The Edward Curtis Project: Uniformly strong performances, powerful lighting and visual designs, and a richly imaginative script.
For the Ottawa Citizen
Photo Andrew Alexandre
“Arrogant white man!” you think to yourself when Edward Curtis makes his first appearance near the beginning of this richly imagined, multimedia play by Marie Clements.
Why wouldn’t you? There’s the early 20th century American photographer, played with a firm blend of empathy and objectivity by Todd Duckworth, delivering, in stentorian tones, a lecture in Carnegie Hall in which he deconstructs “the Indian” as if discussing an exotic specimen of flora or fauna.
Curtis bases his lecture on his three decades taking thousands of photos of native North Americans, those nostalgic, sepia-toned images we’ve all seen that depict natives as the real-life Curtis believed them to be: a vanishing race.
Nothing is ever black and white, of course, and Curtis is no more just an arrogant white guy than First Nations are a vanishing people.
Clements, who also directed this mostly incisive production, explores complexities of character, race, and cultural appropriation and survival by bringing together in a shadowy place where such things can happen Curtis and a young, 21st century Metis photojournalist named Angeline……