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.
PJ Prudat, born in a fierce snowstorm in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, is a Treaty-6-born, proud Métis~Michif~nehiyaw~saulteaux playwright, actor and writer. PJ is a daughter-of-the-fur-trade; her *otanskotapew~*matrilineal ancestors-travelled by dog team, were Buffalo hunters, Métis Résistance Fighters & Treaty Six hereditary-chief signatories
PJ holds Artistic Residencies with Nightswimming and the Theatre Centre and is a Co-Artistic-Leader at Shakespeare in the Ruff, where her play otîhêw premiered last summer (and will be produced by Shakespeare in Action in the of summer 2023). As an actor she has toured luminous IBPOC-creative-led shows across the country and is among the first ever Indigenous Women to hold space as a Company Actor at both the National Arts Centre **and the Shaw Festival. PJ is galvanized to create art that acts as restorative justice; illuminating Indigenous truths in story, lived histories on these lands, and through pure storytelling magic. Kitatamihinâwâw.
PJ’s Website: https://www.pjprudat.com/
Residency Website: https://theatrecentre.org/residency/pj-prudat-jonathan-seinen/