National Network for Equitable Library Service

Contemporary Indigenous theatre in Canada is just over thirty years old, if one begins counting from the premier of Linda Griffiths and Maria Campbell's Jessica in Saskatoon 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: Indigenous Performance Culture traces the work of a host of these artists over the past three decades, illuminating the connections, the artistic geneaology, and the development of a contemporary Indigenous theatre practice. Neither a hsitory 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.