Missing. World premiere of chamber opera at York Theatre. Performances are at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3, 7, 9 and 11; 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 5. Produced by City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria, in partnership with Vancouver Moving Theatre/DTES Heart of the City Festival.
If Marie Clements could write a play, or an opera, that could magically solve Canada’s unfortunate legacy of missing and murdered women – a tragedy that has largely affected Indigenous women – she would do so in a heartbeat.
“In some ways, I’ve been with this story my whole life,” Clements says about writing the libretto for Missing, an upcoming chamber opera that aims to shine a light on a story that’s all too familiar to the public, even if it’s about a woman few remember.
“I’ve seen decades of missing and murdered women in this country, and yet we’re still at this place. If I could write any story or write an opera that would solve this I would gladly spend my life doing it.”
Set in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and along the Highway of Tears, Missing is a poetic expression of loss and hope that fuses Aboriginal theatre with opera, Clements explains.
She was tapped to write the libretto for the production, which is directed by Peter Hinton, conducted by Timothy Long with music composed by Brian Current, by City Opera Vancouver.
Missingwas also co-produced by Vancouver Moving Theatre and the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, where the chamber opera will be the specially featured production at the annual multi-day event.
The theme of this year’s Heart of the City Festival is about honouring the Women of the Downtown Eastside, a mantle that the cast and crew of Missing have taken up with pride.
“This murdered and missing women situation is not like a weekly thing even, or a monthly thing – it seems to feel like it’s a daily occurrence,” Clements says. “We’re in a time where we’re reading articles or reading news where young women are disappearing from their families, from their communities, so I think there’s an urgency in it and I think it has to be told in as many ways until we’re able to figure out a way or figure out something to do about it.”
Clements has been wrestling with important themes of racism, sexism, violence and activism for decades in her work as a playwright, performer, filmmaker, multimedia artist, and more.
She has used or incorporated music into her work before, perhaps most recently in her acclaimed musical documentary from earlier this year, The Road Forward, that examined the history of First Nations activism in B.C.
But with Missing, Clements has made her first foray into opera.
“For the first time in my life I listened to a lot of operas,” she says about finding her operatic inspiration when it came time to work on Missing. “It’s not something I grew up with so it was really kind of beautiful to go in a world that I’d never been before and try to figure out what I did connect to and things that I didn’t connect to and start to envision a way of creating in this new world.”
While she was initially unfamiliar with the medium, Clements says she became interested in the form of opera because of its immense theatricality, an aspect that allows the production to encompass big stories and big ideas.
In addition to its four-date run during the Heart of the City Festival, a special showcase of Missing is being presented to a select audience.
In a courageous, operatic attempt to honour all those missing and murdered women, an audience made up of the families, friends and the Downtown Eastside community of the missing, guided by a group of Aboriginal women and elders, will have the first chance to see the opera performed on Nov. 1.
“I think it was always City Opera’s intention to engage as many communities as possible and to give over and also pay tribute to those families that have been personally affected in our community,” Clements says. “I think it feels fitting that they be the first presentation for so many reasons.”
