ON STAGE
What: Busted Up: A Yukon Story
Where: The Belfry Theatre, 1291 Gladstone Ave.
When: March 10-14
Tickets: $29 from or the Belfry box office (250-385-6815)
With a cast of six portraying 35 real-life characters, with dialogue taken from interviews with members of eight Yukon communities and 14 First Nations of the North, director and co-creator Jessica Hickman certainly has her hands full with Busted Up: A Yukon Story.
The play 鈥� which premi猫red in 2017 at the Yukon Arts Centre 鈥� has been tinkered with in recent years, as Hickman attempts to sharpen a piece that has become increasingly more pertinent.
鈥淭he political situation at the time was different than now, so we鈥檝e removed a few things from the script that are no longer relevant,鈥� Hickman said. 鈥淏ut what鈥檚 interesting to us is the content is about land, and the treatment of land, and how we value land, and our relationships to land. Even though this project was developed four years ago, it feels more relevant than ever.鈥�
Hickman and playwright and co-creator Genevi猫ve Doyon, who together run Whitehorse鈥檚 Open Pit Theatre, interviewed hundreds of people between the ages of five and 100 starting in 2015, with the intention of creating a stirring piece of verbatim theatre. The documentary-like form, where uncensored interviews are presented in a manner not unlike soliloquies or monologues, turned out to be the perfect vehicle for a play about an area of Canada unfamiliar to many, Hickman said.
鈥淲e started out with some very simple questions, like: 鈥榃hat is your relationship to this land in the North?鈥� And then we would lead the interview based off of how they answered.鈥�
Busted Up kickstarts the Belfry Theatre鈥檚 Spark Festival on Tuesday, the first of many events over a busy two-week period of activity at the Fernwood theatre complex (see sidebar for more information on the seventh annual festival.)
Hickman, who lives in Victoria, has found the experience of remounting Busted Up to be a revealing one, given the contrast between where she lives and where her company is based.
Though the hot-button topics affecting those who live in the Yukon are different from those that affect B.C. residents, there is a connection between mining in the North and natural gas pipelines on the West Coast. 鈥淎lmost all of the themes that are touched on in the play have a universal feel to them,鈥� Hickman said.
鈥淎s B.C. residents, resource extraction and how we鈥檙e treating the land is something we can resonate with.鈥�
Hickman lived in Yukon for five years. She created Open Pit Theatre with Doyon, who remains based in Whitehorse and handles day-to-day operations.
Hickman stays in touch with Doyon from Victoria, where she works part-time with the 91原创 College of Performing Arts (she is directing and choreographing the company鈥檚 year-ender, Newsies, starting April 17). A trained actor and dancer, she has been transitioning into directing over the past 10 years, and has directed five or six productions thus far.
Busted Up, which features music from Hickman鈥檚 husband, Brooke Maxwell, has been a rewarding experience on several levels, she said. From its discourse about racism and colonialism to its celebration of the North鈥檚 wild expanse, she imagines the experience will be an educational and entertaining one for those unfamiliar with life in the Yukon.
鈥淭here are so many conversations now about our relationships to each other and how we treat each other. That is touched on in the play, a lot 鈥� how we exist together, even though we鈥檙e different and come from different places and are of different ethnicities. I think it is a revealing look at a different world for some people.鈥�
