Takwahiminana
TAKWAHIMINANA by Matthew McKenzie, directed by Mike Payette and choreographed by Anoshinie Muhundarajah: This is a sincere attempt to deal with the author’s mixed heritage as a member of the Metis nation the child of a woman who spent her formative years in Bangalore, though the stories told are not strictly biographical. Sharon (Michaela Washburn) shares her own conflicted past. Her South Asian mother and First Nation’s father raised her in Bangalore, where she stood out among her classmates for her lighter hair and skin. At 14, her father moved her to a suburb of Vancouver where she stood out because of her accent. With her father heavily involved in his career as a doctor, she eventually was raised by Betty, her First Nations grandmother, an expert herbalist. In the present, she’s dealing with her affair with a married French chef.
That’s a lot of plot to cram into 60 minutes, and I haven’t even covered a lot of the details. In the tradition of aboriginal storytelling and the First Nations view of history as an interconnected web rather than a straight line, the story meanders through time and place. It’s not until the end that the various threads some together. This is a particular challenge as McKenzie’s script doesn’t contain very clear transitions, nor does Washburn’s playing try to supply them. There are also problems in exposition. Sharon talks about Betty for half the play before stating the woman was her grandmother. And for much of the play’s running time, Washburn plays Sharon in a perpetual snit. “To whine” seems to be her predominant tactic, even when describing discoveries she made that seem to have filled her with wonder. She doesn’t modulate this until well into the hour, by which time it’s easy to have shut yourself off from the character.
What works best in the production is the visuals. Sharon’s stories are extended by the performances of five South Asian dancers whose actions sometimes mirror what she’s describing and at other times serve more as abstractions. They’re fascinating to watch, and the three women in particular are delightfully precise and present. Dawn Marie Marchand’s set, a beaded, undulating curtain that functions as a scrim but with more dimensionality, Andre de Tott’s lights and Amelia Scott’s videos maintain visual interest even when you’re busily trying to connect the dots in the disjoined storytelling.
