Salmon Girl, Presentation House Theatre, Raven Spirit Dance production created by Michelle Olson and Quelemia Sparrow, Jan. 27, 28, 29 and Feb. 3, 4, 5; Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays at 1 p.m.
A wolf brought them together for salmon.
Three days before the premiere of their new play/dance piece/puppet show Salmon Girl, playwright Quelemia Sparrow and choreographer Michelle Olson discuss the origins of both the show and their partnership.
As cast and crew scatter for their lunch break, Sparrow and Olson sit side by side outside the Presentation House Theatre stage, generously offering beginnings and endings for each other’s sentences.
“It was Michelle’s desire to write a TYA (theatre for young audiences) show. And then you asked me: ‘Do you want to create a TYA show?’” Sparrow recalls with an infectious laugh. “And then we said: ‘What do we want to write it about?’”
They met through the play, The Ice Wolf, (Sparrow co-starred with Olson’s husband) and now share the shorthand and shared sense of humour indispensable among close collaborators.
Their newest venture evolved over years of workshops, revisions, and the type of conversation that starts with, ‘You know what might work …’ But the basis was always salmon.
The fish wind through the centuries of Musqueam culture, Sparrow explains.
She’d heard some stories as a child but it was between semesters at theatre school while working for the research department in her band’s office that she struck the richest vein.
“I read a bunch of stories there that I hadn’t even heard before,” she laughs, recalling a wide variety of “crazy salmon stories.”
When Sparrow and Olson decided to work together on Salmon Girl, they began by swapping tales.
“I heard stories from Michelle’s nation and then I told her some stories from this region,” Sparrow says.
“(Salmon Girl) itself is a combination of Quelemia’s Musqueam First Nation community and my (Tr’ondek Hwech’in) community in the Yukon,” Olson explains. “We’ve combined these two traditional stories and made them into a contemporary story.”
Salmon Girl, as Olson puts it, is intended to “hold the teachings” of those stories,
“There’s a reason why these stories have been around for so long and there’s a reason why I want to keep passing them on: because there’s incredible knowledge in these stories that we need,” Sparrow explains. “For me, it’s about bringing traditional storytelling to life again, and keeping that tradition alive.”
By hopefully appealing to children and adults, the play will remind its audience “how to care for the rivers and how to care for the oceans” so that salmon runs can flourish.
“It’s the function of stories. Stories are meant to inspire, to guide, to teach. And that, I think, is vital,” Olson says.
The play will have its chance to inspire, guide and teach approximately 1,700 elementary students scheduled to see the show’s weekday matinees at Presentation House Theatre.
Salmon Girl is the rare production that has rehearsed on the same spot it will be performed.
“We have the theatre for the full time that we’re rehearsing, which actually doesn’t happen very often,” Olson points out. “I feel like the piece started here.”
Besides the Chesterfield Avenue location, it also feels appropriate for the play to be staged on the North Shore, according to Sparrow.
“The North Shore has some really amazing creeks … there’s a couple projects that are happening along the North Shore that are really trying to revitalize the salmon,” Sparrow says.
While both Sparrow and Olson would happily receive applause inside the 150-seat theatre, what they really want is for the show to become a “bridge outside of the theatre,” Sparrow explains.
Given the abundance of waterways that flow through the North Shore, Sparrow wants theatregoers to realize how close they are to these “points of nature that we can still really take care of … even if you’re on Lonsdale and Second.”
