About the Book:

Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture is a compelling and timely book of non-fiction that shines a light on the importance of Indigenous theatre to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Contemporary Indigenous theatre in Canada begins with the premiere of Maria Campbell's Jessica at 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon (subsequently produced in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Scotland, Denmark, and Italy) and the establishment of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. Since those contemporaneous events in 1982, the Canadian community of Indigenous theatre artists has grown and inspired one another.

Medicine Shows traces the work of a host of these artists over the past three decades, illuminating the connections, the artistic genealogy, and the development of a contemporary Indigenous theatre practice. Neither a history nor a chronicle, Medicine Shows examines how theatre has been used to make medicine, reconnecting individuals and communities, giving voice to the silenced and disappeared, staging ceremony, and honouring the ancestors.

About the Author:

Yvette Nolan is a playwright, director, dramaturg and educator. Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father, raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she lived in the Yukon and Nova Scotia before moving to Toronto to take the helm at Native Earth Performing Arts where she served from 2003-2011. A prominent figure in Canadian Aboriginal theatre, her best-known and most-produced play is Annie Mae's Movement.