In modern times we seldom think of the impact the fur trade had on colonization in Canada — though it’s one of the first examples of resource-based extraction that drove the formation of settlements across the country.
Anishinaabe and Slovene playwright Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade is set in eighteen hundred and something-something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory. This was a time when Indigenous and Métis people were striving for their own sovereignty to build a homeland recognized by Confederation under the leadership of Louis Riel.
Here we meet three very different women with a preference for 21st-century slang who find themselves stuck in a fort having tea and sharing their views on life, love and Riel.
“Frances Koncan’s satirical look at the lives of women during the time of Louis Riel and the colonization of Canada is a very clever way of illustrating the dismantling of the traditional lives of Métis and Indigenous people of the time,” says Firehall’s artistic producer Donna Spencer and director of Women of the Fur Trade.
In the play, the focus is shifted from the male gaze on history to that of the women as they strive to retain and gain power and strength in a rapidly changing world.
“Mixing contemporary references with historical actions allows the story of the play to be told in a manner that takes us from the present to the past and back again,” adds Spencer.
Frances Koncan’s Women on the Fur Trade will have its West Coast premiere at the Firehall Arts Centre on Saturday, Feb. 8, running to Sunday, Feb. 23.
To learn more about the Firehall Arts Centre, visit their website or find them on Facebook and Instagram.
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