à la façon du pays is a time-travelling, multidisciplinary public performance of the very personal. An exploration of the twenty-year-plus friendship between a Métis-nehiyaw woman and a queer settler man, this tale re-imagines the past four hundred years, from the Fur Trade/colonial reality and moving through to the future of Artificial Intelligence; exploring what has really changed between Indigenous women and white men on this land since those early encounters.
Devised through collaborative creation and inspired by land-based research across lands and waterways of the prairies, the contract is the heart of this piece. Told on Indigenous land, it is a daring history re-told of 'this place,’ where the forgotten and still inherited ‘custom of the country' or 'à la façon du pays’ sets the foundation of ‘canada’ the past 400 years and into the unknown abyss of the future.
Jonathan Seinen (he/him) is a theatre artist with an emphasis on devised work, new plays, and adaptations of classic texts. Born in BC and raised in Alberta, he was co-founder of Architect Theatre which created two plays about resource extraction projects: Highway 63: The Fort Mac Show and Like There’s No Tomorrow. Jonathan directed Saga Collectif’s Dora Award-nominated Black Boys and Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)’s Governor General’s Award-finalist Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land), and has acted across the country at Tarragon Theatre and Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, amongst others. After five years in the United States, he returned as an Assistant Professor in the University of Regina’s BFA in Devised Theatre and Performance Creation program. Jonathan holds an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University, where he trained under Anne Bogart, and was awarded the John Hirsch Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2019.
Website: jonathanseinen.com
Residency Website: https://theatrecentre.org/residency/pj-prudat-jonathan-seinen/