Moshkamo- Finding Wolastoq Voice: East-coast voices tell their stories that convey their struggle to survive.

 

 

Mòshkamo: “ Finding  Wolastoq Voice”  reveals  the founding cosmogony of the East Coast peoples.

This  production from Theatre New Brunswick is based on a text by Natalie Sappier  (Sammaqani Cocahq -the Water Spirit),  a multi-disciplinary artist whose work  unfolds on a frontal stage – a space  in the round would have been much preferable –  within the double layers of a Malaseet circle where the young woman enters  the spiritual  world of the Tobique First Nations  to tell us her personal journey to recover her identity.

The tale  advances through the  double levels of the circular form lying in the centre of the performance space, referring  specifically   to the oral culture represented by the particular origins of the dancer and the author.  Those ancestors are the resounding voices unleashed into the sky  as they narrate the young woman’s tale and guide her through her journey.  Directed in a most poetic and delicate manner  by Thomas Morgan Jones, conceived visually by Andy Moro, a highly versatile  set and lighting designer, the circular volumes surrounded by  long whale-bone posts that suggest the  enclosed space of living quarters, or the sweat house, are all  bathed in a rich blue  fluid  light that engulfs this world of Mammy Wata  where  dancer, choreographer and singer,  Aria Evans intertwines her  East-Coast Mi’kmaq, African, British heritage to capture her troubled life, her own family history, and the  nature of her communication with  the inspiring  cosmogony  that reaches up to the  healing Water Spirit of the river Wolastoq.

At the centre of this event,  the body of  the young multidisciplinary performer draws  her movement, and interpretation of the text, from  her multiple East Coast  origins and many creative talents which help her associate closely with those traditional founding tales of her mixed cultural origins.  One could go back to  African tales that linger in the Caribbean diaspora which speak of the creole  Mami Watah (Mammy Water),  from  South America, the Caribbean and everywhere where African traces persist in the “New World”. Needless to say, this is an important ethnological  reference that persists across the Americas and joins the traditional tales of all the  concerned  peoples.

Then several  dialogues take place  between the voices of the ancestors and her own contemporary younger voice speaking to us  in a present that also flows into her own past.  She tells us  how her world broke apart,  the sun went out, and for ten years she could no longer communicate.  The voice tells us how she was drawn to the healing water, how the fish creatures  fascinated her and drew her to their realm. She loved the water  but the sun left and she remained  alone  in the darkness for so long that she forgot her identity.  Then   younger voices tell us how the young Wolastoq  girl was abused by her father and other older men while forgetting the painful memories  of her mother whom she grew up to hate  because she did not know her mother.

Then the spirits of the forest taught her to find an intimate relationship with nature and she was reborn in the water, transformed  into  a silvery salmon, healed by the stillness of the river. Also her  experiences with a traditional  sweat lodge, listening to her Wolastoq sister and  asking questions to those chanting voices  as all of nature converged on her world,  brought her out of the darkness.

A bear, an image of strength, came to her in her dreams, as the dancer bends over and moves on all fours, expressing her encounter with this strong animal as she feared he would attack her. However, the bear  transformed her gaze,  put love in her eyes and gave her strength not to hurt but to heal. She finally reconciled with the world as she  broke out of her isolation, reunited with her  mother, forgave her father after the pain he caused them all and was accepted by her ancestors who had been watching  over her from  the sky .

The concentric circles seemed to capture the different spiritual  levels of invisible voices that spoke to her as they guided  her  journey and the shifting  colours that bathed the circles changed the moods of the dancer as she captured the  multiple levels of perception  that seeped into this  dense but beautiful text which had to be spoken, not read.  Here was the perfect example of the  orality accompanied by sounds ande instruments  that define this form of  performance that incarnates spiritual communication with the invisible world that is always so clearly present.

I found the dancer’s body was not always easy to read and the intertwining of the corporeal performance with such a rich spoken  text  that forced us to listen intently,  at  times gave  the impression that the moving  body produced an overflowing of information  sometimes difficult to capture.  However, the fluid flowing, and beautiful blue of the warm river drew us  deeply  into that watery world and we followed her journey without the slightest hesitation.

It is becoming  clear that after seeing several  Mòshkamo events, one can start to piece together references, visual experiences , cosmogonies associated with the first people’s world  that help us recognize a richly textured pre-colonial  history , of which most of the non-native people in the audience are unaware. This festival has the great merit  of drawing attention to the  peoples who  share our geopolitical space, the peoples whose  histories and related cultural contexts (including their  languages)   have been obliterated  by  warped colonial thinking of the past which has  never taken these  cultures seriously.   Our  shameful ignorance must be corrected.

 

Finding Wolastoq Voice

Text    Natalie Sappier  (Samagani Cocahq)

Directed and staged by Thomas Moran Jones,

Set and lighting design by Andy Moro

Featuring Aria Evans