• Age: 15 to 18
• Grade: 10 to 12

bug is a solo performance and artistic ceremony that highlights the ongoing effects of colonialism and intergenerational trauma experienced by Indigenous women, as well as a testimony to the women's resilience and strength. The Girl traces her life from surviving the foster care system to her struggles with addictions. She fights, hoping to break the cycle in order to give her daughter a different life than the one she had. The Mother sits in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, recounting memories of the daughter that was taken from her, and the struggles of living on the streets in Northern Ontario. They are both followed by Manidoons, a physical manifestation of the trauma and addictions that crawl across generations. bug reveals the hard truths that many Indigenous women face as they carve out a space to survive in contemporary Canada, while holding on to so much hope.

Yolanda Bonnell (She/They) is a Bi/Queer 2 Spirit Anishinaabe-Ojibwe, South Asian mixed performer, playwright and multidisciplinary creator/facilitator. From Fort William First Nation in Thunder Bay, Ontario (Superior Robinson Treaty territory), her arts practice is now based in Tkarón:to. In February 2020, Yolanda's four-time Dora-nominated solo show bug was remounted at Theatre Passe Muraille while the published book was shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award. In 2022, her play White Girls in Moccasins was produced at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto and at the frank theatre in Vancouver. Yolanda was the Indigenous artist recipient of the Jayu Arts for Human Rights Award for her work and won the PGC Tom Hendry Drama Award for her play My Sister's Rage. Yolanda has facilitated at schools like York University and Sheridan College and proudly bases her practice in land-based creation, drawing on energy and inspiration from the earth and her ancestors.

Yolanda Bonnell's profile page

bug pulls back the curtain on the falsehood of reconciliation using storytelling and movement, bringing everything we've seen in the news and the history books into the heart and gut. (Mooney on Theatre)