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Social Science Indigenous Studies

Indigenous Women’s Theatre in Canada

A Mechanism of Decolonization

by (author) Sarah Mackenzie

Publisher
Fernwood Publishing
Initial publish date
Nov 2020
Category
Indigenous Studies, Playwriting
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781773631875
    Publish Date
    Nov 2020
    List Price
    $27.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781773632018
    Publish Date
    Nov 2020
    List Price
    $26.99

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Description

Despite a recent increase in the productivity and popularity of Indigenous playwrights in Canada, most critical and academic attention has been devoted to the work of male dramatists, leaving female writers on the margins. In Indigenous Women’s Theatre in Canada, Sarah MacKenzie addresses this critical gap by focusing on plays by Indigenous women written and produced in the socio-cultural milieux of twentieth and twenty-first century Canada.

Closely analyzing dramatic texts by Monique Mojica, Marie Clements, and Yvette Nolan, MacKenzie explores representations of gendered colonialist violence in order to determine the varying ways in which these representations are employed subversively and informatively by Indigenous women. These plays provide an avenue for individual and potential cultural healing by deconstructing some of the harmful ideological work performed by colonial misrepresentations of Indigeneity and demonstrate the strength and persistence of Indigenous women, offering a space in which decolonial futurisms can be envisioned.

In this unique work, MacKenzie suggests that colonialist misrepresentations of Indigenous women have served to perpetuate demeaning stereotypes, justifying devaluation of and violence against Indigenous women. Most significantly, however, she argues that resistant representations in Indigenous women’s dramatic writing and production work in direct opposition to such representational and manifest violence.

About the author

SARAH MACKENZIE. Assistant Professor at the University of New Brunswick, where she teaches Indigenous Literature. Her dissertation examined the ways Indigenous women playwrights address the colonialist legacy of violence against women in contemporary North American contexts. Her academic research interests include Indigenous theatre, postcolonial feminist theory, Canadian history, and Indigenous literatures.

Sarah Mackenzie's profile page

Excerpt: Indigenous Women’s Theatre in Canada: A Mechanism of Decolonization (by (author) Sarah Mackenzie)

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