Redpatch, Presentation House Theatre from March 29-April 9 and at Studio 16 from April 12-16. Tickets can be purchased by going to phtheatre.org/show/Redpatch or tickets.theatrewire.com/shows/redpatch/events. More information on Redpatch and its playwrights can be found at hardlineproductions.ca.
As the stage darkens and the action subdues slightly, a whistle blows from a distance. Several individuals are huddled together in a trench.
Silence comes, during which the audience gets a moment with each individual on stage.
One person is tightly gripping a cross, about to tuck it away. Another inspects his gun, making sure the weapon is ready for use at a moment’s notice.
In another part of the trench, a young Métis man from Vancouver Island whispers a prayer to his grandmother while holding his medicine bag, a small pouch that for many indigenous people can contain items of spiritual significance and healing.
The tension builds slowly, heavily, before the characters stuck in the trench must take up arms and march onto the battlefield ahead of them.
It’s the Battle of Vimy Ridge and it’s the First World War.
“I think that that’s going to be a really special moment in the production because the audience will really get a sense of what it was like to be in a trench ready to go into battle,” says Sean Harris Oliver, director and co-writer of
Redpatch, an upcoming play that explores the important and often overlooked history of indigenous participation in the First World War while fighting on behalf of Canada.
Redpatch tells the story of Pte. Jonathon Woodrow, a young Métis man from B.C.’s Nootka Island that volunteers to fight with the Canadian Forces in the First World War.
During his time overseas, he sees action in the battles of Ypres, Somme, and Vimy Ridge before heading home and being forced to come to grips with everything he’s been through.
“In the Canadian theatre canon, there’s not a lot of plays out there where there is a bunch of First Nations characters in the play. Those stories aren’t out there,” Oliver says.
While not all the characters in Redpatch are indigenous, all the actors playing them are. This was important to both Oliver and Raes Calvert, the play’s other writer and lead actor who portrays Pte. Woodrow.
“Given the subject matter of this play and the story we’re trying to tell, we felt it was really important in this day and age to cast it with a full indigenous cast with a mix of male and female actors,” Oliver says.
Calvert and Oliver’s collaboration on this project came about five years ago.
At the time, Oliver was acting in a production called Vimy by playwright Vern Thiessen. In that play, there is a First Nations character, though according to Oliver the show didn’t necessarily go into great detail about the character or the history of First Nations involvement in the war.
Calvert came to watch his friend perform one evening and the pair got to talking about this facet of Canadian history and identity.
Calvert’s grandfather is of Aboriginal descent and he fought on Canada’s behalf in the Second World War.
From this notion, the idea for a new play was born.
“We started becoming interested in telling this story from this perspective about this part of our history that really isn’t mentioned and a lot of people don’t know about it,” Calvert says.
More than 4,000 indigenous Canadians fought in the First World War, a fact that Canadians today are rarely exposed to, Calvert and Oliver say.
In order to do their story justice, the pair decided to go to the source.
“To really get a sense of where this character was coming from and this character’s history, Sean and I went out to Nootka Sound and actually took a float plane to Nootka Island and we met with some elders there from
Mowachaht-Muchalaht band,” Calvert says. “This is the kind of research that we had to do to be accurate. This is us doing our due diligence.”
Calvert and Oliver say the play is designed for a wide variety of audiences to appreciate and learn from. Specifically, it’s geared towards Aboriginal and indigenous communities, veterans, indigenous veterans and young people.
“We really geared this play to being interesting for a younger demographic where they’ll learn about this part of history and engage with this kind of material,” Oliver says.
Although the play could be categorized as a historical drama, its many shifts in time and place, moving from real-time events, past events, dreamscapes and visions, lends a complexity to its structure that highlights the play’s important themes.
“A lot of the play is what does it mean to become a man, what does it mean to become a warrior, and how do we get home from war, how do we get back to where we came from?” Oliver says.
When asked why the play is premiering in April, Calvert and Oliver’s answer is simple: they’re honouring the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
Those wanting to learn more about indigenous involvement in the First World War and honour those who fought can catch Redpatch at North Vancouver’s Presentation House Theatre from March 29-April 9 and at West
Vancouver’s Studio 16 from April 12-16. Tickets can be purchased by going to phtheatre.org/show/Redpatch or tickets.theatrewire.com/shows/redpatch/events.
More information on Redpatch and its playwrights can be found at hardlineproductions.ca.
