves in our bodies and be less in our heads. They reminded us to pause, and to practice deep breathing. How to name racialized trauma, and use the Indigenous healing tools that we already have. Together, we witnessed Somatic Abolition in Theatre, a film that Mpoe created with Pam Tzeng and Alyssa Maturino. This video featured choreography rooted in somatic abolition, accompanied by an interview in which they discussed Resmaa Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. It was incredible to witness how various art forms were making their way through our workshops, dinner conversations, and other informal moments. Breathwork, literature, music, and movement grounded us.

At our first retreat in Ontario, we weren’t met with expectations to produce anything, to have an artifact, or to leave with a concrete plan. The goal was to start a process – to get familiar with each other. Share meals. Commune with the land, and the lake. Imagine what a shared vocabulary might mean for us, as a group of creative thinkers and makers. There would be lulls and in-betweens. Moments in which we committed to rest, hydration, fresh air, and solitude. And, always the concerted effort to make, and maintain, community agreements. One of the first workshops helped us to establish and share what practices would maximize and minimize our retreat. We documented our responses on post-its, and then on large pieces of paper. Here are some of the things that would maximize our collective experience:

1. Disconnect from traditional power/hierarchy
2. Respect and space for fidgeting, etc.
3. Speaking slowly
4. Breaks + encourage alone time
5. Embodying where we are, what we can see, and not see
6. Give others time
7. Abolition in how we treat each other - space to err, grow, self-correct
8. Patience
9. Gratitude expressed
10. Share boundaries
11. Respect pronouns
12. Freedom (i.e. to do things oneself)
13. Being seen fully
14. Centre disability justice
15. Not assuming experience
16. Addressing conflict as it occurs
17. Patience learning new names
18. Space for prayer
19. Time for body needs

Similarly, we verbally communicated and wrote down a few items that would minimize our group experience, some of which included:

1. Pushing boundaries (in a bad way; denying our needs)
2. Not listening/speaking over [each other]
3. Not communicating boundaries
4. Sense of competition
5. Colonial expectation around time
6. Pressure to perform particular kinds of energy (e.g. happiness)

There’s a particular kind of trust that was required to work within Stages of Transformation, and to commit to the project that is abolition. We committed to trying something new. Listening, and learning with each other. Laboring and creating, together.

In a role complementary to mine, the 2-Spirit Anishinaabe disabled artist Raven Davis worked with us as a documentarian. Raven used their skills as a photographer, multimedia artist, and long-time activist to create an archive of photos and videos. Our cohort’s gatherings would thus be remembered with word, image and sound. Raven and I talked about our approaches and shared what was becoming of our methods over time. As the group’s memory-keepers, we were asked to be part of the process. We shared stories, our activities and works-in-progress with each other. Poems, pictures, installations, laughter, somatic workshops, hikes, kayaking and other outdoor activities. I appreciate that our presence was braided into the process of Stages of Transformation. We weren’t asked to assume a lens of objectivity, or to assess “finished” work at the “end” of this project. We’re all needed in the creative process that is abolition. The following paragraphs gather some more notes on our cohort.

Ravyn Wngz –the Tanzanian, Bermudian, Mohawk, 2Spirit, Queer and Transcendent empowerment storyteller, activist and artist – used her time with Stages of Transformation to develop Signals – an entirely new performance about escaping to freedom. I had the privilege of witnessing various stages of this work-in-progress. At our retreat in Ontario, Ravyn sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” to summon the abolitionist dreams of the formerly enslaved. Ravyn reminded us that their ancestors used songs, stars and signals (like illuminated porch lamps) to find their way past the Mason-Dixon line, and toward more freedom in Canada. Through interviews and informal check-ins, I also learned that she was developing the cast and choreography for Signals with orishas (divine spirits) as an organizing principle. Each dancer received guidance from a specific orisha; they would take on the orisha’s characteristic movements to perform emancipatory movement.⁷

Signals shows us that liberation is grounded in spiritual awareness, ancestral memory, and embodied movement. Ravyn performed an excerpt of Signals at the Tremors Festival, 2023. Dramatic lighting of red and orange hues emphasized the risk of being on the run. The dancescape’s sharp movements and careful steps rendered the feeling of fugitivity with clarity. It also rendered the hope for something more than the present. A bold and persistent freedom. This solo rendition of Signals closed with a revised, acapella version of Janet Jackson’s “Together Again” :

Shine on me, shine on me, shineee….
Everywhere I go, every smile I see
I know you are there smilin' back at me
Dancin' in moonlight, I know you are free
'Cause I can see your star shinin' down on me

More beauty was generated through the audience’s feedback. At the close of Signals, Ravyn Wngz asked the audience something to this effect: what movements, images, or sounds were most memorable to you? What words are staying in your mind? Along with her collaborators at lemonTree creations (Indrit Kasapi and Cole Alvis), Ravyn asked us to write our impressions on a white board at the entrance of Progress Lab (Rumble Theatre’s shared performance space). This ask was one of the many participatory elements incorporated into our process as a creative cohort.

Artist Kris Vanessa Teo Xin-En (张欣恩) used her time with Stages of Transformation to develop a new multi-media performance called feel ur feels (CRINGE LIBERATION). Having practiced traditional theatre methods for years, Kris wanted to explore a mode of creative output that wasn’t confined to the norms of stage performance. For feel ur feels, Kris interviewed eight friends and interlocutors about their dreams, routines, delights, and cringe-worthy preferences. Their recorded responses, collectively known as the “Audio Pleasure Recipe,”⁸  were included in a live performance by Kris and Kodie Rollan. Kodie, who also serves as the Artistic Director of Chromatic Theatre, provided dramaturgical support for Kris’ multi-media performance-in-progress as well.⁹  Layered with projections of dreamy imagery, nostalgic tunes and a plethora of floor pillows, feel ur feels aimed to create an environment that felt like a cozy living room. A place where you could relax and talk through the complicated and messy landscape of what makes you, you. A space where you could be free to feel what you want, while holding some room for accountability from a dear friend and compatriot.

There were multiple check-in points leading up to this iteration of this experimental performance. My time with Kris was informative and helpful, as it let me in on this Chinese-Singaporean artist’s history, her motivations, and her process. It was enlightening to scroll through pages and pages of her notes, sketches, and dreams for this new piece. Slowly, I learned how this work reflected the world in which she wants to luxuriate. An abolitionist’s dream. Our conversations ranged from formal interviews about trusting your intuition, to conversations about diaspora and making home in Mohkinstsis (Calgary). There were casual “in-between” moments peppered with laughter, too. Embracing this workflow allowed us to move at a pace that encouraged ease, trust and what I experienced as safety.

Sobia Shaheen Shaikh, an abolition feminist playwright and scholar entrusted us with the development her first ever stage production: Braiding Peonies. This work-in-progress reveals how a family reckons with anti-Muslim violence, carceral feminism and white supremacy in Canada. With insight and perspective from a racialized trans teen, Sobia shows how a Muslim community models transformative justice and moves toward healing from various crises. Santiago Guzmán, the dramaturge and director, and Artistic Director of TODOS Productions, guided Sobia through the narrative-building process with workshops – some of which we participated in. We witnessed Sobia transform the seed of an idea into a working narrative through conversation, interpretive dance, and script readings with a full cast.

In the time between our gatherings, Sobia went on a solo writing retreat to refine her vision, experiment with language, and incorporate our feedback. There were moments when she and I talked about the magic and frustrations of creative writing, as well. Is it possible to illustrate the severity of anti-Muslim, anti-trans and anti-Black violence without reproducing harm? What language can the cast use, and trouble, to reveal the depths of carceral logic? And what imagery can be deployed to mimic the arc of transformative justice? It’s challenging to craft work that is committed to the principles of abolition while navigating the messiness of language and the punitive structures of everyday life. Braiding Peonies is evidence of the courage, creativity, and collaborative labour that’s necessary for transformative justice.   

Performing as Cece A. Blossom, the Tłı̨chǫ Dene Indigiqueer artist Keira Ash developed a flashy and fun burlesque performance called Transformation. This live performance showed us what it means to emerge free, and enjoy your own body. To embrace love and run toward pleasure. In my interview with Keira at Skwacháys Lodge, Vancouver, I also learned that this performance is about letting go of the weightiness of shame and religious confinement. Keira joined us from Victoria, BC – territory that’s stewarded by the lək̓ʷəŋən people. Originally from Somba K’e, Denendeh (Yellowknife, NT), they wanted us to witness the irresistibility of somatic abolition in an Indigenous body, in real time. To create this slutty-forward example of healing justice work, Keira had performance mentorship from the community builder and Indigenous burlesque artist Cherry Cheeks; support from the multidisciplinary Southern Tutchone, Tlingit, and Cree performer Miki Wolf; and assistance from Gwaandak Theatre, an Indigenous theatre company based in the Yukon.

With collaboration from Raven John for the set design, they also created something sultry to complement Cece’s burlesque ensemble. Paper mâché ravens swooped in from above, each of them glowing in a warm purple light. To the rhythm of a punk rock playlist, Cece toyed with their costume, pranced, danced, and addressed us (the audience) directly: “Burlesque is an art form that inherently contains elements of abolition and freedom. As always consent is mandatory.... Yahoos, yells, and yippees of delight are always welcome...”¹⁰  This performance is a self-proclaimed “act of transfor-Raven,” as it foregrounds Indigenous knowing and creation with an appreciation for embodied pleasure. I remember Keira sharing with us that “pride isn’t the opposite of shame; freedom is.” I’m grateful for the opportunity to witness Cece A. Blossom dance a story that Keira Ash devised. Their courage is contagious.

To close, I’ll reflect on a final piece that I participated in during the Tremors Festival (Vancouver, 2023). Like the aforementioned works, it cleverly centers abolition, accountability and retribution through live performance.

Enter Raven John, the 2-spirit Trickster and activist of Coast Salish and Stolo Nation descent. John presented a performance called On Native Land in participation with Rumble Theatre, as well as support from Jamie King (Dramaturge and Director), and Aidan Hammond (Emotional Support Person). Raven’s participatory performance included a printmaking workshop that was equal parts memoir, memorial, and manifesto. Woven into this oral history was an account of the artist’s relationship to work and disability. They invited audience members to co-create prints (ink stamped on paper) that pictured the harm of residential schools: “I really wanted to make something that you could take away with you. Um, this would go a lot faster if I had some help.”¹¹

We made those prints while Raven sat to the side and read their story aloud. Their words sounded like a personal letter, something deep-seated and precious that I was given access to. At first, I didn’t quite know what the prints were for; I was trying to piece together Raven’s instructions and the collection of first-person accounts that they were sharing. Black ink was everywhere. It felt satisfying to put my hands to this sticky substance and roll it onto the stamp and paper; to make something with others; to have some guidance and build some muscle memory. Alongside that satisfaction, though, was the co-constitutive disgust and terror of the oral history. On Native Land reveals the abuse, torture, and medical testing that occurred at residential schools.

In On Native Land, Raven narrated how the Church and Canadian-state starved Indigenous children in the name of “scientific study.” One survivor recounted that they were fed “larvae infested oatmeal” to see how long they could survive on poor nutrition. Importantly, Raven’s account of the residential schools was unveiled as a personal, and deeply specific one: St. Mary’s residential school – where members of the artist’s family attended. In true embodiment of the trickster, Raven also sprinkled the performance with dark humor:

“We’ve been here, uh, colonially documented here, for over 14,000 years. Pretty incredible. Especially when you think about how, like, we consider the pyramids old; and the ones that we’re familiar with are generally only four- or five-thousand years old. We think flip phones are old. And that was just… those were invented in 1996! Like, that was the last year the residential schools were open.”¹²

Sitting in that black box studio in Vancouver, I thought of these colonial experiments as something that further revealed our shared struggle. I recalled the United States’ sterilization campaigns in Puerto Rico and its occupation of Haiti; amputations and organ harvesting at Japanese Internment camps, and syphilis studies on Black people in Tuskegee. As an art historian with interests in the exhibition practices, I couldn’t help but think of the Black Venus, Sarah Baartman, whose remains were preserved and exhibited in France’s anthropological museum, the Musée de l’homme. In all these instances, people of color, of all ages, were used for inhumane experimentation. When they spoke of abolition, Raven asked us to share the responsibility of memorializing Indigenous culture and protecting Indigenous life. I left On Native Land with a few prints, and ink on my hands. Both were mementos of a shared grievance, the need for accountability and a clear call for retribution in the wake of colonialism.

It’s a miscalculation to assume that abolitionist work can be confined to a single performance or one-off project. Abolition is a commitment to praxis. A call for collective action, and a labour that we can share. It’s a network that nourishes accountability. And a space where dreams continue to dream, until we win. To assume that we can rush creative work is also a miscalculation. Stages of Transformation models what careful, collective action looks like in the performing arts. It’s also a prototype for curated projects that want to put abolitionist principles to work.

Our group committed to a process, rather than fuss and fixate on a product. Adaptivity, disability justice and ethical care (not carceral care) were the ingredients for feeling as good and free as possible, now and more often. We tried not to underestimate the time and labour it takes to think critically and create ethically. We also aimed to devise a theatre and performance praxis that encourages accountability. When we failed, we made adjustments. We afforded ourselves the space to earn trust. Stages of Transformation understood that it takes time to build a group’s rapport, and to re-work it as needed. We need more opportunities like this to experiment and sharpen our tools, ethically…and in the words of Sobia Shaheen Shaikh, we need “to convalesce”. These intentional retreats and workshops allow us to focus on process, while articulating life-affirming futures creatively.

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Footnotes

1. Belcourt, Billy-Ray. A Minor Chorus: A Novel. First edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2022.
2. As a result of this gathering, a 40-page report by Makram Ayache and Mariló Núñez was born. The document is housed on the Stages of Transformation website.
3. Correspondence from Curator and Producer Nikki Shaffeelluah and Associate Curator Mpoe Mogale. September 2, 2022.
4. Author’s conversation with Stages of Transformation Curator and Producer, Nikki Shaffeeullah.
5. Fricker, Karen. “Going Inside: The New-Old Practice of Embedded Criticism.” Canadian theatre review 168 (2016): 48.
6. Fricker, Karen. “Going Inside: The New-Old Practice of Embedded Criticism.” Canadian theatre review 168 (2016): 46.
7. The full cast of collaborators includes: Abi Cudjoe, Rodney Diverlus, Dedra McDermott, Nickeshia Garrick, Jaz Adina Simone, and Mandela Lopez.
8. Contributors to the Audio Pleasure Recipe include: Keshia Cheesman, Filsan Dualeh, Bianca Guimarães de Manuel, Liz Hannay, Bianca Miranda, Mpoe Mogale, Isabelle Sinclair, and Kiana Wu.
9. Pam Tzeng assisted with the Movement Consultation + Creation. Tori Morrison offered Projection Design Consultation. Thomas Geddes provided Sound Design Consultation.
10. Cece A. Blossom (Keira Ash) in Transformation, a performance at Tremors Festival, Rumble Theatre. May 26, 2023.
11. Raven John, On Native Land performance at Tremors Festival, Rumble Theatre. May 25, 2023.
12. Raven John, On Native Land performance at Tremors Festival, Rumble Theatre. May 25, 2023.