Yukon theatre company uses people's words to create a play
The Yukon theatre company, Open Pit, received a total of $21, 000 in grants from both the department of Tourism and Culture of the Yukon Government and Canada Council for the Arts to develop a new verbatim play. It will directly involve Yukoners throughout the territory and will be based on the theme home.
Verbatim theatre is a form of art that uses the exact words of those interviewed to create a play. Throughout the summer and the fall, Open Pit will interview Yukoners from at least 8 different communities to discuss their homes, their land, and how they feel about living in the north.
To gain the widest and most accurate Yukon perspective, Open Pit will be interviewing people of different generations, cultural backgrounds, and social standing. Based only on the transcriptions of these interviews, Open Pit will create a script for a new play.
"Home is a theme that is relevant to us all, but that exists in different forms and that triggers different responses. Whether you are an immigrant or First Nations, whether you live in a van, a big log house or an overpriced and crowded downtown apartment, we want to explore what it means for people to live right here, right now." explains Open Pit's co artistic producer Geneviève Doyon.
A first draft of this play will be presented to the Whitehorse audience in the spring of 2015. In their 2016-17 season, Open Pit plans to tour the final production back into the communities where the initial interviews took place.
In order to generate enough raw material, Open Pit hopes to conduct over 200 hundred territory-wide interviews. If you, or someone you know, would like to participate in the Yukon Verbatim Project please contact Genevieve Doyon at genevieve@openp.it to arrange an interview.
Funding for this project is made possible through the assistance of Arts Fund, Department of Tourism and Culture, Mike Nixon, Minister, and Canada Council for the Arts.