Trickster
Spirits Meet Dijereedoos
Interact Theater and Kevin Kling
Travel
Down Under for Exciting Collaboration
by Sandy Moore
Nationally-acclaimed American
actor/playwright/storyteller Kevin Kling is traveling this February
with artists from Interact Center to premier their latest work, “Northern
Lights Southern Cross: Tales from the Other Side of the World.” The
group, including Jeanne Calvit, Artistic Director of Interact Center,
two of Interact’s performing
artists and Al Baker, Native drummer and medicine man, will perform at the
Bundaleer Festival in South Australia and at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
They will perform in collaboration with the Tutti Ensemble, a theater company
focusing on original music theater that includes artists with and without
disabilities, led by composer/music director Pat Rix.
The idea for the new work emerged when Rix was in Minnesota visiting
Interact. She and Calvit took a day trip, and while gazing out at the
St Croix River and the lush Minnesota landscape, they were struck by
the stark differences in the environments of their two homes. And yet
there were many similarities, such as the fact that both countries
were founded by pioneers who dominated and nearly destroyed indigenous
populations. When Calvit brought Kling into the mix, the inspiration
to create this epic new work took root, and the cross-cultural collaboration
began.
Northern Lights/Southern
Cross sprang from their shared vision to create compelling theater
that challenges society’s view of persons
with disabilities. The result—a rich mix of original solo and
choral music, storytelling, poetry, scripted work, shadow puppetry
and projected imagery—reaches across cultures to explore the
fear of “other,” as well as the shared experiences that
shape the lives of artists with disabilities—especially those
from minority cultures. Working with disabled artists from Native
American, African American, European and Aboriginal communities,
Northern Lights/Southern Cross gives depth and insight to issues
of cultural difference.
The Northern Lights portion of this story began to take shape in January
of 2006, when ten artists from the Tutti Ensemble came to Minnesota
to experience winter for the first time. Twenty artists from Interact
and Tutti traveled to the northern wilderness, facilitated by Wilderness
Inquiry of Minneapolis, and were immersed in experiences that even
most Minnesotans have never had: dogsledding, snowshoeing, taking a
sauna and jumping through a hole in the ice of a frozen lake.
In a long weekend with
Ojibwe leaders at Lac Courte Oreilles (la cout o ray) reservation
in Wisconsin, the group took part in a drum ceremony, attended a
pow-wow, met with medicine men and went ice fishing. Ideas started
brewing when the group heard stories of Winne-boujou, the Great Spirit,
who was sent to the other side of the world to set things right. “Right
away,” said Calvit, “we recognized the timelessness of
our instinct to collaborate, to bring artists together from the southern
and northern hemispheres to look at differences, and try to set things
into perspective.
“We also learned about heyokes, the trickster spirits, contraries
who do everything backwards. These spirits have deep resonance in the
world of the disabled—they are wrong, contrary, annoying; they
elicit anger—or laughter—and they reflect our prejudices
back at us. They aren’t ‘normal,’ and they force
us to reach into our own humanity, or know when we are ignoring it.
They are the sacred, honored spirit of ‘otherness.’”
In March of 2006, Kling
and one of Interact’s Native American
artists, Sindibad, traveled to Australia to develop the Southern
Cross portion of this collaboration. They went to the Arkaroola Wilderness
Sanctuary, an area important to Aboriginal culture and the tribal
region of the Adnaja-mathana people, and participated in ritual ceremonies.
In contrast to Minnesota, this part of Australia is the most arid
on the continent.
In the performance, the
artists explore a variety of new images as they bring these ideas
to life on stage. In one scene, disabled/heyoke spirits wander into
life, geared up with backpacks and curiosity. In another scene, a
spirit goes to sleep in one hemisphere and wakes up in the other,
looking up at the sky and realizing that the sky is different. The
sky is important in both Australian and Native American cultures—the
Great Spirit comes from the sky. The heyokes come from the Thunderbird,
who lives in the sky.
A deep, resonant connection
was made at Lac Courte Oreilles when Aboriginal artist Steve Goldman
played his dijereedoo. As the voice of the Outback and the voice
of the drum held time in sacred suspension, another key piece of
the artistic vision fell into place. Tutti Ensemble’s
musicians will bring in the voice of the Earth – a distinct character
in the work – by representing through sung and spoken word the
voices of trees, rocks, fire and wind – sounds with its source
in the natural world.
The work on Northern Lights is now progressing on two continents,
and information is being shared thanks to e-mail and long distance
phone calls. In February, Interact will travel to Adelaide for four
weeks of rehearsal before the opening, performed in the outdoor festival
in the Bundaleer Forest beneath the stars of the Southern Cross.
Calvit believes this will
be a groundbreaking piece of work for Interact: “I
believe this work, in both content and scope, will be a first on
any stage in Minnesota. It will have a strong educational value, will
be multidisciplinary in nature and will push the boundaries of the
art form. It will include artists from the disability and native communities
of both countries in work that explores music and mythology in unexpected
ways.” ![]()
Postcript: This project
is fully funded except for three airline tickets costing $5300. If
readers would like to make a tax-deductable donation to make this
project happen, they should call Jeanne Calvit at 612-339-5145.
