Thought Residencies

When I picture decolonization, I see my father & uncles returning from their traplines. They'd burst in with a kind of joy that I now know was their childhood—before they were scooped up and the layers of their Darkness settled in. Remembering those dripping rabbit pelts, I know how it feels: we are all Food for someone's heartbeat. We walk the veins of our bloodlines to where we were first snared...

When I listen to the echoes of the world… mostly, I hear lineage. I feel what's been forgotten when I hold a tree close. For those of us born blurred between lines of colour and culture, we are its leaves dancing in the wind. We're the chorus of a song our ancestors prayed—their story rooted somehow in us. Our bodies are our inheritance. A legacy of survival breathes through us. We are why our anc...

I met a stranger and discovered that we are deeply familiar to one another. Neither of us understand it but we both implicitly trust it—this Knowing. How little of the world I truly understand, Time being but one of many layers to my wanton ignorance. I wonder how close are we to an Other Life? To intimate knowledge of another? Are we always on the cusp of discovering that we are more than we thin...

I am tired. My heart is a little bent in places and I still don't know what it means to have a Calling. I go to the river and I hold a stone in my hand. This smooth, ancient bone shard reminds me that I am soft and new and a visitor here. This is the way the land speaks—tender even when it burns. Ceremony is its poetry... each stanza an offer, waiting for something deeper than thought to notice, h...

We Anishinaabe think of knowledge as Teachings. We wait for our teachers to arrive. The purpose of all knowledge is to pass it on and those who are, are only Knowledge Keepers for a time.  My son's arrival was lodged in me for years, but I only recognized that the feeling-he-had-been was gone long after he was born. I didn't know he was coming. I didn't know how much I needed his knowledge. He's t...

There's very little elegance when creating something from nothing. It's gangly work to let go of expectation—to endure the growing pains of acceptance and the insufferable lack of clarity that sucks the marrow of your joy. It's not until an exquisitely lucid moment of connection surprises you and what was a problem, a resentment, or a looming fiasco suddenly becomes a rite of passage. 

I've been trained to hold the space—to fulfill my responsibilities by caring for community. But the older I get, the more I seem to fail at holding the space in a Good Way. And with each failure, I think I may be learning that the space is holding me  and  my failure… and my actual responsibility is to simply carry my fear, not wield it.

Today has been a study in humility. I am collaborating on a new piece, and I was reminded that to be inside my own questions is to be exceptionally open to other peoples' answers.  Everything is about reorienting ourselves to the Thing (with a capital T) that we've lost, which is the land. And collaboration is a recall of sorts of what we live without, and how we fill it with what we hope might be...

Did you watch the Tonys? Today's thought is about the art we love and what happens, or how it feels, when we stop loving it. These days I sit through a musical the same way I think Kevin Spacey does - with a polite smile that doesn't reach my eyes.

Hey, it's Dylan again. Thought #4 is about sharing, artistic labour, and money. I'll be among the first to advocate for more openness, more sharing of artistic works, the ability to build upon them... I think that if art is a public good it should be freely available. However, I have to wonder if sharing freely in this way undervalues - devalues artistic labour in an industry that already has prob...

Hey, it's Dylan with Thought #3. As scrappy as theatres can be, we use a lot of technology, and most of it is proprietary. Other people build it, and theatres pay to use it. I've been dreaming of a world where theatres will have the money to hire technical people to be on staff to collectively build and maintain the tools we need as an industry, and make them freely available for anyone's use. So,...

Hey, it's Dylan and this is my second thought. Today I'm thinking about Semantic Versioning, so for example, the process that governs our move from version 1 to version 2. In software, this is a huge shift introducing backwards-incompatible changes that mean you can't use that software in the same way. We can re-invent Romeo & Juliet into version 2 and demand a fundamentally different engagement w...

Hi, my name is Dylan On. Today I'm thinking about artistic and cultural institutions and their subjectivity. Namely - do they have one? Can institutions exist in a real way where they can bear responsibility, or do individuals like me simply speak them into existence? I guess what I'm wrestling with is: When institutions fail... does the buck stop with me?

Th​ought #12 - The Call​ ​Th​ere is a thorn in the wind There is a wall we must climb There is a storm rolling in It is the call of our time Who is to tend to the need​?​ Who is to hold tired hands​?​ Friend it is you, it is me Because n​o one is free Until freedom stands _______________ This is Tanisha and Thought #12.​​​ Thanks for listening to my residency.​

Thought #11 - Legacy It's Tanisha and Thought #11. As I've watched the In Memoriam reels at this year's Oscars and Grammys, I can't help thinking about the impact of my own life. As a daughter, as a sister, as an aunt, a mentor, a friend... I know it is deep and true. But as an artist? I'm not sure. Will there be a directing job that I do, a performance that I give, a song or a play that I write -...

It's Tanisha and Thought #10. Often I'll look at strangers and thin​k​ "Might we have been friends in a different life?"​ It fascinates me how the relationships that we hold dearest -- our siblings, colleagues, friends and mentors -- are all born of circumstance. Where did we live? What were our parents' economic situations? What schools did we go to? What jobs did we get? What contracts did we ta...

This is Tanisha and Thought #9. There are moments which encapsulate and cement us. I think that the most powerful breaths we ever take are in those pivotal and defining moments -- the ones that divide our lives into before and after they happened. You often do not know that they will be the defining ones until well after they occur, but then when you look back... you find yourself in awe of their...

This is Tanisha and Thought #9. I'm someone who tries very hard to live her life from a place of truth. And so watching the Trump administration lead with lies, and live in lies, is so disconcerting for me. It's not that I didn't know that politicians can be dishonest; of course I did. But it's the commitment to dishonesty -- a commitment that is so fundamentally contrary to the commitment that I'...

This is Tanisha and Thought #8. Our government is letting a lot of people down. Brea​king political promises​, breaking Indigenous hearts. It's so easy - and I catch myself doing it too - for us to sit on our high horses and focus on the crap show that is happening south of the border, because it is so brazen in its horror and its malice. Ma​ke no mistake, I am grateful to be where I am. But that...

Moderator: Sarah Garton Stanley Guests: Theo Pitsiavas & Chris Little, Erin Shields & Genevieve L. Blais, Ali Joy Richardson & Amanda Wong, Joey Tremblay, Trevor Schmidt, Matthew Payne & Pamela Bethel, Heather Inglis & Adam Tsuyoshi Turnbull

It's Tanisha and Thought #7. So powerfully poignant and painful it is to love someone to the depths of your being who cannot, does not, and will not ever love you back. And yet from the midst of this realness come lessons -- lessons in detachment, in sacrifice, in selflessness and in grace... that are profound.

​This is​ Tanisha and Thought #6. Often, when a young attractive woman of colour becomes part of an ensemble that is otherwise Caucasian, at some point -- either during the process or in reviews -- she will be referred to as "exotic". And apparently she's supposed to jump up and say "Thank you" for this. A woman of colour who acts in a play or a film is an actor. Not a ferret, not an iguana, not a...

This is Tanisha Taitt and Thought #5. Imagine Donald Trump as a theatre director. Imagine him having to collaborate with actors, designers, crew, and an admin staff to put something on stage - in which although he was helming the ship, he had to acknowledge equally the talents of everyone aboard that ship in order for that ship to set sail. Do you think he could do it? Or do you think it would be...

This is Tanisha and Thought #4. Here's some advice. If you are a white person, avoid ranting about why Black Lives Matter are a bunch of morons that offend you and why they aren't going about their business correctly. You might not appreciate their tactics, and that's fine. But until you know where the pain and the distrust and the terseness come from -- until you live in that skin and then dedica...

Barack Obama's second memoir was called The Audacity Of Hope and I've been thinking a lot about that phrase recently, as we wake up feeling hopeless at the thought that the most powerful country in the world is seemingly led by someone with no moral compass and no intellectual curiosity. So it is up to us - each of us - to find the audacious within us and be bold and brave and loud. We can't wait...