Location: Zoom Room 1
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/3874647177?pwd=Jw1g9axPFpvKa8qEe26DCLjGd0ACbW.1
Moderator: Olivia Michiko Gagnon
Abstract:
This curated panel brings together three artist-scholars; playwright and director Frances Koncan (UBC Creative Writing), poet and land defender Rena Priest (MA Student, UBC Theatre & Film), and dramaturge Lindsay Lachance (UBC Theatre & Film), to explore how inheritances shape, guide, and unsettle contemporary Canadian theatre practices. Each presenter’s creative and scholarly work engages with distinct yet intertwined inheritances: the political and familial responsibilities of defending the land, the intergenerational transmission of storytelling, institutional experiences, and the land-based processes that inform their artistic creation.
Drawing on specific plays and performances, and referring to influential artists such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Monique Mojica, and other performance theorists, the panel examines how these inheritances materialize in practice—through narrative structure, performance methodology, and relationships to community and place. Collectively, the panel demonstrates how inheritances—political, aesthetic, and embodied—are not fixed legacies, but dynamic, evolving forces that generate new futures for theatre and performance.
Biographies:
Frances Koncan (they/she) is an Anishinaabe-Slovene playwright originally from Couchiching First Nation in Treaty 3 territory. They are a graduate of the University of Manitoba (B.A. Psychology) and the City University of New York Brooklyn College (MFA Playwriting) and are currently an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing where they teach playwriting and screenwriting. She likes theatre a lot.
Lindsay Lachance (Algonquin Anishinaabe) is a dramaturge and holds a Canada Research Chair in Land-based and Relational Dramaturgies. She is an Assistant Professor of Canadian Theatre and Dramaturgy in the Department of Theatre & Film at the University of British Columbia. She was the first Artistic Associate of Indigenous Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre.
Rena Priest is a citizen of the Lhaq’temish [Lummi] Nation. In a historic appointment, Priest was named Washington State’s sixth Poet Laureate (2021-2023), becoming the first Indigenous person to hold the position. In this role, she championed poetry that celebrated the ecological gifts of the bioregion. Learn more at renapriest.com.