On the twentieth anniversary of its first volume, Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume III is a curated collection of new works rooted in Indigenous values, aesthetics, and narrative structures. Inspired by their own dramaturgical practices and current conversations in contemporary theatre creation, co-editors Monique Mojica and Lindsay Lachance identify the invaluable and understudied ways that many Indigenous theatre artists are creating culturally specific dramaturgical processes and shifting the paradigm for what is considered “text.” By presenting models for relational theatre-making and land-based explorations outside the traditional “well-made-play” structure, Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume III is more than just a collection of plays; it offers strategies and tools for how Indigenous artists can reimagine the structures of new-play development and performance on Turtle Island.

An anthology that identifies and highlights a vast array of anti-colonial performing arts processes, including reclamation, embodiment, and community-engaged work—to name only a few—Mojica and Lachance gather the works of artists leading these practices to not only honour how their plays are expanding dramaturgy, but to build Indigenous performance literacies for all practitioners creating on Turtle Island.

Monique Mojica’s (Guna and Rappahannock) theatrical practice is centred in land-based embodied research and the development of culturally specific Indigenous dramaturgies. Her first play, Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots, was produced in 1990 and is taught in curricula internationally. She founded Chocolate Woman Collective in 2006 to create the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way. She is the co-editor, with Ric Knowles, of Staging Coyote’s Dream vols. I and II. Newly released is Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way: Mapping Embodied Indigenous Performance, written with Brenda Farnell. Most recent performances include Izzie M.: The Alchemy of Enfreakment written by Monique with a diverse creative team, My Sister’s Rage for Tarragon Theatre and The Unnatural and Accidental Women at the National Arts Centre. Monique has collaborated with Santee Smith since 2013 as the dramaturge for Kaha:wi Dance Theatre’s tryptic Re-Quickening / Blood Tides / SKe:NEN, Teneil Whiskeyjack’s Ayita for Edmonton’s SkirtsAfire Festival ,and Audrey Dwyer’s Come Home: The Legend of Daddy Hall for Tarragon Theatre. She is a member of the newly formed Indigenous Dramaturgy Circle at Tarragon Theatre and was the inaugural Wurlitzer Visiting Professor at the University of Victoria’s Theatre Department in 2023.

Monique Mojica's profile page

Dr. Lindsay Lachance is an award-winning dramaturge and Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she also earned her Ph.D. in 2018. Most recently, Dr. Lachance holds a Canada Research Chair position in Land-Based and Relational Dramaturgies. Her extensive career in dramaturgy spans over a decade, which includes her role as the first Artistic Associate of the Indigenous Theatre department at Canada’s National Arts Centre. In honour of her Algonquin Anishinaabe family, Lachance’s dramaturgical practices are influenced by her relationships with birch bark biting and the Gatineau River.

Lindsay Lachance's profile page